Comment by mikepurvis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikepurvis | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

My kids have an old Thinkpad T440p that's their Scratch/Roblox/Minecraft machine, and overall it works well enough running Ubuntu (originally 22.04, then 24.04, now 25.04). But it has been far from seamless:

- the built in bluetooth and wifi can't be used at the same time; for a while we mitigated this with a USB wifi module, but that eventually broke and so now bluetooth is just disabled.

- it's hard to figure out what apps and app data are shared between users. AFAICT there's one Steam install my kids are sharing, but each one installs their own copy of a game, which is terrible for disk usage.

- a bunch of games don't work, especially from non-steam sources like Epic and Itch.io. I've heard about the Heroic Launcher, and I will try it at some point, but it's just... one more fiddly thing to have to mess with.

- several Minecraft launchers / mod-managers have been tried, but I can't seem to keep my Microsoft account logged in on there, so I eventually just put my password on a sticky note so they could re-auth it whenever needed (fortunately I don't use it for anything else).

- unattended-upgrades pulled a new kernel and the thing just panicked on startup until I went into the grub menu to get the previous one and reverted.

- until 25.04 the power management story was terrible, the machine would chew through the whole (newly replaced) battery in less than an hour.

As a competent nerd I've been ~fine with all this, but it's honestly right on the edge of acceptable. I expect a normal person would immediately give up in the face of most of these— either give up in terms of ditching the machine/OS or give up as in accepting a limitation like it just doesn't play that game or I just can't use my earbuds.

I have been using thinkpads since forever and bluetooth and wifi both work (at the same time, yes). It seems more likely to be a broken machine. Which can happen.

I had a faulty keyboard on a thinkpad that was causing a lot of seemingly unrelated problems, like freezes or suspend not working. Replacing the keyboard resolved everything.

Try to switch them to luanti!

It was kind of a subtle failure, tbh— like when bluetooth was active (game controller, headphones) then the wifi would suddenly have huge packet loss resulting in a bunch of retransmissions. So it would kind of still work but be really annoying to use. That said, I haven't fully re-tried it since updating to 25.04, so maybe the story is better on the newer kernel.

The keyboard has already been replaced once, though at the time I just bought whatever was cheapest on eBay, assuming they were all the same, and I think I did get a bit burned with a crappy knockoff— the keys are weirdly clicky and several feel like they're about to pop off at any moment; I have the LiteOn keyboard standing by which I'd like to try out, as that's the one that comes recommended most often online.

I assure you it works fine. I own bluetooth keyboards, speakers… and connect via wifi. It's not a general linux or thinkpad issue.

You plugged a chinese knockoff… there, found your problem.

Unfortunately most hardware is not done in a way to work properly when there's a bad device connected to the same BUS.

The bluetooth problem predated the installation of the replacement keyboard.

Anyway, I'm not going to fight for this, I'm just saying my "Linux desktop for non-technical users" experience in 2023-2025 timeframe was such that I don't know that I would do it again, and certainly would be extremely hesitant to recommend it to a household where no one is standing by with the willingness and aptitude required to tackle a boot-to-grub situation.

You've ever tried installing windows 10?

The minecraft thing is a problem regardless of launcher, to the point that I actively condone people pay for the game then find ways to not require online auth.

Some moron at Microsoft decided that if your password is serving its purpose and people aren't able to get in but that there are a bunch of attempts that you should need to reset your password. Because of this, I have to reset my password. Every. Time. I. Want. To. Play.

But that means multiple 2FA codes to both my non-mirosoft account email and to my phone. All in all, it usually takes about 7 or 8 minutes each time I want to play, which is an ABSURD amount of friction for an account I don't want to be using to play the game anyway, given when I bought it it was a Mojang account without all the associated, creepy TOS changes.

Don't be afraid to look around for ways to play without a legitimate account if you've paid. If that's the better experience, it is what it is.

I used to work on a T440s on Debian from 2013 - 2017. I am surprised that your battery life is so poor on Ubuntu. I was able to frequently push my 9-cell battery laptop to 12 hours with careful usage.

If I forgot my charging cable at home, I could do a full day at the office with music and internet on battery.

Might be the nature of the task, game playing vs text editing, or there was something wrong with a driver or background process.

Or another factor is that I think often the "new" batteries for old devices are in fact themselves old and have just been sitting around on shelves for years. Obviously that doesn't wear them as hard as actual cycling, but it's not nothing, particularly if they're allowed to discharge down to empty.

>- several Minecraft launchers / mod-managers have been tried, but I can't seem to keep my Microsoft account logged in on there, so I eventually just put my password on a sticky note so they could re-auth it whenever needed (fortunately I don't use it for anything else).

https://prismlauncher.org/

This is a perspective I'd like to hear more often. Too often I hear all these supposed ideal solutions without mentioning the pitfalls of having to support a non-technical family.

Pi hole is a good example. Do all websites (and other services) still work perfectly but without ads, or am I going to have to endure sighing and eyerolling everytime someone asks me why their site isn't loading (again)?

IME the tradeoffs (reduction of ads + malware) are well worth the very occasional exception that needs to be made.

GP here and yes I've experienced that too— I run a pihole-style blocklist on my OpenWRT router and never got a good workflow together for adding exemptions to it.

On a phone it's not a huge deal as you can just momentarily switch to data, click through, and then switch back. But it's more annoying on a computer where you have to figure out where that link was going to go and then get there by an organic path.

Overall absolutely worth the slight pain though.

  >  Do all websites (and other services) still work perfectly

Like 99%? I've rarely seen problems running it for years

  > but without ads,

No. It is only a DNS blocker. Most browsers these days will bypass that anyways. But it is definitely helpful for lots of other things on your network. You can also point the browser there to get the same benefits but still won't replace an adblocker.

The main annoying thing about piHole with a non-technical family has been that it blocks google shopping.

You know, when you search for a thing you want to buy and google shopping shows a list of common stores on top of the search results like a bunch of little cards? Yep. Clicking one there causes a failure because that link is a google ad link. Same thing if you tab into "Shopping". All links are broken.

Otherwise, it's been 4 years and no other complaints at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com