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Comment by markphip | Hacker News Reader

I got sick of waiting for Apple to fix their keyboards and built myself a custom Ryzen-based desktop. I chose to install PopOS 19.10 on it and it has been great. I plan on waiting a few weeks to upgrade to 20.04 and will then probably stay on that version until the next LTS release.

I never used Ubuntu as my daily driver so it is hard to say what is better, but PopOS has been great and has good defaults. It was not hard to adjust despite having used OSX for the previous 12 years. I work from home 95% of the time so working on a desktop was an option and I still have my old 15" Macbook from work around when I need to travel to the office. I will probably just get it upgraded when Apple refreshes the 13" Pro.

Anyway, +1 for PopOS and you do not have to run System76 hardware to use it.

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Switched from Mac to a system76 laptop last year. The build quality is a lot worse but the software just gets out of my way and does its job. So nice not to have to worry about Apple or Microsoft overlords anymore. Makes me want to get a puri.sm phone to completely leave big tech behind.

Or a PinePhone

wait... If you wanted a desktop, wouldn't getting a non-apple keyboard be a total nonissue?

It's also irrelevant it was a AMD-shilled CPU.

It could have been the drop that made the bucket overflow (or however you say this in your language) and it is probably also an emotional thing of feeling poorly treated.

Love learning a new expression! In English we usually say "the straw that broke the camel's back" or just "the last straw".

I don't know where you are from, but we say something very similar in Swedish.

in Russian we say just "the last drop".

Indeed, I had been feeling frustrated with Apple for a long time before finally giving in and building a Ryzen-based desktop.

Honestly, I won't say the transition has been entirely painless - it does take time to adjust to a new operating system, but I have to say, my biggest regret is that I didn't ditch Apple's computers sooner. I love my iPhone but honestly it does feel like Apple just isn't all that interested in their desktop / laptop computers recently.

Where are you from? In Greek we use "glass" instead of "bucket", it's really interesting to see how close these expressions are.

It sounds like a literal translation of the Italian version to me.

Or Dutch. "De druppel die the emmer doet overstromen" == "the drop that makes the bucket overflow".

Actually I was wrong, a literal translation would have used vase or pot

Indeed! In German it's "barrel"

Love the expression! I was aware these common phrases are often different across languages/cultures.

In college I learned that while Americans say "Kicked the bucket" or "Bought the farm" for 'died', Austrians say "Handed in their spoon". Which is farm more evocative IMHO.

A 400$ Ryzen will outperform anything that Apple offers outside the 6000$ Mac Pro, so might as well get a 8 or 12 core CPU?

It's not like it's the law that you need to buy Apple hardware.

Or a 16 core 3950x because works payin and watching a 32 thread beast chomp through a linux compile is legit popcorn worthy.

I did not necessarily want a desktop. I have used Macs for 12+ years. I have a 15" MBP with the old keyboard that still works well. The trackpad started to not register clicks consistently so I had to switch it to tap to click. I work remotely from home so using a desktop is an option. That said, I do still travel to the office several times a year so I need a laptop. I considered buying a System76 laptop but I just do not think the keyboard and trackpad would measure up to my MBP. I had also been intrigued by Ryzen so I just decided to build a custom desktop. I figured it would also let me test out using Linux as a daily driver and worst case I would have work upgrade my MBP to a new one and I could use the desktop as a home server for testing work stuff.

For now, I still use my MBP when I travel. I could probably do OK with the new Air if I wind up needing to upgrade. I would prefer to have 32 MB of RAM though because I run a lot of VM's and Docker images and having the extra RAM for that helps.

Anyway, back to my original point. PopOS has been a pretty easy transition and it worked fine on my custom build. You do not have to use System76 hardware to benefit from using it.

Have you tried wiping down the Touchpad

> "+1 for PopOS and you do not have to run System76 hardware to use it."

In the Thinkpad community, PopOS is often recommended for the Thinkpad X1 Extreme, because it has hybrid graphics that can switch between integrated and GPU based on your need, and PopOS is apparently the only Linux that supports that.

It automatically swaps, if so, that's pretty good.

If not, being able to choose between these has been around for quite a long time.

Did the graphics you chose have quality, easy to install drivers? Been thinking of doing something similar.

If you have Intel or AMD graphics work perfectly under Linux. You don't even need to install drivers because they are shipped in the Kernel.

There are kernel components of drivers as well as userspace components. But they are all available via package managers, so no need to install them.

Out of curiosity, do people have issues with Nvidia in Linux? I've seen similar sentiment in the past but I've never really noticed any issues with the nouveau (open source) driver. Due to CUDA work, I primarily use the proprietary drivers which work well too (other than an annoying suspend bug introduced in 18.04 and seemingly unfixed in 20.04)

Nvidia runs very well under Arch and Manjaro. Install the proprietary drivers and let Conda handle CUDA. It's as close to anything Just Working with Nvidia drivers for neural nets that I've found.

