Ask HN: Linux on a notebook | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Linux on a notebook

7 pointsscarmig8 comments

Hi all,

So, I'm looking at getting a new notebook and wanted some input. Right now I imagine three options:

1) Native Linux. This is what I've done for the past two laptops I've gotten, currently running Ubuntu on an x220. It scores high marks on the user experience side of things, but I'm unhappy with it otherwise. I still consistently get 20-30% lower battery life than when running under Windows, and various other annoyances (sometimes not going to sleep when closed, for instance). Even getting there, though involved a lot of really stupid bullshit. Making it into a usable experience was a total PITA, and I'd seriously pay someone a lot of money not to have to deal with it again, except I don't trust anyone else not to screw things up. For that reason I'm disinclined to take this option again, unless there's a simple way to get things working. In an easy, user-friendly way, not a "it's theoretically possible if you spend a couple days of your life messing with config files" type of way.

2) Linux on a VM. I have little experience with VMs, but this option appeals to me: I imagine it minimizes the amount of "stupid bullshit" I'd have to deal with, and even though it would involve some time investment on my part, I see it as time well spent. Do people who have tried this option like it? What virtualization software do you use? And most importantly how taxing is running the VM constantly on battery life?

3) Learn to live with OSX. If I understand correctly, it's possible to run X11 on OSX. Is this easy or obnoxious to do? Can you get XMonad up and running without the OSX dock/menubar/etc? I have no real ideological preference for Linux and really just need a good Unix to work with. Do people have any experiences with this?

I'm also open to other suggestions, if you have them.

Well you could look here: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/

But your laptop is already certified there, the sleep thing has been around in linux for a long time and the only thing is to make sure it goes to sleep before you put it away or shut it down when you are done.

Battery life again isn't going to improve with another laptop windows should be better for pretty much every supported laptop, you could look into buying a bigger battery maybe?

You could try System76 but I don't know that they will be better than an x220

I used a System 76 machine (pangolin) for two years. It was great, except battery life was never more than 1.5hrs. That's pretty bad for a 15" laptop.

If the machine will always be plugged in, I recommend System 76. But if battery life is an issue, there are better laptops out there.

My next linux laptop will probably be a Dell XPS from the Sputnik project: http://bartongeorge.net/2012/05/07/introducing-project-sputn...

I think it's interesting because of the notion of having some sort of Chef or other configuration management on Github, and then being able to fork that for particular development purposes or preferences and switch between them. I gather from some of the other interviews that the sputnik project is aiming for something like that.

As far as hardware goes, I like Lenovo ThninkPads best, and the Dell E65xx series that kind of copy them are also pretty good. I expect to screw around googling driver settings and etc on any new hardware I buy, so I'm not to worried about "just working". Someone else's definition of everything "just working" probably isn't good enough for me anyway.

Running clones of specific production environments in a VM is a good idea, using it as your main everyday interface is not, IMHO.

Second the Lenovo Thinkpads. Right now I am running a T510 with out of the box CentOS 6.2 (All default options chosen during installation, no tweaking afterwards) and I get battery life in excess of 3.5 hours.

Native is easy enough if you're willing to either shop around (our Samsung Q330 i3 took minimal messing around with for 11.10 and "just worked"™ for 12.04) or pay somebody.

You say you're willing to pay so take a look at people like Zareason and System76 -- people who design the hardware around what will work in Linux. You pay them over the odds, they support you.

But don't get hung up on some features. Battery life is one of those where everybody seems to get the same drop vs Windows. Yeah, I'd really like those bugs found and fixed but it's not going to affect my purchasing decisions. If I need long battery life, I just look at bigger batteries (or slower CPUs). Graphics is another interesting topic.

I'd also go out of my way to avoid dual-GPUs (Optimus et al) for the moment. They do work (bumblebee, ironhide, tbp, etc) but having to prepend things with optirun can get annoying - plus they're another power drain.

If you have no ideological preference then use OS X. It uses a real unix and XQuartz is very up to date. You can use Homebrew, but I had some major issues with in the past so YMMV. I personally use MacPorts as Fink is too out of date as I have a 500gb hd and I prefer the 3rd party software to have separate dependencies from the core Mac system software.

Try using powertop to help tweak power settings Linux may have overlooked by default. It's in the repos, last time I checked.

3) Don’t try to bend OS X to be what it isn’t: you will be frustrated, disappointed and will not succeed.

If you decide to learn to live with it, actually learn to live with it: you will have to adopt new usage patterns and tools. Don’t try to turn it into Ubuntu, it’s not.

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