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I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is styl

I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu and would go for a ThinkPad instead of the XPS, because 1) I want a 14" screen 2) the XPS's fan is too loud, especially when Skyping 3) the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils. [1]: https://fman.io/blog/home-and-hotel https://fman.io/blog/home-and-hotel

Un1corn 7y ago
> the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils. The camera is no longer placed at the bottom of the screen in the newest model (9380), they moved it up top
- mherrmann 7y ago
  Ah, okay! That's great.
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  Huh, weird. I used to have an XPS 15 (from 2015 or so) with the camera placed on top, but my newer one (2018) has it at the bottom. Weird and unwelcome.
  - SiVal 7y ago
    It's back on top in the 2019 XPS 15
- ahnick 7y ago
  That's great to hear. Maybe everyone complaining loudly about that got them to redesign it. I completely ruled out getting an XPS previously because of that design decision.
tasuki 7y ago
+1 for ThinkPads, they just work. The XPS has super annoying fans which change their speed randomly all the time (though it's possible to override: https://github.com/TomFreudenberg/dell-bios-fan-control https://github.com/TomFreudenberg/dell-bios-fan-control). Btw, Xfce is a desktop environment while Ubuntu is a distribution. Perhaps you meant to write you're on Xfce instead of Gnome?
- mherrmann 7y ago
  Yeah, sure. I was on Ubuntu, now I'm on Debian + Xfce. It's better because it's faster and does not have some of the bugs I mentioned in the article I linked to.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    Sure, but Xubuntu is a thing, so your phrasing is very unclear.
- ratiolat 7y ago
  Thinkpads come in different flavours, and the have very different quality. Either get a T-series, or X-series (X series is basically smaller version of T). Or if it's a used one, the later A-series are good as well (A series means AMD instead of Intel). The old A - series were crap. Nowadays T and X series have AMD also (if model ends with 5, it's AMD). T and X series have MIL certification. For example there's also X1 Extreme (costs around 3000€), but quality wise it's a lot worse than T or X series, because it does not have the MIL certificate.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - tasuki 7y ago
    Yes, when I wrote ThinkPad I meant T or X series! First time I hear the X1 Extreme is worse quality wise - I was thinking it'd be my next machine... like in a couple of years. Do you have more info?
nabla9 7y ago
I have new Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu and I'm satisfied with it. Camera has moved in these new models. Dell Thunderbolt Dock (TB16) is is disappointment. Others report problems as well.
- Boulth 7y ago
  I agree w.r.t. TB16. While it works (unlike TB15) it's very loud (fan is enabled 90% of time). Generally I'm not fond of XPS 13 (9350) but later firmwares got rid of most issues (except extremely long boot time). On the other hand Dell is contributing to several Linux projects (such as fwupd) and all of XPS hardware (including touch screen) worked out of the box.
oarsinsync 7y ago
I love this analogy, and it's remarkable at how much sense it makes when I look at the choices I make in my day to day life generally. Hotel-chic is very clean, very minimal, very sparse. Just enough to have the necessary conveniences that appeal to everyone, with absolutely nothing personalised for any individual. As of about 10 years ago, I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mobile) experience away from the defaults as much as possible, as I was fed up of having to document and then re-deploy all of my customisations every time I had to reinstall for whatever reason, which was far too frequent for my liking. At the same time, I'd been moving home roughly every year for the 7 years prior already, and had grown weary of all my physical effects. I started disposing of more and more of my things (inadvertently marie kondo-ing my life before it was a "thing" I was aware of) and decreasing the personalisation of my physical space down more and more. I now essentially live a hotel-esque lifestyle, with most of my personal customisations fitting in a small corner of the room. Added bonus of this is with the frequent travel I need to do for work, I can take one or two items with me, and the hotel room instantly feels like home. I guess this explains why I'm relatively happy as an Apple user. The lack of customisation doesn't bother me, as I don't customise anything outside of the bare minimums (wallpaper and privacy settings, thats about it). It also explains how I'm able to use Windows 10 at work without killing anyone, while my colleagues are all using tiling window managers under Linux and looking at me like I'm crazy for not wanting to spend a week tweaking and customising my environment....
- swinglock 7y ago
  In case you didn't notice, Windows 10 is now a tiling window manager with virtual desktops, by default, if you just learn the new keyboard shortcuts.
  - lol768 7y ago
    > In case you didn't notice, Windows 10 is now a tiling window manager with virtual desktops, by default, if you just learn the new keyboard shortcuts. But it's not comparable to sway/i3 - not in terms of customisability or functionality. What I suspect we have on Windows, are virtual desktops and snap-to-edge/quarter tiling. Maybe you can get some rigid layouts if you install PowerToys/FancyZones, but it's still a far cry from my usual working environment where I can dynamically create layouts by opening new windows, configure shortcuts to my own desire, programmatically send messages to the window manager and so much more. With Windows (and to be honest, macOS too), you get least-common denominator functionality aimed at users who don't know what a window manager is.
