6 ms·

Seriously un-true. Just this weekend I set up a friends old, aging laptop with a fresh Ubuntu Studio install, and .. everything just works. Video playback, dr

by mmjaa 9y ago

Seriously un-true. Just this weekend I set up a friends old, aging laptop with a fresh Ubuntu Studio install, and .. everything just works. Video playback, drivers for everything. Seriously! Even multi-screen (i.e. projector) extensions, and so on. We watched movies with it all weekend, just plain ol' Ubuntu Studio. So, anecdotal stories are yarns, yo. (I say this as an Ubuntu and macOS developer, thus user: its functionally a point where Ubuntu could un-seat macOS in terms of ease of use, on .. admittedly a very much wider range of hardware.) As for the MacBook hegemony, I point my wavy hands at things like the GPD Pocket, and its future off-spring.

mlvljr 9y ago
Did you also ruin his BIOS by doing so? :)
meneame2 9y ago
Ubuntu is now really polished, and works great if you cherry pick hardware a bit and avoid components with drivers that are not in the kernel. But I'd go one step further and argue that, as a developer, Linux can give you a unique experience if you stick to its strengths: * Use a minimal distribution with few moving parts -> Things rarely break, and if something does it's usually easy to fix * Try functional package management and administration (NixOS) -> Easy to reproduce setups, trivial to rollback, no dependency hell * Try a simple keyboard-driven desktop -> A tiling window manager (XMonad), a web browser (Firefox) and Emacs (with Org, Magit, Eshell, Dired, Notmuch...) work incredibly well
- gigatexal 9y ago
  Is there much that doesn’t have a kernel module? I know some can’t be included because of licensing and such like some WiFi hardware but then distros could just compile all drives as modules and hot plug them at boot no? (I bet this is what happens anyway)
  - meneame2 9y ago
    For example, many Broadcom network cards do not have decent drivers. These are really common.
- ufo 9y ago
  I don't think this agrees with the parent post. Niche package managers and window managers are precisely the sort of thing that you need to fiddle for an hour to get the projector to work or install some software that isn't packaged. I do agree that the freedom of choice that you are mentioning is a great benefit of Linux and FOSS software in general, though.
- regularfry 9y ago
  This in response to an otherwise very positive experience report that singles out a fault in what should be a really, really boring, unexciting, stable subsystem on "known good" hardware that somehow, in 2018, is still not working fluidly. Seriously, if you're cherry-picking hardware, I think you could be forgiven for landing on this laptop, and yet it doesn't work in a fairly obvious way.
tn_ 9y ago
I've probably spent a couple of hours last month trying to resolve sound driver related issues where my headphone jack stopped working on Ubuntu 16.04. Also, my dual monitor set-up randomly stopped working.. this was during a deadline so I ended up coding with my thinkpad screen for the entirety of a day. This is my work machine. These are the exact same problems I faced 10 years ago when I was using Ubuntu. Completely unacceptable. Macs + Windows are miles ahead more stable than Ubuntu.
- wazoox 9y ago
  And every now and then, on my old macBook USB stops working and I need to unplug everything (MIDI interfaces, audio, disk drives). Annoying as hell when you open Cubase and it can't see any of your setup. On the other hand I never had any serious issue with my XPS running Ubuntu, or my desktop PCs (running Linux exclusively since 2003). So YMMV, and the plural of anecdote isn't statistics. On my book, Linux works largely better and more predictably than MacOS by a large margin.
- olyjohn 9y ago
  Honestly, I see this same stuff on Windows constantly. Our 50+ Windows devs still struggle to hook up to projectors, extra monitors, docks, etc. Sound drops out during meetings, sound devices lock up and require reboots. The worst thing really is the new updating process, which despite configuring it to not reboot during the day, it does so anyways. Some of these updates have taken 2+ hours to install. Can't even use the computer at all. Not to mention, many of these updates end up breaking components despite our best efforts at testing.
jorvi 9y ago
> its functionally a point where Ubuntu could un-seat macOS in terms of ease of use And this is in turn is seriously un-true. * With my Macbook, I can be almost ironclad certain that if I close the lid to sleep, it will wake up. With Ubuntu (or any Linux really) you have 99,5% certainty, which is great, until it isn't and you lose work. * Battery life if still miles behind macOS+Macbook levels unless you compromise somewhere (resolution, portability, etc.) * Apple is quite a heavy-handed overlord that pushes changes through, and developers have to adapt or die to them. Ubuntu has no such power. * Most macOS developers also 'naturally' stick to platform conventions, so all applications feel at home and look and work as expected * The ease-of-use of Apple's 'global menu' cannot be overstated. It may not matter much to techies, but for my mother or grandma the fact that 'Print' is always under 'File' and 'File' is in the menu bar regardless of which application is being used is magic. Same goes for 'Edit', 'View', etc. They never have to hunt for these things again[1] That's not to mention Touchpad gestures, Spaces (best implementation of virtual desktops), scaling, font rendering, updates that rarely if ever bork everything, ecosystem integration with your phone and tablet (Continuity, shared copy-paste and remotely-triggered tethering are a godsend), etc. etc. Now if you were touting that Linux is much easier to tweak exactly to your liking, I'd heartily agree. But even today, I'd much rather recommend someone a Macbook than have them deal with the headache that Linux desktop _can_ be. [1] Yes I know Ubuntu had a global menu. They nixed it, and the Gnome extension is a hack that doesn't work for everything
- StavrosK 9y ago
  > Spaces (best implementation of virtual desktops) Oh man, how? Virtual desktops where alt+tab doesn't cycle through windows only on the current desktop are completely broken (they're just a large virtual screen), and last I used Spaces there was no option to change this.
  - jorvi 9y ago
    The fact that they've chosen to go with a horizontal-only grid (instead of both horizontal and vertical) simplifies everything greatly and makes switching to another Space a breeze: either swipe with 3 fingers or press ctrl+left/right or (if enabled) press ctrl+Spaces number. As far as your point goes: it depends on if you see your Spaces as isolated desktops, or just 'more desktop space' which you can then loosely thematically organise. I fall into the latter category, and I suspect as Apple has chosen that cmd-tab style because most people do.

