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Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

There's gotta be a lot of OSX users like me who'd switch in a heartbeat given better laptop options. I know they're getting better, but it still isn't that close.

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I ditched Windows back in 2006 and it was a close run thing between Ubuntu and OSX, but I had just started a family and the combination of iPhoto and iMovie was a big draw to OSX. Also, again due to above said family, I didn't have the time to spend tinkering and configuring things. I needed something that worked right out of the box, and would keep working. That machine finally packed in a few months ago and time machine backups saved my arse twice in that time.

Back in 2006 Linux on the desktop looked like it might eventually break through and become a mainstream option. Now I don't think so. The commercial desktop OSes, particularly OSX, are pulling ahead technologically in ways Linux can't match fast enough to stay relevent. Apple can do in one or two yearly updates what would take a Linux distro 5 years or more to match. The main opening is against Windows, which is struggling to get back to providing a useable basic desktop. Yet even with MS shooting their own feet off every other release, the Linux desktop still isnt getting any mainstream traction.

It's really very depressing. I remember 2009 being declared the year of the Linux desktop. 15 years later that looks as far away from coming true as ever. I might have to buy a retina iMac to cheer myself up.

I remember 2009 ...

WARNING: Do not touch the repo until you've had more coffee ;)

Indeed. Please subtract one decade. I shall leave my error in place as a pennance.

Actually did the math on the trends here, and naively extrapolating it seems that the year of Linux on the desktop is around 2050. In the meantime we have Steam, AAA games and 1.16% market share now, according to Steam Hardware Survey. That's a third of what OSX does!

Actually that's fairly impressive and a great sign, but I suspect most Mac users get their games from the Mac App store while Linux gamers are more likely to know steam even exists. So I doubt it tells us very much about the actual number of games and gamers on Mac Vs Linux.

A lot of Canonicalers are getting the Dell XPS 15. It's practically a macbook clone. The main difference is the battery life - with the smaller battery it's like 3.5 hours, bigger battery is like 5 hours. But that's with a quad Core i7, and 16 GB of RAM. I'm super happy with mine. I think most of the difference in battery life is just software at this point... Apple definitely has some magic sauce in there.

I've heard good things about the XPS.

I travel a lot though. I prefer 13" and last time I looked, I found very little that supported 16GB. Also, again, with the traveling, battery life is huge.

This might also sound lame, but I also hate the badges. I saw that the XPS 15 only has the single intel badge. I'd rather have 0...it really grates me the wrong way (not just on laptops, WTF do I want "Samsung" printed in white on the bottom of my TV?)

You know it's just a sticker, right? :) I always take all stickers off my laptops.

But, yes, I wish the XPS 13 had a 16GB option.

They're also specially controlled stickers, some with holograms, meant to suggest that the hardware inside is legit. Kind of like new NBA hats. You can remove those too.

I have the 13" XPS. The size and weight of it are really good for traveling. The battery life is not very good. I get maybe 3 hours on it in Linux. There might be some settings that need to be tweaked to get more life out of it. Also the WiFi on the device, even in Windows 8, sucks. The connection drops quite frequently and some AP it will not connect to. The computer is only a year old, so the new ones might be better now.

What we need is for Canonical to release their own laptops where they support the entire hardware+software combo. Canonical Nexus, please?

Any other company with their own Linux distro and hardware would also work, I guess. I really like Unity, though.

The Nexus model chooses a manufacturer and then works with them to create the current year's creation. I'm not sure Canonical has enough resource or leverage to do that.

That said, I'd love to see an Apple-esque model where I could point to 3 laptops each year and say "large, medium, and small" and know that they would work completely with zero fussing.

Maybe Canonical could start down this road by refitting their devs with new laptops on an annual cycle and saying, "these are the laptops we will be using this year."

I'm a NetBSD-to-Apple switcher (circa 2003) who has a fair bit of ambient familiarity with Ubuntu as his auxiliary OS. I don't run any proprietary system beyond what comes bundled with OS X nowadays. I could switch to Ubuntu for day-to-day work and be perfectly content.

I can say that the SOLE factor of why I haven't has everything to do with not finding a rival to my MacBook Air 11". Part of that may be there simply isn't a comparable machine. But part of that may be that the hassle of searching for alternatives is simply too great.

Well, a big benefit of Canonical selling it's own hardware is that they could use the price of the hardware to pay for OS work.

There is the Dell XPS 13 developer edition which comes from Dell with Ubuntu... ThinkPads work great with Ubuntu (at least the T, X, and W series), I've been using a T530 for a few years now and every single function key, the fingerprint reader, absolutely every feature it has works. And of course there are a few boutique manufacturers that ship Linux systems.

I'm sure other laptops work great with Ubuntu but these are the ones I'm familiar with...

I use one of the boutique systems (the ZaReason UltraLap) as my work laptop and like it a lot, but when my home laptop started to give up the ghost for the fourth or fifth time (a 6-year old Dell Inspiron 1525), I realized that for home use I need the secondary parts market to be active. I fix computers that break (the Inspiron is on its second motherboard, third power board, and the screen and backlight inverter of someone else's 1525 that they were throwing out.) The ThinkPad T430 is cheap enough that it often undercuts the boutiques, but I'm not locked out of ebaying for a new power board.

System76 [0] has launched its business in this area: taking a hardware, tuning Ubuntu to work out of the box on it, and supporting it. You get the assurance that your system will just work.

I haven't tried them but I hope they have good business doing what seems to be the real solution here.

[0] https://system76.com

Yeah, but they don't ship with international keyboards and Canonical don't test on System76 hardware in any special way, so it can break on any upgrade.

