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I recently switched back to Linux (ThinkPad/Arch/Kernel4.8) after 5 years using a Macbook Pro (after using linux for 5 years previously). Linux hardware suppor

I recently switched back to Linux (ThinkPad/Arch/Kernel4.8) after 5 years using a Macbook Pro (after using linux for 5 years previously). Linux hardware support has become much better without a doubt. However just in the last couple days I've had the following sporadic issues: * External usb keyboard/mouse simply wouldn't work (and doesn't show up in lsusb). Restart fixed. * If left overnight, occasionally won't wake up from sleep; requires restart. * Upon start trackpad/trackpoint occasionally doesn't work; do not show up in xinput; probably fixable, but haven't dug into it. On the other hand, mac had its own issues: * Macbook takes relatively forever to come back from sleep; thinkpad is practically immediate. * Macbook wireless constantly has issues connecting, to the point of having to turn off wireless and back on multiple times (this occurs often). * Opening many tabs in chrome on mac causes serious slowdowns. Have yet to see any slowdown on thinkpad even with 20-30 tabs. This also goes generally for mac beachball issues. In general, Arch/i3 combo is far better than MacOS for my needs (95% of time in terminal/browser).

Twirrim 10y ago
>* Macbook takes relatively forever to come back from sleep; thinkpad is practically immediate. Waking up from sleep has been nice and fast in Linux for a while, but I have to say that regardless of all the frustrations I've found using OS X over the last year, waking from sleep isn't one of them. It has been nice and fast every time. >* Macbook wireless constantly has issues connecting, to the point of having to turn off wireless and back on multiple times (this occurs often). I've found wireless to be a really bizarre experience on OS X. If there are two networks it can connect to in range, it doesn't seem to pay much attention to the strength of the signal, and it always seems to overstate how strong the signal is (that may feed into the former). I can be sitting in the same room as another wireless endpoint, and it'll choose the one furthest away from it, where wireless strength is pretty low, and constantly suffer communication problems. I've made it a point now to go check which wifi it has connected to.
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  It has a user definable order of preference across all SSIDs which you can tweak in network preferences.
  - Twirrim 10y ago
    Sure. I'd rather it just went with the one with the strongest signal, however. I shouldn't need to juggle SSID priority order based on which room I happen to be in.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  You can change your sleep mode to get rid of the hibernate restoration. I have to warn you although, your battery life of your sleeping laptop will go down: http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/software/sleepmode.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/software/sleepmode.h...
  - phaedrix 10y ago
    Thanks! I didn't know about that. Maybe that's the difference as my linux is solely suspend to ram (never could get hibernate to work)
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    Indeed, very useful. On Android I had similar issues and had to install a program called Wifi Prioritiser (or something akin to that as there's multiple solutions available). Unfortunately it has a slight impact on battery life.
atombender 10y ago
But macOS is famous for having fast wake from sleep. It's always had this, years before Windows and Linux started catching up. It's always been near-instantaneous for me. That said, it would seem that they have, and continue to have, issues with waking up with a new external monitor. Maybe you're being hit by this? Occasionally when I arrive at home or the office and plug my asleep-and-lid-closed MBP 2015 in, the screen will display garbage for a while, and hang for 10-30 seconds until it shows the unlock screen. Sometimes it doesn't recover at all.
- phaedrix 10y ago
  I should have been more specific, and the word 'forever' was overly hyperbolic - though when you're doing it 20 times in an hour it gets to feel that way. Relative is the key: Linux wakes up in milliseconds every time; by the time I open the lid all the way it's ready to go. rMBP (2012) can be from almost as fast as linux to ~10 seconds. I'd guess the average is ~3 seconds; though sometimes even when it wakes up fast I'll still get a beachball for a bit. I mostly use my laptop around the house and often open and close it many times in a short period -- for instance say I'm reading something technical on the kindle in the armchair; I'll flip it open quite often to test or look something up quickly, so even having to wait a few seconds gets obnoxious. I could just leave it open, but I don't always have a safe place to put it while open. note: no external monitor, so that's not the issue.
phaedrix 10y ago
A few notes for context on why (for my needs) linux is better than mac: Off the top of my head there are a few primary reasons I prefer linux: * WM Aesthetics - Arch+i3 (or any minimal, preferably tiling WM) provides a gorgeous minimalist aesthetic -- checkout /r/unixporn for examples. MacOS is just too visually noisy for me. * I was going to buy a new macbook pro, but then they went and got rid of the escape and function keys. Escape I could probably live without (I tap caps-lock for escape), but function keys I want (at least until the apple touchbar proves itself to be comparatively useful). * I'm tired of Apple's hyperbole and smugness, especially considering they haven't done anything really interesting since Jobs passed away. * Customizability: really no comparison here. This is my big one. * Pacman/AUR - honestly homebrew is pretty good though. Negatives: * Occasional weirdness/breakage. * Can take a lot of research to figure out how to get things to work at times (note: usually not common things anymore though, like wifi etc); sometimes they just don't work without an unreasonable amount of work, or at all (e.g. hibernate). Many things are esoteric in general and have marginal documentation (arch wiki is great though). Granted this is part of the fun (I mean, I am a programmer :). * Spent tens of hours setting things up to function the way I want (keep in mind I don't use gnome/kde so that would likely fix a lot of issues like external monitor support for HiDPI, and I tend to do heavy/esoteric customization of the user experience). Most of this is because I haven't used linux as my personal machine for ~5 years (i.e. setting it up again would be a few hours or less likely). If you use Gnome/Unity/KDE this probably wouldn't be the case. * HiDPI (x1 carbon): I think this is actually decent in kde/gnome/unity (?), but it's pretty terrible in most GUI apps in my minimal setup. After some fiddling chromium is fine and I generally simply don't use GUI apps otherwise, and when I do it's still usable if not great. Retina screen and OS support was the primary thing that kept me on a mac. (edit: terminal and chrome look great so I'm happy) * Miss a few apps: Quiver, Artful, Dash * I still keep my mac around just in case, but haven't needed it yet. * Touchpad: nothing touches a macbook (although I'm not jazzed about the huge new one), on the other hand the X1 Carbon's is actually quite good. oh, and I use Manjaro-i3 [1] -- I've been there, done that with setting up Arch from scratch...highly recommended. 1: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-i3-16-06-16-06-1/3329 https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-i3-16-06-16-06-1/3329
Fnoord 10y ago
> * Macbook takes relatively forever to come back from sleep; thinkpad is practically immediate. What about battery life? Have you tried [1]? This is based on a HN comment. Explanations on the functions are also found here [2]. > * Macbook wireless constantly has issues connecting, to the point of having to turn off wireless and back on multiple times (this occurs often). Which macOS version was this? Wasn't a related framework replaced recently? Or was that only DNS? > * Opening many tabs in chrome on mac causes serious slowdowns. Have yet to see any slowdown on thinkpad even with 20-30 tabs. This also goes generally for mac beachball issues. How much RAM is in the MBP? I had 100+ tabs open on a MBP 2010 (4 GB RAM default, replaced with 8 GB RAM, replaced 512 GB HDD with 256 GB SSD) and never had any issue with that after the hardware replacements. Are you comparing a 5 year old machine with a new one? > In general, Arch/i3 combo is far better than MacOS for my needs (95% of time in terminal/browser). Have you ever tried Homebrew (+ Cask) + Amethyst + iTerm2 + Tmux on the Mac? [1] http://pastebin.com/F3Sh2mjY http://pastebin.com/F3Sh2mjY [2] http://blog.taylormcgann.com/2012/07/05/hibernate-from-terminal/ http://blog.taylormcgann.com/2012/07/05/hibernate-from-termi...