by mmjaa 9y ago

mlvljr 9y ago

Did you also ruin his BIOS by doing so? :)

meneame2 9y ago

Ubuntu is now really polished, and works great if you cherry pick hardware a bit and avoid components with drivers that are not in the kernel. But I'd go one step further and argue that, as a developer, Linux can give you a unique experience if you stick to its strengths: * Use a minimal distribution with few moving parts -> Things rarely break, and if something does it's usually easy to fix * Try functional package management and administration (NixOS) -> Easy to reproduce setups, trivial to rollback, no dependency hell * Try a simple keyboard-driven desktop -> A tiling window manager (XMonad), a web browser (Firefox) and Emacs (with Org, Magit, Eshell, Dired, Notmuch...) work incredibly well

gigatexal 9y ago
Is there much that doesn’t have a kernel module? I know some can’t be included because of licensing and such like some WiFi hardware but then distros could just compile all drives as modules and hot plug them at boot no? (I bet this is what happens anyway)
- meneame2 9y ago
  For example, many Broadcom network cards do not have decent drivers. These are really common.
ufo 9y ago
I don't think this agrees with the parent post. Niche package managers and window managers are precisely the sort of thing that you need to fiddle for an hour to get the projector to work or install some software that isn't packaged. I do agree that the freedom of choice that you are mentioning is a great benefit of Linux and FOSS software in general, though.
regularfry 9y ago
This in response to an otherwise very positive experience report that singles out a fault in what should be a really, really boring, unexciting, stable subsystem on "known good" hardware that somehow, in 2018, is still not working fluidly. Seriously, if you're cherry-picking hardware, I think you could be forgiven for landing on this laptop, and yet it doesn't work in a fairly obvious way.

tn_ 9y ago

I've probably spent a couple of hours last month trying to resolve sound driver related issues where my headphone jack stopped working on Ubuntu 16.04. Also, my dual monitor set-up randomly stopped working.. this was during a deadline so I ended up coding with my thinkpad screen for the entirety of a day. This is my work machine. These are the exact same problems I faced 10 years ago when I was using Ubuntu. Completely unacceptable. Macs + Windows are miles ahead more stable than Ubuntu.

wazoox 9y ago
And every now and then, on my old macBook USB stops working and I need to unplug everything (MIDI interfaces, audio, disk drives). Annoying as hell when you open Cubase and it can't see any of your setup. On the other hand I never had any serious issue with my XPS running Ubuntu, or my desktop PCs (running Linux exclusively since 2003). So YMMV, and the plural of anecdote isn't statistics. On my book, Linux works largely better and more predictably than MacOS by a large margin.
olyjohn 9y ago
Honestly, I see this same stuff on Windows constantly. Our 50+ Windows devs still struggle to hook up to projectors, extra monitors, docks, etc. Sound drops out during meetings, sound devices lock up and require reboots. The worst thing really is the new updating process, which despite configuring it to not reboot during the day, it does so anyways. Some of these updates have taken 2+ hours to install. Can't even use the computer at all. Not to mention, many of these updates end up breaking components despite our best efforts at testing.

jorvi 9y ago

> its functionally a point where Ubuntu could un-seat macOS in terms of ease of use And this is in turn is seriously un-true. * With my Macbook, I can be almost ironclad certain that if I close the lid to sleep, it will wake up. With Ubuntu (or any Linux really) you have 99,5% certainty, which is great, until it isn't and you lose work. * Battery life if still miles behind macOS+Macbook levels unless you compromise somewhere (resolution, portability, etc.) * Apple is quite a heavy-handed overlord that pushes changes through, and developers have to adapt or die to them. Ubuntu has no such power. * Most macOS developers also 'naturally' stick to platform conventions, so all applications feel at home and look and work as expected * The ease-of-use of Apple's 'global menu' cannot be overstated. It may not matter much to techies, but for my mother or grandma the fact that 'Print' is always under 'File' and 'File' is in the menu bar regardless of which application is being used is magic. Same goes for 'Edit', 'View', etc. They never have to hunt for these things again[1] That's not to mention Touchpad gestures, Spaces (best implementation of virtual desktops), scaling, font rendering, updates that rarely if ever bork everything, ecosystem integration with your phone and tablet (Continuity, shared copy-paste and remotely-triggered tethering are a godsend), etc. etc. Now if you were touting that Linux is much easier to tweak exactly to your liking, I'd heartily agree. But even today, I'd much rather recommend someone a Macbook than have them deal with the headache that Linux desktop _can_ be. [1] Yes I know Ubuntu had a global menu. They nixed it, and the Gnome extension is a hack that doesn't work for everything

StavrosK 9y ago
> Spaces (best implementation of virtual desktops) Oh man, how? Virtual desktops where alt+tab doesn't cycle through windows only on the current desktop are completely broken (they're just a large virtual screen), and last I used Spaces there was no option to change this.
- jorvi 9y ago
  The fact that they've chosen to go with a horizontal-only grid (instead of both horizontal and vertical) simplifies everything greatly and makes switching to another Space a breeze: either swipe with 3 fingers or press ctrl+left/right or (if enabled) press ctrl+Spaces number. As far as your point goes: it depends on if you see your Spaces as isolated desktops, or just 'more desktop space' which you can then loosely thematically organise. I fall into the latter category, and I suspect as Apple has chosen that cmd-tab style because most people do.