That definitely describes me. There is no program I run on my MBA that I can't run on Linux (or a just as good equivalent) and I don't even particularly like OSX, but the whole OSX on an MBA package is hard to beat.

Asus Zenbook UX* line. Only thing that does not work out of the box with Ubuntu is ambient light sensor. Light, powerful, good (not awesome) battery life (4-5 hours), excellent display, ... Also Lenovo X1 Carbon, but the latest model comes with dumbest keyboard ever.

Battery's important. I'm aware of the keyboard issue on the Carbon. It worries me that they still have trackpad and keyboard issues in 2014. The X1 isn't the only one.

It's not a matter of "still" - the original X1 Carbon was fine. Lenovo fucked up on the second iteration.

They keyboard sucks because of design, not Linux - see:

http://cdn.gottabemobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Thin...

I love my 1st gen; it's really depressing that they did this.

I have a Dell XPS 13 developer edition that came preinstalled with Ubuntu. It's almost as good as a Mac; it's light, it has good battery life, a nice 1920x1080 screen. Things lacking compared to MacBook air: no Thunderbolt (though does the Air have it?), the trackpad isn't made of glass and doesn't feel as good as a Macbook one, but it's reasonably close (and buttonless).

All in all, it's an acceptable Mac alternative for me.

> (though does the Air have it?)

Yeah. I've got the MBA 11" with it.

How good is good battery? My MBA is the first device where I'll take it out for a full day's work without thinking of bringing my power adaptor.

Unity sucks battery like there's no tomorrow; with Unity I'd say 5 to 8 hours, but with windowmaker and light low, I'd 7 to 9 hours is doable.

The Sputnik? Only available in limited countries -- not mine (at the time I was looking, or now) which is an absolute deal breaker. There also wasn't a 16GB option (also not for the air, but there is for the 13" rMBP) and the real-world battery life is 2-3 hours worse than the air or rMBP.

I'm not saying it's a bad laptop, but I am saying it isn't as good. And the select country thing is a joke.

Eh. I use both on a very regular basis, for years. Ubuntu on my netbook and OSX on my desktop.

OSX is just a slicker environment. If I wasn't committed to a tiny form factor with my netbook, I'd go all Apple products.

This isn't entirely their fault. There are quite a few Macbook components that are closed source and don't even function correctly in Windows.

I think he means any laptop, period, not just Ubuntu running on a Macbook. Once you're used to having a POSIX OS that's pretty much perfectly integrated on a device with 16GB+, HiDPI display and extremely good touchpad, it's just hard to settle for Ubuntu on a Dell/HP/Lenovo IMO. So far i couldn't find anything that matches Retina display quality (including software support, which is just as important as the hardware). If I could, I'd probably switch to Linux as well.

I don't have a "Retina" laptop but I have a 4k monitor and GNOME3/Unity have really nice HiDPI support now. Anything else is going to be hit and miss. I pretty much only use ThinkPads and haven't had any issues, but there are some things you need to manually to get the most out of it (like installing ThinkFan and laptop_mode).

I think it's less to do with OS and more to do with laptop screens somewhat regressing over a period of 10 years until Apple come out with Retina. New laptops will come out with better screens, open source will be written and the experience will be competitive. I blame manufacturers way more than the Linux ecosystem for this.

Given how ubiquitous Apple laptop hardware is, and how few models there are, I've never quite understood why Canonical hasn't invested more into a goal of ensuring perfect operation on Apple hardware. Maybe they have, and there are simply limits to what they can achieve.

I sure do wish there were a not-obviously-inferior alternative to the OSX/Apple stack that ran Linux.

We don't have any Apple hardware on our Certification list:

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/

In fact, no Linux distribution has ever had Apple hardware certified.

If it's not certified it means that the vendor is not working with the Linux distribution. At that point it's a case where the distribution's developers and Open Source developers spend their time having to run after the hardware with bad information and experimentation.

It's not a particularly worthwhile 'investment' to make.

If you want to run Ubuntu well you should use certified hardware. Also note that when you buy certified or preloaded hardware you signal to the vendor that there is a market for Linux - everyone who buys a Dell XPS with Ubuntu preloaded signals to the market that supporting Ubuntu (and therefore wider Linux) is important.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I can understand the difficulties in trying to support a hardware platform that doesn't want to play, especially when firmware updates could make it a moving target.

I went through the Ubuntu Certification list when I purchased my current laptop about a year ago. At that time (and now), there simply aren't any options that appear to be in the same category as an MBA 11". I would like to somehow signal the market that supporting Ubuntu is important, but the hardware manufacturers need to make hardware I want. You guys make software I want--it's a hardware problem now.

I just run Ubuntu on a retina macbook. It's pretty easy to set up, if you use http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ as a boot manager (the Linux kernel has built-in EFI support these days), and the hardware support has been quite good in my experience.

> better laptop options

I use Ubuntu on a HP EliteBook Folio 1040. It's relatively nice hardware. The touchpad cannot really do middle click, but I always use external mouse, so I don't care.

I am sure ThinkPad T440s would be a nice machine, too.

I tried T440s exactly for 3 days and sent it back! Lenovo just screwed their trackpoint/trackpad experience (and part of keyboard as well). The virtual buttons do not work on Linux out of the box. Had to buy a refurbished T430s, with which I'm quite happy - only the battery time is really bad, I get just 2 hours on Linux.

> I am sure ThinkPad T440s would be a nice machine, too.

It is, except the touchpad (which i don't use anyway)

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