Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

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> There are good laptops out there other than Macs... Lenovo, HP, Dell, etc all have offerings which are supported out of the box by Linux because they aren't using their own hardware or do contribute the necessary code to run FOSS OSs.

For the love of all that is holy, name one model that has the following properties:

- 6 hours real life battery doing C++ development work.

- 7+ days suspend battery life

- 99.99% success rate resuming from suspend under linux (~ 1 kernel panic per year is OK)

- Centered keyboard and trackpad

- >> 1080p screen

- bluetooth, wifi, webcam, etc, etc, all work reliably (~ 1 device "need to reboot" failure across all categories, per year)

- un-noticable fan

- less than 10% permanent hardware failure rate per year

None of the last ~ $10K worth of intel machines I've used (including high end macs, linux and windows machines) met the above criteria.

My M2 macbook actually ticks all the boxes.

However, I really, really, dislike MacOS.

I've managed to tick all your boxes on not one but two Lenovo ThinkPads. Ironically I've had trouble with suspend on my previous work Mac laptop running macOS. Also issues with WiFi on the same Mac laptop not present on other devices. Every single hardware failure within warranty I've had on both personal and work laptops have been Apple - LCD, battery, mainboard, dvd drive, just to name a few. Yet all the others I've owned have done their three year duty without fail. Very much a case of YMMV.

The end of the intel mac laptop line models were the worst laptops I've ever used. My last one went through 2 screens, the battery swelled, it couldn't charge fast enough to stay on while plugged in (and the CPU ran at 10% perf while charging, but only if plugged in on the left side).

Also, at any given time 6 of the keyboard buttons stuck, and the touchbar constantly phantom pressed the siri button when I pressed backspace. It got under 90 minutes of battery when brand new. It reliably kernel panicked on resume 1-2 times a week. It was also loud and hot.

Maybe I should give lenovo another try.

They completely screwed me over on a warranty repair right after the IBM acquisition. When I got the laptop back after over a month, it was diagnosed "no fault detected" and had a new symptom: it leaked high voltage from the backlight transformer into to the case during boot shocking the heck out of me!!!

Also, when I look at their web page, I always have the problem that they offer too many sub-configurations, and there isn't a button that says: "just give me the one that definitely runs Linux with the taint bit turned off, and only contains components that have had stable OSS drivers for over a year, and whose BOM hasn't changed for at least 12 months".

Ironically, Apple's web page is pretty close to having a de facto button like that.

My thinkpad does all those things... I expected really something crazier as a rebuttal. It sounds like you may have bought bad products and then bought a Mac when they had those specs and were happy then...

Really? My 2016 ThinkPad Carbon hasn’t been able to run off of a charger since ~2019.

To be clear, is this a description of your experience with Asahi Linux?

No; with MacOS running an Ubuntu Multipass VM. :-(

I wish more manufacturers worked harder to keep fan noise down to between none and barely audible without severely throttling the CPU and GPU or toasting your lap. My laptop shouldn't be spinning up its fan just because I plugged in something as pedestrian as a 2560x1440 60hz monitor (as my ThinkPad X1 Nano likes to).

Installing "uBar" fixed a lot of my beef with MacOS. (I get no referral bonus, just a happy user)

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