olex 7y ago
Our company offers Dell XPS 13 and Precision 5530 (based on the XPS 15 chassis) as Macbook alternatives for all employees. I've had my Precision for a couple years now and couldn't be happier, it's an awesome device and imho as close as it gets to the overall hardware quality and usability of Macbooks with Windows-/Linux-based devices.
- mobilemidget 7y ago
  An alternative or a replacement, could you still opt for a MacBook (pro)?
  - olex 7y ago
    An alternative. We can have both 13" and 15" MBPs as well (and I assume the upcoming 16" will be an option, too).
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etatoby 7y ago
I second a ThinkPad with XFCE (such as Xubuntu) as the best combination. A few things which, although obvious in retrospect, I had to learn the hard way: • Get a ThinkPad with physical buttons under the touchpad, if you like to track with your index finger and click with the thumb. I made the mistake of getting the kind where you push the entire touchpad, and it's very hard to use. Apple's was at least useable, this is not. • Get a ThinkPad with a physical Ethernet port. USB dongles are finicky and unstable on Linux, and there are places / desks / offices where the WiFi is flaky. • Choose the stable release of a well-supported OS (Ubuntu, Mint... whatever) because the beta / newest / testing version will make you lose time on bugs and freezes.
- sam_lowry_ 7y ago
  There are not many ThinkPads with Ethernet ports. T4??p or P?? are the only ones left, IIRC. Others have either no port or a difficult to use clapet.
  - jnieminen 7y ago
    You have also an option to use a docking station.
  - forty 7y ago
    My T480s does have an Ethernet port. I believe T490s lost it but the T490 (which has similar size to the T480s) still has it.
    - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
      Did you try to use it? Whenever I have to take out the cable, I ask a colleage with long nails for help. As I keep T480s upright with on hand, they pull down the clapet simultaneously from both so I can pull out the cable with the other hand.
- computerex 7y ago
  Overall I agree with your post. There are some things I'd like to point out. - ThinkPads have amazing linux support. Dells aren't bad either. I have used a few dell laptops with linux as my daily drivers and no issues. Currently typing this on a Latitude E7450 and have had everything working out of the box. - I am using a USB wired connection without issues, works out of the box. - Currently using Manjaro linux and enjoying the heck out of it. Haven't done a reinstall in over a year and it's very stable across updates.
CareyB 7y ago
Great analogy
gigatexal 7y ago
Give me the hotel then because I want to spend my time doing work not having to do laundry or cut the lawn.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  Stretching this analogy even further: With Linux, we have a choice of over 20 different housemaids and lawn-cutting robots, though choosing between them is difficult at first. Most lawn robots can also sweep patios or shovel snow, so if you move to a different climate you can use the same tools.
  - dotancohen 7y ago
    > Most lawn robots can also sweep patios or shovel > snow, so if you move to a different climate you > can use the same tools. I thought that the UNIX was was to one job, well.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      No, that's some philosophy from 40 years ago regarding the bare-bones UNIX userland (tools like cat, tar, grep, bc, etc). It never applied to other things, like Emacs, and was never a core tenet for server and GUI applications, or frameworks...
    - Jare 7y ago
      The robot's job is to move back & forth the tool it is holding in its arms as it sweeps across the surface it is on. Give it (pipe) a shovel or a mop or a crass cutting thing and there you go.
    - jmmcd 7y ago
      Yes, but the point of Unix is that sweeping leaves and sweeping snow are the same task, when viewed in the right way.
    - laretluval 7y ago
      That is the official Unix philosophy, but a glance at just about any man page will suggest that it's never been followed.
skunkpocalypse 7y ago
After using macs for a decade I switched back to Linux last year. I really like your hotel-vs-home analogy, that describes my experience (and motivation) quite well.
Aperocky 7y ago
Serious question: how’s the transition trackpad wise
- readingnews 7y ago
  I moved from a MBP to a Dell XPS 13. This transition made me appreciate just how nice the trackpad on the mac is. I am no apple fanboy by any means, after my MBP died out of warranty. They wanted $700 to fix... but after some use, the XPS trackpad is a real aggravation machine. In laymen terms, it is like the MBP knows when I am typing and reduces the sensitivity of the trackpad. On the Dell, it surely seems like the Dell knows when I am typing and cranks the sensitivity of the trackpad up 10X. I consciously have to move my hands up to type, which becomes a real problem when the laptop is in your lap and not on a desk. I have used Linux since 1992, literally, but I still find the mac os X more cohesive and fluid. Do not get me wrong, I love linux, but on the XPS I felt like I still have to futz with the OS too much. "hey, I just went to work, I am on the OTHER wifi now mr Dell XPS laptop. Hello? HELLO? OK, gotta reboot and turn the wifi on and off three times to connect". This is with the Dell supplied ubuntu fully updated. Ugh.
  - dotancohen 7y ago
    There is some tool I've forgotten that disables the touchpad when the keyboard is in use. You can set the timeout period, I think that my sweetspot was 1.5 seconds. If you can't find it then let me know, I'll google it.
    - levesque 7y ago
      It's still rather clumsy though, if you go too fast from typing to touchpad you have to wait for the delay. If you set the delay to be too quick, you will get wrong clicks. It's more a question of palm detection, and the Linux touchpad drivers are not great at this.
