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I love Linux, GNOME 3 is even a pretty decent desktop environment. IntelliJ and friends run just fine on it, Evolution works okay enough with my work Exchange a

I love Linux, GNOME 3 is even a pretty decent desktop environment. IntelliJ and friends run just fine on it, Evolution works okay enough with my work Exchange account, GNOME Boxes provides adequate virtualization of Windows 10 when I need Visual Studio. But you know what? Power management SUCKS. I've got a work-issued Lenovo W540 running Fedora 26, and while it gets the job done even light web browsing drains the battery like crazy - sure this thing has a power-hungry 65W CPU but it's also got a stupid big battery jutting out the back of it to match. There's also the death by a thousand cuts issue to the desktop user experience, Evolution works just "okay", meanwhile Mail.app/Calendar.app/Contacts.app work flawlessly with Exchange like I'd expect them to; Boxes is a PITA compared to VMWare Fusion and audio support is still broken for Windows 8+ - VMWare Workstation locks my whole machine up or I'd just use it; Bluetooth audio is still rather janky to use; even USB audio is a bit janky, if I turn my sound down below ~30% my Corsair USB headset just goes mute. I'm hopeful one of these days the biggest nag I have, power management, gets better on more recent hardware - until then I'll certainly prefer a Mac.

jsight 9y ago
You sound like a Red Hat employee. In fairness, it may be less of a power management issue and more of a mediocre laptop issue. The last laptop that I had (T540p) was a similar experience to yours, especially after it was a few years old. The new P50 that replaced it has similar specs, no bulging battery, and can last for 4 hours+ even under pretty heavy load (lightly loaded could be closer to 8 hours). I won't disagree with you about the software experience that you describe, though. Evolution is absolutely horrible. Boxes is horrible, but I really liked virt-manager for server virtualization once I got used to it. I used to have tons of issues with Bluetooth, but none so far with Fedora 26 (knock on wood). It definitely wouldn't surprise me if that experience is still uneven, and Bluetooth in general is pretty mediocre.

jsight 9y ago

You sound like a Red Hat employee. In fairness, it may be less of a power management issue and more of a mediocre laptop issue. The last laptop that I had (T540p) was a similar experience to yours, especially after it was a few years old. The new P50 that replaced it has similar specs, no bulging battery, and can last for 4 hours+ even under pretty heavy load (lightly loaded could be closer to 8 hours). I won't disagree with you about the software experience that you describe, though. Evolution is absolutely horrible. Boxes is horrible, but I really liked virt-manager for server virtualization once I got used to it. I used to have tons of issues with Bluetooth, but none so far with Fedora 26 (knock on wood). It definitely wouldn't surprise me if that experience is still uneven, and Bluetooth in general is pretty mediocre.