Now I have far less time and far more money. I use Windows. It just works.
I will say that prior to ~2016, it was a completely different story. Whenever I had to reinstall Linux (which was frequent), I could expect to spend several hours hunting down drivers and figuring out how to finagle GRUB or DKMS to work, but I largely don't feel like this is an issue anymore, at least not with the "mainstream" distros like Ubuntu or Suse.
Additionally, unless ARM starts replacing x86 on servers, WSL2/x86 is a lot closer to the production setup, than either emulation on M1, or developing for ARM platform, and targeting x86 in production.
This is fair, and it's a selling point for Windows and OSX. I also dislike having to tinker more than necessary. As long as you're on the happy path, those work pretty well for most people. But if you're not on the happy path, it can get real painful real fast.
With linux I'm able to set things like audio (pipewire), foreign language inputs (fcitx), etc exactly how I want it- and that means no desktop environment at all asides from i3. I had a macbook for a while and ended up getting frustrated in certain situations due to lack of freedom to configure things exactly how I want, even if other parts of the OS were more polished.
It really sucks. I'd love for them to have anyone nipping at their heels.
(Windows user from '94-present [gaming and other non-serious uses, for most of that time], mainly a desktop Linux user from 2000-2011 and I still try it out every couple years, FWIW—alternated between nodding along and going "holy crap, still?!" for all of TFA)
There has also been some really nice Windows laptops in most recent years. I got a business HP laptop (think it was probook series) for work when I started 2 years ago. It was awesome, great trackpad, keyboard, battery life, speed etc.
Had to move over to Macbook Pro 16" due to some technical setup in the workplace. It's great too but not ahead on anything really. Lower battery, more heat. Slower. Also Intel though. Lot of issues with connecting non-Apple displays.
Also heard the Dell XPS should be great.
I just think many people think Macbook good, PC bad. Because they ARE willing to spend 2500$ on a Mac but their last PC they spend 1000$, and then they to compare.
But I concede, currently Apple APU's has no match.
I have the 16" Macbook pro as well, and haven't ever had any issues connecting to an HDMI monitor/TV with just a cheapy USB-C dongle I bought off Amazon. What kind of issues are you having?
I hope that's been ironed out by now, but don't really know (I WFH now and have for years, and my monitor's fine, but that's just one monitor)
When it happens the screen setup/orientation often reset, so left becomes right. We've tried multiple different cables, cheap ones, short ones, expensive ones, Thunderbolt 3 etc. etc. Console does log an error when it happens, but we don't have the expertise to look into it. And really who to contact? HP would point fingers at Apple and vice versa, or Apple at our corporate setup. Doesn't seem to happen with only 1 screen attached.
For headset connection we use an off-brand adapter where we plugin the wireless USB-A dongle, but you sound like a robot. Probably adapter fault, but same issue, who to contact? We found a particular brand of a very cheap small USB-C to A adapter works. I am using bluetooth to connect my headset, but it's very spotty requiring me to reset bluetooth module one a week to get the connection. So why am I using bluetooth you might ask, and not the dongle? Well if I use the dongle it interferes with my personal Logitech mice/keyboard setup, so that begins to lag.
I know the solution is to use Airpods, Apple keyboard and mice/trackpad as well as Apple screens and adapters... but expensive and shouldn't be necessary.
FWIW we've never spent more than ~$1300 on a personal MacBook (older Pro, when the lower-end models were much cheaper, and a recent Air; my wife's owned two Airs). Aside from one case when a workplace provided me a much higher-end unit than I would have requested—I'd really rather not have a discrete graphics card, thanks, as they're the cause of a solid 50% of all problems with laptops, both Mac and PC, in my experience—I don't think a company's ever spent more than ~$1700 on a work MacBook for me.
Ditto for about two decades, but I'm working on becoming a FreeBSD server enthusiast instead. Between being the "native" platform for ZFS, which is a huge deal all on its own, and my disliking a whole bunch of things about the direction of Linux (I am pretty sure Red Hat is pushing almost all the new stuff I dislike, in that they're the de-facto owners of the projects and are having great political success pushing them on everyone else) I think it's time to start surveying the broader field of free server unices.
Still working on getting used to Jails over Docker + LXC. Docker's so damn convenient, even if you just treat it as a cross-distro isolated-install package manager with a huge and up-to-date package list, and don't leverage anything else it does.
The article is really a rather random list of issues that different demographics might or will encounter. Is there any specific issue on there that made you glad you switched?
I get it, that was over ten years ago, and maybe things are better, maybe not according to this guy. I’m just tired of this kind of finickiness and would rather focus on hacking on server code.
I once got a macbook from work, and the mechanical stress from carrying it in my backpack broke something internally. Started randomly rebooting. I had to bring it in, b/c Apple would not allow me to swap the broken piece myself. Got it back with everything wiped and all my files gone.
This is why Windows will never work for normal people and will never become popular. This is why Apple won't work for any common use like a backpack and will never become usefull /s
But first: thanks a lot for spending the time to make a patch!
Yet, my point is: sure, that is valid criticism. Stuff should Just Work. But it also is kindof anecdotal and a little random to write off the entire desktop experience of Linux on a piece of unsupported hardware 10 years ago. We all have experienced bad hardware support everywhere, with every OS, with every ecosystem, haven't we? Hell, even one of my thinkpads did weird stuff once.
Common tasks include:
- Zoom/Google Meet meetings including screen sharing
- Playing music on bluetooth headphones
- Watching movies on Youtube/Netflix
- Playing games (with official support for both platforms)
- Using external monitor with different DPI
This is a fair point but I think anyone who has used Linux for any length of time knows it isn't just one issue. It's a whole crowd of them. Windows and Mac have issues too, but far fewer.
I assume that he has experienced more issues than that and that was just the worst one.