  - btrettel 7y ago
    I started having the exact same problem when I bought my latest Dell laptop. This was infuriating at first, but slowly I got better at avoiding the problem. (Still somewhat infuriating at times.) Periodically I'll disable the trackpad entirely via xinput if it screws up my typing too much.
deleted 7y ago
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SebastianKra 7y ago
I'd rather compare it to living in a hotel vs flat-sharing. You can customize your room (your Window Manager, Terminal, etc...) but when you try to make yourself at home in the bathroom or kitchen (use and/or customize common applications), you run into issues. [1] Since everyone has a different preferences, you have to make compromises. On Mac, all apps follow similar guidelines. And the end result are beautiful, powerful, intuitive and feature-rich native applications, that make the best use of all the available system features. [1]: https://stopthemingmy.app/ https://stopthemingmy.app/
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > On Mac, all apps follow similar guidelines. The good ones, at least.
AdamGibbins 7y ago
> the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils. This is no longer the case in the latest gen, they've placed it back at the top on a very thin bezel still.
dotancohen 7y ago
> I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home This is very apt. If we've all grown out of our parents' basements when we left /., then let me share my own analogy. When SSHing into different servers I used to bring my .vimrc and .bashrc along with me, because how could you live without them? Likewise for switching computers, you bring along your config files. When a new job required me to be at lots of different computers, and SSH into lots of different servers, I also made a conscious effort to reduce my dependency on customization. That's when I developed my significantOther vs girlInEveryPort modes of operation. In significantOther mode of operation, I invest the time to customize the environment so that it is perfect for _me_. This is like looking for a woman to marry. It takes time, and the first woman (or config setting) has no more chance of being the best as does the twentyith. We invest much time finding on what we _can_ compromise, and on when we cannot. In girlInEveryPort mode of operation, I have little problem using vanilla VIM and standard Bash. I might stumble a bit and touch her in ways she doesn't like, but overall we get the job done and nothing is broken afterwards. The perfect balance for me was to discover that I could have both modes of operation.
- tjpnz 7y ago
  Why the downvotes?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - exikyut 7y ago
    Perhaps the mild cognitive dissonance caused by the choice of reference points. Possibly also cross-domain projection of various strongly held views.
    - dotancohen 7y ago
      Some very vocal, very opinionated people are on a crusade to remove the idea that man with woman, or woman with man, is the default configuration for sex. They actively downvote any comments that suggest that M-F is "normal" all over the internet, from Reddit to StackOverflow. I would say it's been happening for a while but the past few months have been very extreme.
mgamache 7y ago
FYI they fixed the nose cam in the new models
dekhn 7y ago
Since you made an analogy, it's worth going back and reading In The Beginning Was the Command Line. Mac OS X is a hermetically sealed german car, Linux is an M1 abrams tank that gets 100MPG. (I also find many Dell and Thinkpad models to be as good as if not better laptops than MacBooks).
cytzol 7y ago
> In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. I've heard this over and over — that Macs are locked-down, uncustomisable machines — and I don't agree with it at all. I use replacements for almost all the built-in apps. I use a custom launcher. My editor config Git repo is approaching ten years old, and my shell config Git repo is almost eight. There are standard interfaces to per-application Preferences and keyboard shortcuts. When I sit down to use someone else's Mac, I have no idea how to use it! What changes am I missing? The only thing I can think of is that I can't use a different window manager or a different kernel, but I'm fine with those already.
- reubenmorais 7y ago
  > The only thing I can think of is that I can't use a different window manager There are some third-party macOS window managers out there. Personally I use Amethyst. I'm sure they're not as powerful as Linux WMs can be, but it suits my tiling needs when I have an external monitor plugged in.
- deleted 7y ago
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- robert_foss 7y ago
  There's no real package manager. You can't rebuild your kernel. You can't upgrade your hardware. Once your HW is unsupported by Apple you're stuck with an old OS that is unsupported by third party software as well.
  - new_realist 7y ago
    “You can’t rebuild your kernel.” Are you kidding me? Apple supports the hardware it ships on day one, then provides free updates until the device is obsolete. If you must rebuild Apple’s OSS kernel, you can follow the instructions here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/build/build.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
derriz 7y ago
I tried this switch (2015 MBP 13 to top-spec XPS 13) about a year ago and was not so happy with it. The reasons that I remember: - Unless watching movies (not something I used it for) the wide screen aspect ratio was a big step down for productivity. IDEs, browsers, etc. all feel very cramped compared to on a more square 13" MBP. - With Ubuntu pre-installed, out of the box, the sleep/hibernate mode used about 25% battery per 12 hours of sleep. I was able to configure a working sleep mode but this is the sort of basic functionality I expect to work on a high-end laptop. - Multi-monitor - with mixed DPI - just never worked and I tried every suggestion I could find. - Overall battery management was poorer - probably not Dell's fault as I expect this is an issue with the way Linux applications are written. A regular pattern was re-starting applications whenever the fan would start whirring up. - This could be an issue with our set-up but I had to write a script that ran in the background to refresh the WiFi connection. There was some ARP issue that I wasn't able to (nor had time to) fully debug. - This is pretty subjective, but I found the keyboard to be cramped an unergonomic. I actually wanted to like this as I've primarily used Linux on my desktops for a couple of decades.