Twirrim 10y ago

>* Macbook takes relatively forever to come back from sleep; thinkpad is practically immediate. Waking up from sleep has been nice and fast in Linux for a while, but I have to say that regardless of all the frustrations I've found using OS X over the last year, waking from sleep isn't one of them. It has been nice and fast every time. >* Macbook wireless constantly has issues connecting, to the point of having to turn off wireless and back on multiple times (this occurs often). I've found wireless to be a really bizarre experience on OS X. If there are two networks it can connect to in range, it doesn't seem to pay much attention to the strength of the signal, and it always seems to overstate how strong the signal is (that may feed into the former). I can be sitting in the same room as another wireless endpoint, and it'll choose the one furthest away from it, where wireless strength is pretty low, and constantly suffer communication problems. I've made it a point now to go check which wifi it has connected to.

JonnieCache 10y ago
It has a user definable order of preference across all SSIDs which you can tweak in network preferences.
- Twirrim 10y ago
  Sure. I'd rather it just went with the one with the strongest signal, however. I shouldn't need to juggle SSID priority order based on which room I happen to be in.
mahyarm 10y ago
You can change your sleep mode to get rid of the hibernate restoration. I have to warn you although, your battery life of your sleeping laptop will go down: http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/software/sleepmode.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/software/sleepmode.h...
- phaedrix 10y ago
  Thanks! I didn't know about that. Maybe that's the difference as my linux is solely suspend to ram (never could get hibernate to work)
- Fnoord 10y ago
  Indeed, very useful. On Android I had similar issues and had to install a program called Wifi Prioritiser (or something akin to that as there's multiple solutions available). Unfortunately it has a slight impact on battery life.

