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Comment by 1970-01-01 | Hacker News Reader

1970-01-01

Linux in a nutshell: Just awful in a laptop, meh in a desktop, and first-class as a server.

I'm heavily biased and an expert user, but I do also have a Mac from work, and my Linux laptop genuinely is more trouble-free with docking and Bluetooth acrobatics than the Mac (a M1 MBP).

Every time the Mac decides today's another day when flipping it shut will randomly also disable the external display, I get a little more frustrated, or when it's dumb about not switching my headphones out of bi-directional headset mode to a HQ audio profile once a call ends. These things are just flawless on my Linux system.

Battery life on the M1 Mac is absolutely stellar and probably about double of the Intel-based Linux one, though, which I agree is a valid deciding factor for quite a few users because it can really change how you go about your day.

In my experience, Linux works quite well on laptops that are intended to run it.

I’ve only tried the System 76 Lemur Pro and the Framework 13, both of which worked smoothly. The Framework has better build quality, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to try a Linux laptop.

Framework has been rock solid—I've had it since the first batch, and it's worked flawlessly across three mainboards, two screens, and two webcams (all upgraded along the way).

Arch Linux ran without a hitch. KDE on Wayland is now incredibly polished and, surprisingly, a far better UX for me on a laptop than Apple's.

I can add that Linux is also pretty solid on Asus machines well, despite the company actively advocating for MS on their sites. I have an old G46, some i7-1065 Zenbook Flip, and a newish Zenbook with a 6800U. All of them running Debian 12 with GNOME or KDE, all hardware components supported. That also includes the sensors for tablet mode in the Flip! Also used to have an 8000 series Intel AsusPro something, same good support.

It takes around 1 to 2 years for the kernel to catch up on more stable distros, but I can wholeheartedly recommend Asus laptops for Linux use.

Presumably because servers have components that are predictable and stable over their production runs, whereas laptops seem to be assembled out of whatever bits the supplier has on hand that week?

There are two main issues.

Servers are configured differently (config files, puppet) with static configs. This works great for server deployments. On laptops, too much is always changing--new networks, powering on and off, etc.

The other issue is yes, drivers, but not only because of supplier pressure. There seem to be more peripheral devices (sound, webcam, bluetooth) from low-end vendors, so the devices are buggier and less likely to get support. Servers care about disk and network. There aren't as many vendors, and the have incentives to have decent Linux support.

I always buy Lenovo laptops. Never really had an issue until the latest Lenovo I purchased. The suspend/sleep gets weird sometimes. Other than that, I am pretty satisfied with my dev box.

I run Linux on my laptop and desktop and have a MacBook.

I wouldn't recommend it for your laptop unless you're an enthusiast. Suspend/sleep is still janky, power saving is poor and dock support is hit and miss depending on the day. And this is after applying a lot of tweaks.

For desktop it's fantastic and I would recommend. It's not without some issues but what OSes is actually without any issues.

For server, I can't imagine using anything else.

As a ThinkPad Z13 user, I've had none of the issues you've described. I've been running Linux (Fedora + Arch) on it for three years now and it's been a first-class experience. Everything worked out-of-the-box, with literally zero issues. I can't think of a single thing that I'd want to improve, from a laptop user's perspective. For me, this is the definitive Linux laptop experience.

I had a similarly good experience with my previous laptop, an HP Elite Dragonfly. Only niggle was that not all bits of firmware was upgradable via fwupd, so I had to ocassionally boot into Windows to do the firmware updates. But other than that, I don't recollect any issues with it either, suspend/resume/power management all worked as good as Windows. In fact, battery life was better than Windows when I applied powertop's tweaks.

And I'm sure the laptop experience is equally good on "native" Linux laptops, such as the ones from System76, Slimbook, Tuxedo etc.

So personally, I wouldn't make a blanket statement like "I wouldn't recommend it for your laptop unless you're an enthusiast". To be clear, I'm not claiming that the issues you describe don't exist, but at least for laptops known for having official support for Linux, the experience should be good.

I have a Slimbook Elemental 15 (or some such) and it's crap. The keyboard has a backlight you can change the colour of... with an application which is only available on specific distros (it isn't even on the AUR) and even then half the time it doesn't work.