- rtdp 7y ago
  The better battery usage and wi-fi are some of the basic things that don't work out of the box even on a preinstalled ubuntu on XPS are real let down. These are the same problems I faced when I had used Linux laptops before, and so now happily settled with 15" mac pro since past 5 years - no issues whatsoever.
_Codemonkeyism 7y ago
Tried to switch from an MBP to a XPS13. XPS13 (maxed out CPU, memory, screen) was the worst notebook I ever had, two power supplies broke, battery broke, fan broke and BIOS made a fire-alarm-level alarm every time it booted, service was abysmal, although I had a business level all-care next-day package they wanted to jump me through many loops, install firmware updates etc. before they did anything - in the end they would not come and fix the laptop. Never again.
accnumnplus1 7y ago
I use a 2014 MBP at home, a new xps 13 at work. Everything about the Mac is more polished. The hardware differences being more important to me than the software differences. The xps trackpad is a bit flakey, too sensitive maybe; I'll be working away when suddenly I'll have miraculously switched focus to a window on another screen. Does my palm get to close to it whie typing? I guess, but no such issue on the mac. After less than six months I can see keyboard marks starting to appear on the xps screen. The xps 13 keyboard is far better than the Latitude I had previously, which was outright hell, but the mac is higher quality, precision engineering. No contest for me, but I do wish Apple had built a Linux OS for compatibilty reasons. And the reason I'm still on a 2014 model is because the subsequent models haven't appealed. I've been considering an x1 carbon as a mac replacement. Time may soon force my hand.
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vzaliva 7y ago
I am moderately happy with XPS-13. My main problem is touchpad ergonomy http://lambda-files.crocodile.org/2019/01/dell-xps-13-touchpad-problem-analysis.html http://lambda-files.crocodile.org/2019/01/dell-xps-13-touchp... which I was able to alleviate a bit by "moving furniture in my home" per your analogy.
tbrock 7y ago
I’d get a Thinkpad! Compatibility wise the dell is great but build quality is lacking. The Thinkpads (X, T, Carbons) are all light years ahead and have similar - if not better - compatibility out of the box. I have a X1 Carbon 6th gen and the battery life is awesome and everything besides the fingerprint reader works out of the box.
- puranjay 7y ago
  How does the trackpad perform compared to Macbooks? That's one area where I haven't found a Macbook equivalent
  - tbrock 7y ago
    It is excellent.
supernintendo 7y ago
My work laptop is a Thinkpad T480 running Fedora. It’s a wonderful machine but not without some flaws: 1. The thermal situation on newer Thinkpads needs to be called out. Even with undervolting, there doesn’t seem to be a sweet spot where you can avoid regular throttling without the CPU hitting unsafe temperatures. I’ve heard it can be somewhat remedied by applying more thermal paste to the CPU than the meager amount Lenovo provides out of the box (doing it yourself voids your warranty). Ultimately, I think there is a clear regression in the thermal design between Lenovo’s newer laptops and classic Thinkpads like the X200. The internals just aren’t designed to properly dissipate heat and while it’s nice that the fan is quiet, I wish it did more to cool the device. This seems to be a common issue not just with the T480 but other newer Thinkpads like the X1 Carbon. If anyone has any advice here beyond iuvolt, throttled etc. please let me know. 2. My model has a WQHD display and I use an external monitor with the same resolution but a lower DPI. Linux in 2019 is still a bit dicey when it comes to mixed DPI setups. GTK+ 3.0 applications on Wayland scale perfectly between displays but Firefox is a bit buggy and Electron apps are laughably bad. It has come a long way for sure but there’s still work to be done. All that said, I’m coming from a 2017 MacBook Pro that had way more issues from the failing keyboard to dead speakers and screen burn-in. I’m happier with the Thinkpad and enjoy using it as my daily driver. It’s a solid machine and the keyboard and port selection are perfect. No issues with running Linux on this device either. Everything just worked on a clean install and I’m able to do everything I did before on macOS whether it be software development, multimedia creation or just personal computing. The “hotel vs. home” analogy you used is dead-on and speaks to what I’ve always loved about Linux. I’ll take an OS that lets me tailor my own software experience over the proprietary equivalent any day.
zarkov99 7y ago
I use a XPS 13 as well, KUbuntu with i3 as the window manager. Works great and the newest XPS I believe fixed the camera placement.
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socksy 7y ago
"Every time I plug in my headphones, there is some white noise and I have to run a command line tool alsamixer to get rid of it" Glad to see my suggestion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17314002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17314002 worked then :) But I run it once in my startup script along with my xmodmap changes and it seems fine to me...
- mherrmann 7y ago
  It did! :) I think I now also run it upon login.

