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Comment by eblanshey | Hacker News Reader

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eblanshey

Anyone know how viable it is to wipe it and use Ubuntu with it?

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You don't need to wipe it...just set up a dual boot: http://www.howtogeek.com/187410/how-to-install-and-dual-boot...

Why waste half a drive?

Wiping it will make it hard to update firmware. I learned this the hard way.

Anyone know if Ubuntu will do the retina justice?

Yup, it works now.

With 14.04 LTS? How good is your experience with the setup?

I have been using Ubuntu 14.04 since it came out. Anyone who calls Yosemite buggy should try running Ubuntu as their primary system and see what buggy really looks like. YMMV, of course.

Yeah, I think Unity is the most productive desktop environment in existence and I especially like how good it is at handling huge amounts of windows but I manually installed the newest nvidia drivers and now it can't be started. KDE and GNOME Shell work just fine. Installing drivers is not a fringe use case. GNOME Shell is close in usability, except for its clumsy multi-monitor support. Also any Ubuntu update can break your computer. Happened to me. It actually makes me want to get a Mac.

Linux in general has problems with graphics, Wi-Fi and printers. I know this is not Linux's fault, but that doesn't fix it.

If a company came out and made a dedicated Linux distro for its own brand of computers a la Apple, took care of the video and WiFi drivers while keeping them up to date and also sold me a printer I would be all over it.

I guess the closest thing to a problem-free Linux experience would be the Dell developer edition laptops or maybe the Thinkpads, as Lenovo usually Ubuntu certifies them.

Isn't that what System76 does?

No, they sell it with Ubuntu. It works when you get it, but Canonical doesn't test new updates on System76 machines. Which means it will break. Because that's how much Ubuntu regresses.

I want the hardware and the software manufacturer to be the same company. I think that's the only way an open source OS could get sufficient funds and a sufficiently narrow group of hardware to support.

Gonna have to agree with you, I used desktop linux for years (even on one system76 laptop that had ubuntu pre-installed), and it felt like I was spending more time reporting bugs, working around bugs, and distro-hopping than actually using my computer. OSX has its issues but I've been a lot happier with it.

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