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Comment by cgb_ | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, I've been using linux on desktop/laptops for 16 years, and for last 1 1/2 years, I've been running Linux (Fedora, awesomewm) on VMware Fusion, on OSX, on a Macbook Air 2013 (June), and it's the smoothest Linux laptop experience I've ever had.

When you think about it, all I'm doing is abstracting the hardware to a hypervisor, and the OS that hypervisor is hosted on is responsible for all hardware management. I continue to get 10-14 hour battery runtime, never ever had a failed suspend/resume, and every single hardware component is fully supported.

Barely any other laptop can compare to it for battery life and the hardware itself is the best laptop experience I've had (although I do miss my 'pointing stick' from Toshiba or IBM/Lenovo gear). I'm surprised more people haven't suggested this.

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I've been doing this for years, too. The huge advantage is that you can update your MacBook to the latest version frequently, without having to deal with all the pain points the GP describes.

The same benefits accrue even more so for Windows; not because of hardware incompatibility (there are Windows drivers for all Macbook hardware) but because of system decrepitude. I have never had a physical machine that booted Windows for 7 years (or even 2 years) that didn't become hopelessly fucked up, whether due to installing some weird open source thing, malware, or Windows Update.

But I have had the same 3 Windows VMs (XP, 7, and 8.1) running since the day I installed Windows on them, albeit with significant help from my frequent use of VMWare Fusion's snapshot feature.

The only big drawback is graphics performance -- if you want to play games I don't think you would be happy with the solution, but it works great for virtually any other usage.

Last time I tried VMWare Fusion (<1yr ago) I was pretty disappointed with the trackpad support (I could find absolutely no way to get horizontal scrolling, for example, and vertical scrolling was extremely jarring). Maybe it doesn't bother you, but it drove me nuts.

I do the same and also have a wonderful experience with Fedora running as a guest in VMware Fusion on a Macbook Pro Retina.

Are you productive using only the laptop or do you use a external monitor with it?

I can be productive but I would always prefer a larger/external screen. I use a DVI/VGA thunderbolt adaptor for second monitor, and VMWare Tools/Xorg sees the additional displays as 'Virtual1, Virtual2 [..]' so xrandr 'just works'.

For the MBA specifically, the resolution is less desirable (non-retina) but the retina model just doesn't exist yet. 8GB RAM max is a bit of a limitation too but I can work around that.

AwesomeWM (tiling window manager) helps me be productive in any monitor configuration though :)

Thanks for sharing; I think I may have to consider this for my next upgrade!

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