Un1corn 7y ago

> the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils. The camera is no longer placed at the bottom of the screen in the newest model (9380), they moved it up top

mherrmann 7y ago
Ah, okay! That's great.
tom_mellior 7y ago
Huh, weird. I used to have an XPS 15 (from 2015 or so) with the camera placed on top, but my newer one (2018) has it at the bottom. Weird and unwelcome.
- SiVal 7y ago
  It's back on top in the 2019 XPS 15
ahnick 7y ago
That's great to hear. Maybe everyone complaining loudly about that got them to redesign it. I completely ruled out getting an XPS previously because of that design decision.

tasuki 7y ago

+1 for ThinkPads, they just work. The XPS has super annoying fans which change their speed randomly all the time (though it's possible to override: https://github.com/TomFreudenberg/dell-bios-fan-control https://github.com/TomFreudenberg/dell-bios-fan-control). Btw, Xfce is a desktop environment while Ubuntu is a distribution. Perhaps you meant to write you're on Xfce instead of Gnome?

mherrmann 7y ago
Yeah, sure. I was on Ubuntu, now I'm on Debian + Xfce. It's better because it's faster and does not have some of the bugs I mentioned in the article I linked to.
- garmaine 7y ago
  Sure, but Xubuntu is a thing, so your phrasing is very unclear.
ratiolat 7y ago
Thinkpads come in different flavours, and the have very different quality. Either get a T-series, or X-series (X series is basically smaller version of T). Or if it's a used one, the later A-series are good as well (A series means AMD instead of Intel). The old A - series were crap. Nowadays T and X series have AMD also (if model ends with 5, it's AMD). T and X series have MIL certification. For example there's also X1 Extreme (costs around 3000€), but quality wise it's a lot worse than T or X series, because it does not have the MIL certificate.
- deleted 7y ago
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- tasuki 7y ago
  Yes, when I wrote ThinkPad I meant T or X series! First time I hear the X1 Extreme is worse quality wise - I was thinking it'd be my next machine... like in a couple of years. Do you have more info?

nabla9 7y ago

I have new Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu and I'm satisfied with it. Camera has moved in these new models. Dell Thunderbolt Dock (TB16) is is disappointment. Others report problems as well.

