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Comment by thrownawayjests | Hacker News Reader

After running Linux (plain, crappy boring Ubuntu) as my daily driver for the last few years, I'm convinced that we're at the point where the only real barrier to wider adoption is software, and this is less and less of an issue the more we work in the browser.

For your basic user, it's performant, simple, stable, and does everything a computer needs. Every time I boot up Windows it takes forever, I find that a new update that further fills my machine with crap requires a restart, I get super weird "news" and advertising thrown at me. I have no idea how normies put up with this.

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Hardware support can be a problem as well. There are many combinations that "just work" - definitely more so than 20 or even 10 years ago - but you still need to be careful with network cards, for example. And graphics is still kind of a mess, enough so that all major browsers are still either using whitelists to enable hardware acceleration on supported hardware (like Firefox), or straight up disable it by default on Linux (like Chrome).

Which translates to the other problem that is battery life on laptops. I did a fairly simple test recently that basically opens Reddit main page in Firefox & Chrome and then scrolls it slowly until battery dies. Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash.

And then you look at battery life vs an ARM MacBook, and it's not even funny.

> reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings

With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W.

But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.

Would you mind sharing some of the settings you changed there?

Power/battery tuning differing between manufacturers, models, and even specific SKUs within models is perhaps the greatest hurdle to be overcome. It makes baking those settings into distros by default impractical and means there isn’t an easy string of commands that anybody can run to improve battery life on their Linux laptop.

One thing that bit me, was trying to get a trackpad working on a xxx-xx17-xxx model (17 for 17" display)... out of a lark, I tried searching for xxx-xx15-xxx and found the answer... I added a comment on the 17" model number to help anyone else that may not have otherwise seen the page. It was adding a few options to the boot loader that fixed it.

I've also seen issues with wifi drivers, but those are usually fixed booting up wired with a widely supported USB to ethernet dongle, not too bad, but still annoying.

For me, that is about it for my biggest issues, aside from getting an RX 5700 at launch, where the drivers didn't stabilize until the next LTS releases (about 6 months later). I'd run alpha/beta kernels, which generally worked, and even tried Arch (btw) and both I got a black screen after updates. I went back to windows for a while, and then switched my main boot back to linux and haven't looked back after the Ads in start menu search results on my Windows Insiders install.

For the most part, I've had very few issues in general, and only on initial setup. I've mostly used PopOS, and been exceedingly happy with it.

I'm not a laptop user so I alas never consider these things in my needs, but I imagine "Year of the Desktop" will be followed up with "Year of the Laptop"

For me the "Year of the Laptop" happened ages ago. Everything from old clunkers to a relatively modern HP Elitebook 840 G6... install Fedora, done. I think the fingerprint reader might be tough, and Bluetooth on Linux is truly a sad state of affairs. But everything else works out of the box, and that includes suspend/resume and other power management, the special keys, Wifi and so on. WebGL just works, no need to tweak a whitelist, and battery life is on par with when the thing was running Windows 10. With SSD, and a fan that hardly runs in light use, the Elitebook is a sweet Linux machine.

I even use it on the Displaylink type USB-C dock that my current work laptop came with. Installing the Displaylink driver was a bit of "old school Linux" since the installer was Ubuntu only. But not too traumatic, and dock/undock also works perfectly.

For whatever it’s worth, newer Intel wifi/bluetooth chipsets (e.g. AX200 or AX210) have consistently worked very well for me under Linux. If your EliteBook has a socketed wifi/BT card, it might be worth buying an Intel card (they’re dirt cheap) and installing it.

My issue with battery life isn’t getting it to match what it is under Windows, but that x86 ultraportables tend to have disappointing battery life under either OS. Linux doesn’t make it worse but doesn’t fix it either.

The existing (M.2) wifi/bluetooth module works just fine. My issue with bluetooth on Linux is that it's never been able to pass this testcase: Use a bluetooth headset as an audio I/O device. Repeatedly over disconnects/reconnects. For the past few years, it works when you first configure it - beautifully, you can choose your codec and so on - but soon stops doing so even if unpaired and re-paired. Maybe "the year of bluetooth" on Linux has arrived and I've just not tried lately.

