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Comment by gpapilion | Hacker News Reader

So, specifically:

1. 4 hours depending on workload(sort of an air form factor with a core-i7).

2. Yes, all supported, and still using my apple magic mouse. Used Skype, Vidyo, and Google Hangouts.

3. Can't say for sure, no reboots so far, wakes just fine.

4. Using an external monitor at work with my apple display port -> dvi adapter, so pretty much worked no problem. I was worried about the display being lower res than an air, but it hasn't been a real issue.

5. Yes, work fine.

6. The trackpad is ok. functional, but more temperamental than the mac pro.

7. I like the keyboard better, but I've never liked the mac keyboards.

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Just to add another data point, Arch Linux on X220:

1. 4-6 hrs with 6 cell battery.

2. Yes, Intel everything (HD4000, wireless, etc).

3. Yes, 1 resume crash total this year.

4. Yes, attached to external monitor via DisplayPort -> DVI right now.

5. Never tested.

6. Small, crappy. I'm one of those guys who disables the touch pad in favor of TrackPoint though.

7. Much better IMO, not a fan of chiclet style and Apple's "mushy" keyboards.

The problem is that these are exactly the kinds of replies given by Linux advocates throughout the years. I've used unix varieties for more than 20 years and never experiences like this for anything, ever. Nothing is totally supported, or works right away. Ever. At least not in the way a Mac user would employ those descriptions.

I'm sorry you've had poor experience with Linux, I've had plenty of them myself.

I'm tired of dealing with ACPI / driver issues as well. That's why now I just buy ThinkPad and Intel-only chipsets. If you're going to use Linux, you have to research your hardware ahead of time (e.g. poor Atom support) or buy Linux laptops (Dell Ubuntu series, unofficially ThinkPad series).

I'm not trying to say everything's happy in Linux land. Printers are still a sore point, as are AMD / nvidia cards (Open or binary drivers? Multi-monitor support?).

> these are exactly the kinds of replies given by Linux advocates throughout the years

Sometimes a happy Linux user is just that - someone who's happy using Linux. I've had some hardware compatibility problems, but they were all minor and none for the past couple years. Of course, I know what I'm doing and I avoid hardware I know has poor Linux support (much like you should avoid a SPARCStation to run Windows NT in the 90's). Comments like yours are very much in line with other comments from people who have been called "Microsoft apologists" since ever. I will, however, avoid calling you one.

> I've used unix varieties for more than 20 years and never experiences like this for anything, ever

While it seems you have been trying a lot (20 years is a long time) you may have to consider the possibility you are just very unlucky. Of course, 10, 15 years ago, the supported hardware list was much smaller. Solaris and SCO Unix were never intended to be general purpose desktop OSs anyway and it makes little sense to support general purpose desktop hardware back then. I'm now on my fifth Linux-only laptop and I'm yet to have a single problem. In fact, this one is the first that came with Linux preinstalled. I had to remove the "Designed for Microsoft Windows" stickers from all the others, but I've left this one's "n series" as a proud reminder of its origins.

It may depend on whether you buy with Linux support in mind (having waited for someone else to do the spadework, and posted the results to Ubuntu Forums or wherever). There are machines where everything really does Just Work, with at most a few proprietary drivers that are in most distribution repos. (And I've had models from several manufacturers needing at most minor tweaks going back ten years or so --- FWIW, one machine that needed custom scripts to get the display-dimming function keys to work right.)

But if you buy on raw hardware specs, and then try to get Linux working after that, odds are that you'll run into something (sleep/wakeup issues, flaky Broadcom wireless drivers, or lately, problems with fussy trackpads) which will be real trouble.

So, you can get a pretty trouble-free Linux experience, if you do research --- but it might not be the exact machine you want, and it probably won't be anything bleeding-edge.

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