Boulth 7y ago
I agree w.r.t. TB16. While it works (unlike TB15) it's very loud (fan is enabled 90% of time). Generally I'm not fond of XPS 13 (9350) but later firmwares got rid of most issues (except extremely long boot time). On the other hand Dell is contributing to several Linux projects (such as fwupd) and all of XPS hardware (including touch screen) worked out of the box.

oarsinsync 7y ago

I love this analogy, and it's remarkable at how much sense it makes when I look at the choices I make in my day to day life generally. Hotel-chic is very clean, very minimal, very sparse. Just enough to have the necessary conveniences that appeal to everyone, with absolutely nothing personalised for any individual. As of about 10 years ago, I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mobile) experience away from the defaults as much as possible, as I was fed up of having to document and then re-deploy all of my customisations every time I had to reinstall for whatever reason, which was far too frequent for my liking. At the same time, I'd been moving home roughly every year for the 7 years prior already, and had grown weary of all my physical effects. I started disposing of more and more of my things (inadvertently marie kondo-ing my life before it was a "thing" I was aware of) and decreasing the personalisation of my physical space down more and more. I now essentially live a hotel-esque lifestyle, with most of my personal customisations fitting in a small corner of the room. Added bonus of this is with the frequent travel I need to do for work, I can take one or two items with me, and the hotel room instantly feels like home. I guess this explains why I'm relatively happy as an Apple user. The lack of customisation doesn't bother me, as I don't customise anything outside of the bare minimums (wallpaper and privacy settings, thats about it). It also explains how I'm able to use Windows 10 at work without killing anyone, while my colleagues are all using tiling window managers under Linux and looking at me like I'm crazy for not wanting to spend a week tweaking and customising my environment....

swinglock 7y ago
In case you didn't notice, Windows 10 is now a tiling window manager with virtual desktops, by default, if you just learn the new keyboard shortcuts.
- lol768 7y ago
  > In case you didn't notice, Windows 10 is now a tiling window manager with virtual desktops, by default, if you just learn the new keyboard shortcuts. But it's not comparable to sway/i3 - not in terms of customisability or functionality. What I suspect we have on Windows, are virtual desktops and snap-to-edge/quarter tiling. Maybe you can get some rigid layouts if you install PowerToys/FancyZones, but it's still a far cry from my usual working environment where I can dynamically create layouts by opening new windows, configure shortcuts to my own desire, programmatically send messages to the window manager and so much more. With Windows (and to be honest, macOS too), you get least-common denominator functionality aimed at users who don't know what a window manager is.

olex 7y ago

Our company offers Dell XPS 13 and Precision 5530 (based on the XPS 15 chassis) as Macbook alternatives for all employees. I've had my Precision for a couple years now and couldn't be happier, it's an awesome device and imho as close as it gets to the overall hardware quality and usability of Macbooks with Windows-/Linux-based devices.

mobilemidget 7y ago
An alternative or a replacement, could you still opt for a MacBook (pro)?
- olex 7y ago
  An alternative. We can have both 13" and 15" MBPs as well (and I assume the upcoming 16" will be an option, too).

deleted 7y ago

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etatoby 7y ago

I second a ThinkPad with XFCE (such as Xubuntu) as the best combination. A few things which, although obvious in retrospect, I had to learn the hard way: • Get a ThinkPad with physical buttons under the touchpad, if you like to track with your index finger and click with the thumb. I made the mistake of getting the kind where you push the entire touchpad, and it's very hard to use. Apple's was at least useable, this is not. • Get a ThinkPad with a physical Ethernet port. USB dongles are finicky and unstable on Linux, and there are places / desks / offices where the WiFi is flaky. • Choose the stable release of a well-supported OS (Ubuntu, Mint... whatever) because the beta / newest / testing version will make you lose time on bugs and freezes.

sam_lowry_ 7y ago
There are not many ThinkPads with Ethernet ports. T4??p or P?? are the only ones left, IIRC. Others have either no port or a difficult to use clapet.
- jnieminen 7y ago
  You have also an option to use a docking station.
- forty 7y ago
  My T480s does have an Ethernet port. I believe T490s lost it but the T490 (which has similar size to the T480s) still has it.
  - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
    Did you try to use it? Whenever I have to take out the cable, I ask a colleage with long nails for help. As I keep T480s upright with on hand, they pull down the clapet simultaneously from both so I can pull out the cable with the other hand.
computerex 7y ago
Overall I agree with your post. There are some things I'd like to point out. - ThinkPads have amazing linux support. Dells aren't bad either. I have used a few dell laptops with linux as my daily drivers and no issues. Currently typing this on a Latitude E7450 and have had everything working out of the box. - I am using a USB wired connection without issues, works out of the box. - Currently using Manjaro linux and enjoying the heck out of it. Haven't done a reinstall in over a year and it's very stable across updates.

CareyB 7y ago

Great analogy

gigatexal 7y ago

Give me the hotel then because I want to spend my time doing work not having to do laundry or cut the lawn.