I'm with you there; simply so bad experience w/BT. And, it often worked at first OS install but then degraded through kernel, BlueZ, and interface updates until it was unusable. Until recently, when it has been solid enough through most? Fedora 39 and now into 40, though I've found at times the config gets confused, forcing me to delete and re-add the device, sometimes manually, forcibly. But still, been solid enough for my daily use mouse and HD-Aptx audio (among others, all while crossing my fingers as 40 ages).

Wonder whether you've ever experienced this problem: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203709 (spurious wifi disconnects due to "beacon loss" on Intel cards, been open for 5 years). There were two good blog posts summarizing the situation around that bug but can't find them anymore.

It's been really annoying with my Intel wifi/bt CNVi card for years and there's a lot of people having similar problems...

Don’t think I’ve ever encountered this on either AX200 or AX210 cards.

this isn't true. you can install something like power-profiles-daemon and immediately see a large gain to battery life, without any additional configuration needed.

Just to be clear, I meant the default browser settings specifically (i.e. whitelisted / no hardware acceleration). I didn't do anything special to try to optimize the OS as a whole.

OTOH I was pleasantly surprised that all hardware generally worked, including even stuff like the fingerprint reader (so now I can use that to sudo in the terminal!). Although that did require spending some time in the console to enable it in PAM. I'd say that Linux runs great on that laptop overall, aside from battery life, which is not a big deal if you mostly use your laptop plugged in.

> Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash.

Were you comparing this to Windows 11?

> Linux

What DE was this done on? Were you using any power-saving daemons (PPD, TLP, Powerdevil)? If not, I strongly recommend installing something like PPD (power-profiles-daemon) which requires 0 configuration out of the box, and retesting.

> but you still need to be careful with network cards, for example.

Funny you say that. A while back I reinstalled Windows on a new laptop (get rid of all the default installed garbage) and I couldn't connect wirelessly. Had to connect via ethernet and install and update everything just to have wireless work. I haven't installed Linux on it, but considering its a Broadcom card I don't exactly have high hopes of it working with only upstream drivers.

The worst thing about windows booting up is being lied to that the system is ready to use, when in fact everything is still sluggish for another 2 minutes and default apps are starting up.

While on my Linux computer I consistently can immediately start using the system once I've logged in.

Not to mention all the focus-stealing from apps that I can't work without.

Just the other day I heard a noise I couldn't identify, nothing in notification center, nothing in task manager. I'll die without knowing what that noise meant.

Thankfully I recently switched jobs to one where I'll be 100% linux.

> I have no idea how normies put up with this.

Remove the pinned ads for apps once, never open the widgets, shut down every night so updates are transparent.

Sure Microsoft could make a nicer product. But it doesn't really affect users in their day-to-day.

Can not agree more. It finally struck a nice balance of simplicity for day to day usage and advanced features when needed. I have been pleasantly surprised discovering recently that Gnome Disks lets you create image files of single partitions or disks with just a couple of clicks.

> does everything a computer needs.

This really comes down to this.

If you can stabilize what you need, inevitably linux will catch up to where you are and you're set.

If it's an always moving goalpost, the year of Linux on the desktop will always be next year, eternally.

Hence the existence of Chrome OS.

> Hence the existence of Chrome OS.

Which is useless besides browsing the internet.

Which is what 95 percent of computer use is now.

Unless you’re an Emacs user. Then it is 100 percent.

Emacs users spend 100% of their time in a web browser?

I shouldn’t have to explain a joke[1] but yes: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/eww.html

[1] This phrase is a self-deprecating remark about my own joke making abilities, not a slight at parent.

Did you mean for this to be as condescending or off-putting as it comes across? I'm really trying to be generous in my interpretation but I'm not sure how else to read it.

Condescending towards Emacs users? No.

There’s a general theme in Emacs users’ testimonials that you end up doing everything in Emacs. For many that includes web browsing. Hence the joke.

It doesn’t include web browsing for me but no condescension intended. If you don’t like my joke, that’s okay. I’m sorry.