Its audio system is also fucked, if you plug in headphones tte thing will play from the headphones at the volume of the speakers. The system doesn't see the headphones, it only has a generic audio output and switching between speakers and headphones happens IN HARDWARE.

The battery life ain't great, though I don't know about hibernate 'cause I ain't wasting 32 gigs on swap. Suspend seems to work fine, though I don't know how much power it'd drain over the course of, say, a night.

Dunno, I've had no issues running Linux on laptops for the last 15 years. Had a ThinkPad, a cheapish Acer and now an MSI. All ran Linux flawlessly. My current MSI laptop even has a touchscreen, stylus and fingerprint reader. Everything works flawlessly.

I'd give this laptop to my grandma even. It's great to use. Gives me zero trouble, can't say the same for my wife's Windows laptop.

Ubuntu works fine on the Dell XPS 15 9500 laptop I use for work. It came preinstalled with Windows, but I shrank the partition so I can dual boot. (Having all data encrypted-at-rest was a requirement which made things a little trickier.)

The only weirdness I've encountered is some crashing in some lid-open-or-closed software, probably because I tried to make sure it wouldn't sleep just because I wanted to carry it to a conference room.

Asides from what sibling comments have mentioned, this is in large part true for me because I've yet to experience a Linux desktop environment that I've found to be great from a UI perspective. On a server, that's not applicable.

This comment is unworthy of your user name. The modern experience of Linux is miles ahead of Windows and as good as Mac: https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-4-best-linux-desktops-base...

It seems like the perception that MacOS and Windows are miles apart in quality stems from the two ends of the horseshoe theory refusing to admit they're next-door neighbors.

'the modern experience' is dogshit sliding down a wet stick for laptops. average it all out.

As a ThinkPad user, I disagree. I've been using Linux (Fedora + Arch) on my Z13 Gen 1 for three years now and it's been a first-class experience. Everything worked out-of-the-box, with literally zero issues. I can't think of a single thing that I'd want to improve, from a laptop user's perspective. For me, this is the definitive Linux laptop experience.

And I'm sure the laptop experience is equally good on "native" Linux laptops, such as the ones from System76, Slimbook, Tuxedo etc.

So to make a blanket statement like "'the modern experience' is dogshit sliding down a wet stick for laptops", is pretty disingenuous and very disrespectful towards all the developers who've worked so hard on making Linux viable.

It is disingenuous, yet also accurate.

HN mostly agrees:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964519

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42569926

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42122686

I've never used anything but Linux on the 20 or so laptops I've gone through. Suspend can be an issue, fan control can be suboptimal, but the only thing I find intolerable is the touchpad, so I use a mouse. I've had one or two bad laptops, but most were sufficient. If I had a laptop presently, it would be running Linux.

You use it with a mouse... That is telling. Have you considered that people actually want to use the laptop all by itself? Without an external mouse? That's the experience you're supposed to benchmark for.

Yeah, and touchpad behavior in Linux can be configured to a satisfactory degree, but with admittedly excessive fenagling. Modifying dozens of different parameters in a command line interface to get full functionality is silly. The default settings can easily be interpreted as deliberate cruelty.

I am unusually OCD with touchpads though, and have a history of actually smashing them during times of high stress. Why the touchpad isn't taken more seriously in Linux-land is a mystery to me and certainly a point of contention. For all the other benefits of Linux on a laptop, it is something I've always just accepted and been otherwise very grateful for.

Wayland has had 1:1 trackpad gestures as the default for years. I know this because I've been daily-driving Linux (both KDE and GNOME) with a Magic Trackpad for years now, and the experience out-of-box is better than my Mac.

In fact, I think Apple should take a page out of Linux' book and put cursor acceleration in system preferences instead of the terminal. The amount of work that Apple puts into enforcing controversial defaults is mind-boggling.

https://youtu.be/aBEsxTVRsEo?t=95

Holy crap! Good stuff! Thanks.

Just need to get a laptop to try it.

You just linked to three anecdotes. That doesn't prove anything, it just shows that HN users are willing to take a stance one way or the other sometimes.

If you wanted to prove that it's accurate you might include qualitative data, or, gasp, ignore HN since it comprises largely of marketers and not so many engineers.

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