Symbiote 7y ago
Stretching this analogy even further: With Linux, we have a choice of over 20 different housemaids and lawn-cutting robots, though choosing between them is difficult at first. Most lawn robots can also sweep patios or shovel snow, so if you move to a different climate you can use the same tools.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  > Most lawn robots can also sweep patios or shovel > snow, so if you move to a different climate you > can use the same tools. I thought that the UNIX was was to one job, well.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    No, that's some philosophy from 40 years ago regarding the bare-bones UNIX userland (tools like cat, tar, grep, bc, etc). It never applied to other things, like Emacs, and was never a core tenet for server and GUI applications, or frameworks...
  - Jare 7y ago
    The robot's job is to move back & forth the tool it is holding in its arms as it sweeps across the surface it is on. Give it (pipe) a shovel or a mop or a crass cutting thing and there you go.
  - jmmcd 7y ago
    Yes, but the point of Unix is that sweeping leaves and sweeping snow are the same task, when viewed in the right way.
  - laretluval 7y ago
    That is the official Unix philosophy, but a glance at just about any man page will suggest that it's never been followed.

skunkpocalypse 7y ago

After using macs for a decade I switched back to Linux last year. I really like your hotel-vs-home analogy, that describes my experience (and motivation) quite well.

Aperocky 7y ago

Serious question: how’s the transition trackpad wise

readingnews 7y ago
I moved from a MBP to a Dell XPS 13. This transition made me appreciate just how nice the trackpad on the mac is. I am no apple fanboy by any means, after my MBP died out of warranty. They wanted $700 to fix... but after some use, the XPS trackpad is a real aggravation machine. In laymen terms, it is like the MBP knows when I am typing and reduces the sensitivity of the trackpad. On the Dell, it surely seems like the Dell knows when I am typing and cranks the sensitivity of the trackpad up 10X. I consciously have to move my hands up to type, which becomes a real problem when the laptop is in your lap and not on a desk. I have used Linux since 1992, literally, but I still find the mac os X more cohesive and fluid. Do not get me wrong, I love linux, but on the XPS I felt like I still have to futz with the OS too much. "hey, I just went to work, I am on the OTHER wifi now mr Dell XPS laptop. Hello? HELLO? OK, gotta reboot and turn the wifi on and off three times to connect". This is with the Dell supplied ubuntu fully updated. Ugh.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  There is some tool I've forgotten that disables the touchpad when the keyboard is in use. You can set the timeout period, I think that my sweetspot was 1.5 seconds. If you can't find it then let me know, I'll google it.
  - levesque 7y ago
    It's still rather clumsy though, if you go too fast from typing to touchpad you have to wait for the delay. If you set the delay to be too quick, you will get wrong clicks. It's more a question of palm detection, and the Linux touchpad drivers are not great at this.
- btrettel 7y ago
  I started having the exact same problem when I bought my latest Dell laptop. This was infuriating at first, but slowly I got better at avoiding the problem. (Still somewhat infuriating at times.) Periodically I'll disable the trackpad entirely via xinput if it screws up my typing too much.

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SebastianKra 7y ago

I'd rather compare it to living in a hotel vs flat-sharing. You can customize your room (your Window Manager, Terminal, etc...) but when you try to make yourself at home in the bathroom or kitchen (use and/or customize common applications), you run into issues. [1] Since everyone has a different preferences, you have to make compromises. On Mac, all apps follow similar guidelines. And the end result are beautiful, powerful, intuitive and feature-rich native applications, that make the best use of all the available system features. [1]: https://stopthemingmy.app/ https://stopthemingmy.app/

saagarjha 7y ago
> On Mac, all apps follow similar guidelines. The good ones, at least.

AdamGibbins 7y ago

> the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils. This is no longer the case in the latest gen, they've placed it back at the top on a very thin bezel still.

dotancohen 7y ago

> I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home This is very apt. If we've all grown out of our parents' basements when we left /., then let me share my own analogy. When SSHing into different servers I used to bring my .vimrc and .bashrc along with me, because how could you live without them? Likewise for switching computers, you bring along your config files. When a new job required me to be at lots of different computers, and SSH into lots of different servers, I also made a conscious effort to reduce my dependency on customization. That's when I developed my significantOther vs girlInEveryPort modes of operation. In significantOther mode of operation, I invest the time to customize the environment so that it is perfect for _me_. This is like looking for a woman to marry. It takes time, and the first woman (or config setting) has no more chance of being the best as does the twentyith. We invest much time finding on what we _can_ compromise, and on when we cannot. In girlInEveryPort mode of operation, I have little problem using vanilla VIM and standard Bash. I might stumble a bit and touch her in ways she doesn't like, but overall we get the job done and nothing is broken afterwards. The perfect balance for me was to discover that I could have both modes of operation.