Edit: Also not intended to be condescending towards your grandparent commenter. Apologies again.

If they use emacs as the web browser, quite likely.

My dad spent a couple years basically using it as his standard OS while consulting. Couldn't guarantee what software a company required, but if everything was done through emacs, he'd have no problem setting it up to his liking.

Emails, builds, etc. I think this was before the web browser was up to snuff though. I never quite got into it at that level, but the power users easily demonstrate the value of knowing a powerful system very well.

It also runs Android apps, and has an integrated Linux VM that can be added with a click to run basically anything that runs on Debian.

ChromeOS can do quite a bit. Crostini is a built in take on Distrobox/Toolbox that gives you a Debian container to install anything. Newer versions can run multiple containers and do GUI pass through. ChromeOS can also run Android apps (although some apps don't do this well). And you get a hyper efficient immutable base OS. Five years ago I could get 10+ hours on battery without trying, on airplane WiFi for example.

Yes it's not perfect. But it is a lot more than it was when it was released. I only replaced it with Fedora Kinoite when the outdated Chrome browser version started getting in my way.

>Which is useless besides browsing the internet.

What else do most people, outside of tech, use computers for? There are web apps for basically everything now. Chromebooks have replaced 'real' computers in most schools and I'm really surprised that they haven't in most Offices. A lot of the windows PCs in offices end up being used as dumb terminals to run citrix or access web apps anyway.

Yeah, I've got friends who are open to the idea (even though they still think the driver situation is the same as 20 years ago - I won't promise there aren't problems, but I think overall it's much better than it used to be).

The main complaint is: I need my Adobe. I need my Ableton. I need my Office.

Some people actually need the official Office products, but I think for most users it's not necessary, though they get really uptight if you suggest it's not.

Adobe is honestly one of the biggest problems I think, and the most likely to continue to cause an issue with adoption.

Ableton can sorta work, but it's not perfect, but I can see them starting to pour resources into it to get it working better or even a proper port, but I could be wrong.

As far as Ableton goes, have you tried Reaper? Reaper has a native Linux version and generally works quite well IMO. One of the better DAWs and certainly one of the cheapest to purchase a license for.

Reaper's great, but it and Ableton are focused on very different things. It's hard to come up with a workable analogy but they are probably at least as different as Photoshop and Illustrator are from one another.

I use ableton in linux, it works fine. What works amazing is Bitwig, which you'll find is like Ableton evolved, by some of the original developers of Ableton.

Unless Reaper has drastically changed since the last time I used it, it's not even in the same ballpark as Ableton. Ableton strength is using it as a pattern based nonlinear editor and live production. I can't even imagine doing something like that in reaper.

To me reaper is more like a superior version of audacity than a competitor to things like Logic Pro, FL Studio, etc.

> To me reaper is more like a superior version of audacity

I can't tell about Ableton as i never used it, but Reaper is on a totally different planet compared to Audacity. I used Cakewalk Sonar (on Windows) for years until I discovered Reaper, and didn't look back. Then they made the Linux version which works like charm, although the Windows version runs extremely well with very low latency too using WINE. I'm all for using FOSS software, and it hurts me because Audacity is the "good guy" here, but it's really way way inferior compared to just everything else.

What's funny is that I personally am not an Ableton fan, so this applies more for my friends than me. I know Bitwig exists, and just looking now it seems to support Linux. It's not the same exactly but uses the same "pattern"/loop based mode that Ableton is built around.

I actually paid for a license, because I think Justin Frankel/Cockos is great for Reaper and supporting Linux. Even though I barely use it (I ended up not doing much music production) - maybe someday I'll get back into it.

I did check (based on the comment above about Ableton not being the same as Reaper in terms of how it's used) - and see that Bitwig (which is more like Ableton) does support Linux (not sure how well, but it looks like it's officially supported). But people who have Ableton specific plugins may not be able to use it, IDK.

I do feel like Reaper was more for "live recording" sessions as opposed to Midi sequencing and electronic production, but that was just based on my small experience. I'm sure it's good for both, just a different work flow.

Bitwig

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