atombender 10y ago

But macOS is famous for having fast wake from sleep. It's always had this, years before Windows and Linux started catching up. It's always been near-instantaneous for me. That said, it would seem that they have, and continue to have, issues with waking up with a new external monitor. Maybe you're being hit by this? Occasionally when I arrive at home or the office and plug my asleep-and-lid-closed MBP 2015 in, the screen will display garbage for a while, and hang for 10-30 seconds until it shows the unlock screen. Sometimes it doesn't recover at all.

phaedrix 10y ago
I should have been more specific, and the word 'forever' was overly hyperbolic - though when you're doing it 20 times in an hour it gets to feel that way. Relative is the key: Linux wakes up in milliseconds every time; by the time I open the lid all the way it's ready to go. rMBP (2012) can be from almost as fast as linux to ~10 seconds. I'd guess the average is ~3 seconds; though sometimes even when it wakes up fast I'll still get a beachball for a bit. I mostly use my laptop around the house and often open and close it many times in a short period -- for instance say I'm reading something technical on the kindle in the armchair; I'll flip it open quite often to test or look something up quickly, so even having to wait a few seconds gets obnoxious. I could just leave it open, but I don't always have a safe place to put it while open. note: no external monitor, so that's not the issue.

phaedrix 10y ago

A few notes for context on why (for my needs) linux is better than mac: Off the top of my head there are a few primary reasons I prefer linux: * WM Aesthetics - Arch+i3 (or any minimal, preferably tiling WM) provides a gorgeous minimalist aesthetic -- checkout /r/unixporn for examples. MacOS is just too visually noisy for me. * I was going to buy a new macbook pro, but then they went and got rid of the escape and function keys. Escape I could probably live without (I tap caps-lock for escape), but function keys I want (at least until the apple touchbar proves itself to be comparatively useful). * I'm tired of Apple's hyperbole and smugness, especially considering they haven't done anything really interesting since Jobs passed away. * Customizability: really no comparison here. This is my big one. * Pacman/AUR - honestly homebrew is pretty good though. Negatives: * Occasional weirdness/breakage. * Can take a lot of research to figure out how to get things to work at times (note: usually not common things anymore though, like wifi etc); sometimes they just don't work without an unreasonable amount of work, or at all (e.g. hibernate). Many things are esoteric in general and have marginal documentation (arch wiki is great though). Granted this is part of the fun (I mean, I am a programmer :). * Spent tens of hours setting things up to function the way I want (keep in mind I don't use gnome/kde so that would likely fix a lot of issues like external monitor support for HiDPI, and I tend to do heavy/esoteric customization of the user experience). Most of this is because I haven't used linux as my personal machine for ~5 years (i.e. setting it up again would be a few hours or less likely). If you use Gnome/Unity/KDE this probably wouldn't be the case. * HiDPI (x1 carbon): I think this is actually decent in kde/gnome/unity (?), but it's pretty terrible in most GUI apps in my minimal setup. After some fiddling chromium is fine and I generally simply don't use GUI apps otherwise, and when I do it's still usable if not great. Retina screen and OS support was the primary thing that kept me on a mac. (edit: terminal and chrome look great so I'm happy) * Miss a few apps: Quiver, Artful, Dash * I still keep my mac around just in case, but haven't needed it yet. * Touchpad: nothing touches a macbook (although I'm not jazzed about the huge new one), on the other hand the X1 Carbon's is actually quite good. oh, and I use Manjaro-i3 [1] -- I've been there, done that with setting up Arch from scratch...highly recommended. 1: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-i3-16-06-16-06-1/3329 https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-i3-16-06-16-06-1/3329

Fnoord 10y ago

> * Macbook takes relatively forever to come back from sleep; thinkpad is practically immediate. What about battery life? Have you tried [1]? This is based on a HN comment. Explanations on the functions are also found here [2]. > * Macbook wireless constantly has issues connecting, to the point of having to turn off wireless and back on multiple times (this occurs often). Which macOS version was this? Wasn't a related framework replaced recently? Or was that only DNS? > * Opening many tabs in chrome on mac causes serious slowdowns. Have yet to see any slowdown on thinkpad even with 20-30 tabs. This also goes generally for mac beachball issues. How much RAM is in the MBP? I had 100+ tabs open on a MBP 2010 (4 GB RAM default, replaced with 8 GB RAM, replaced 512 GB HDD with 256 GB SSD) and never had any issue with that after the hardware replacements. Are you comparing a 5 year old machine with a new one? > In general, Arch/i3 combo is far better than MacOS for my needs (95% of time in terminal/browser). Have you ever tried Homebrew (+ Cask) + Amethyst + iTerm2 + Tmux on the Mac? [1] http://pastebin.com/F3Sh2mjY http://pastebin.com/F3Sh2mjY [2] http://blog.taylormcgann.com/2012/07/05/hibernate-from-terminal/ http://blog.taylormcgann.com/2012/07/05/hibernate-from-termi...