I think it depends on the card model but overall the Nvidia drivers and CUDA software work great.

Nvidia even provide Linux support for the latest RTX cards.

The biggest problem I had was installing the latest proprietary drivers because the ones Ubuntu provide are lagging behind. Sometimes you need to do this via the console.

Nvidia is supposed the be the big advantage of PopOS: you can download the Nvidia version of PopOS and it takes care of everything for you.

I've been using 1080ti (desktop) for gaming on Ubuntu 18.04 with no problems for a year or so using the closed source drivers from the Ubuntu Drivers PPA.

Yes, because Nvidia drivers are not part of the kernel they need to be updated manually and Nvidia does not distribute the source code, so you need to wait on Nvidia.

Nvidia also doesn't support some of the APIs that AMD and Intel do, which causes fragmentation in Linux desktop environments.

That's less than perfect there... I bought an RX 5700 XT in October when I built my desktop. I had lots of issues over the months until around February where it finally seemed stable (on updated Kernel releases, and having to sometimes download the binary driver modules).

Even then, I had trouble with even trying VMs as nothing supported the ahead of mainline kernel I needed for my video card. Now, 20.04 may be miles better and much more stable overall, still well behind the kernel I'd been running. Just saying it isn't a panacea at all.

NOTE: Since early march, I've been mostly on Windows in support of a couple legacy projects.

I moved my 5700xt into a purely for fun gaming pc and replaced it with a 1050 in my dev machine.

I had the exact same experience, but in December gave up on having linux play nicely with Navi for the time being. I will readily admit to being an AMD fanboy, but Nvidia is really besting them at the software game.

My 3700x CPU has been dreamy from day one.

This has more to do with market dominance and standards compliance of nvidia than anything else. Nvidia does its own thing game devs compensate, amd gets a shafted experience and looks like its their fault.

Could you elaborate? I would have thought that AMD would be invested in offering comparably good drivers. I'm not taking issue with a game not performing optimally. I'm taking issue with a reasonably common desktop environment (Ubuntu 18.04) proving unstable.

They create better drivers.

Nvidia dont adhere to specs. Amd does.

Developers develop for nvidia.

Problems ensue for amd users.

Do you recall which kernel you were using?

I was forced to grab a 5700xt because of stock problems but it would have been around the same time.

I had one big deal breaker problem but i only had to run a mainline kernel build to tie me over.

In anycase, this sort of thing is standard for new hardware, always takes a couple months for linux to catch up.

I ran ubuntu lts for a while with the amd drivers, then an update broke that (black screen)... by then popos 20.10 was out, and that mostly just worked... I had a couple issues and went up through kernel versions (MB also had Intel AX 201 wireless), so between the two, I paid for Ukuu and just stuck to the latest... around late January, no more issues.

Of course then I needed to do some work in windows, and couldn't get any VM software working with the ahead of mainline kernel I'd been using.

I understand the why, just was frustrating and less than ideal.

AMD, only if one has a recent card. APU owners aren't so lucky.

what do you mean? AMD integrated graphics are supported by the same open source driver... IIRC, anything that's GCN 1.2 or newer is supported (APU or dedicated)

Supported doesn't mean they are at the same feature level as fxgl used to be.

I am still waiting for OpenGL 4.1, the extensions listed here, and hardware video decoding, because from where I sitting glxinfo still reports OpenGL 3.0

https://www.geeks3d.com/20110609/asus-eee-pc-1215b-netbook-r...

So yeah, thanks very much for 2D and less than optimal 3D support.

You are correct - older hardware has suboptimal support. However - that laptop is at least eight years old. All the AMD graphics cards since Polaris have good support.

Nah, I rather bet on NVidia nowadays, it was a mistake to try to support AMD FOSS efforts and get this reward.

I recently switched to POP!_OS and the base install recognized my nvidia RTX 2070 which is very refreshing. no figuring out which drivers to install.

I have an nvidia graphics card, and the pop_os installer walked me through the driver installation and made everything pretty painless.

He said AMD Ryzen which works great with open source drivers that are part of the kernel. I've got a Ryzen 2 laptop and everything works perfectly under Ubuntu out of the box.

Not all Ryzen CPUs come with integrated graphics.

PopOS supports nvidia, intel and amd graphics pretty well out of the box (nvidia was a separate download, unsure if it still is).

I had trouble with the 5700 XT for the first few months though... Other than running out and buying a new graphics card series when it comes out, most people should be fine.

I do not game so I saved money by just going with a Radeon 570. It works great. I have multiple monitors, including my Apple Thunderbolt display. I was able to find an AIC for the desktop that added Thunderbolt and it "just worked" in PopOS .. at least for the video and audio. I never tried to get the webcam to work.

Try installing Pop!_OS on the old MacBook, it may run alot faster

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