tjpnz 7y ago
Why the downvotes?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- exikyut 7y ago
  Perhaps the mild cognitive dissonance caused by the choice of reference points. Possibly also cross-domain projection of various strongly held views.
  - dotancohen 7y ago
    Some very vocal, very opinionated people are on a crusade to remove the idea that man with woman, or woman with man, is the default configuration for sex. They actively downvote any comments that suggest that M-F is "normal" all over the internet, from Reddit to StackOverflow. I would say it's been happening for a while but the past few months have been very extreme.

mgamache 7y ago

FYI they fixed the nose cam in the new models

dekhn 7y ago

Since you made an analogy, it's worth going back and reading In The Beginning Was the Command Line. Mac OS X is a hermetically sealed german car, Linux is an M1 abrams tank that gets 100MPG. (I also find many Dell and Thinkpad models to be as good as if not better laptops than MacBooks).

cytzol 7y ago

> In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. I've heard this over and over — that Macs are locked-down, uncustomisable machines — and I don't agree with it at all. I use replacements for almost all the built-in apps. I use a custom launcher. My editor config Git repo is approaching ten years old, and my shell config Git repo is almost eight. There are standard interfaces to per-application Preferences and keyboard shortcuts. When I sit down to use someone else's Mac, I have no idea how to use it! What changes am I missing? The only thing I can think of is that I can't use a different window manager or a different kernel, but I'm fine with those already.

reubenmorais 7y ago
> The only thing I can think of is that I can't use a different window manager There are some third-party macOS window managers out there. Personally I use Amethyst. I'm sure they're not as powerful as Linux WMs can be, but it suits my tiling needs when I have an external monitor plugged in.
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robert_foss 7y ago
There's no real package manager. You can't rebuild your kernel. You can't upgrade your hardware. Once your HW is unsupported by Apple you're stuck with an old OS that is unsupported by third party software as well.
- new_realist 7y ago
  “You can’t rebuild your kernel.” Are you kidding me? Apple supports the hardware it ships on day one, then provides free updates until the device is obsolete. If you must rebuild Apple’s OSS kernel, you can follow the instructions here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/build/build.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...

derriz 7y ago

I tried this switch (2015 MBP 13 to top-spec XPS 13) about a year ago and was not so happy with it. The reasons that I remember: - Unless watching movies (not something I used it for) the wide screen aspect ratio was a big step down for productivity. IDEs, browsers, etc. all feel very cramped compared to on a more square 13" MBP. - With Ubuntu pre-installed, out of the box, the sleep/hibernate mode used about 25% battery per 12 hours of sleep. I was able to configure a working sleep mode but this is the sort of basic functionality I expect to work on a high-end laptop. - Multi-monitor - with mixed DPI - just never worked and I tried every suggestion I could find. - Overall battery management was poorer - probably not Dell's fault as I expect this is an issue with the way Linux applications are written. A regular pattern was re-starting applications whenever the fan would start whirring up. - This could be an issue with our set-up but I had to write a script that ran in the background to refresh the WiFi connection. There was some ARP issue that I wasn't able to (nor had time to) fully debug. - This is pretty subjective, but I found the keyboard to be cramped an unergonomic. I actually wanted to like this as I've primarily used Linux on my desktops for a couple of decades.

rtdp 7y ago
The better battery usage and wi-fi are some of the basic things that don't work out of the box even on a preinstalled ubuntu on XPS are real let down. These are the same problems I faced when I had used Linux laptops before, and so now happily settled with 15" mac pro since past 5 years - no issues whatsoever.

_Codemonkeyism 7y ago

Tried to switch from an MBP to a XPS13. XPS13 (maxed out CPU, memory, screen) was the worst notebook I ever had, two power supplies broke, battery broke, fan broke and BIOS made a fire-alarm-level alarm every time it booted, service was abysmal, although I had a business level all-care next-day package they wanted to jump me through many loops, install firmware updates etc. before they did anything - in the end they would not come and fix the laptop. Never again.

accnumnplus1 7y ago

I use a 2014 MBP at home, a new xps 13 at work. Everything about the Mac is more polished. The hardware differences being more important to me than the software differences. The xps trackpad is a bit flakey, too sensitive maybe; I'll be working away when suddenly I'll have miraculously switched focus to a window on another screen. Does my palm get to close to it whie typing? I guess, but no such issue on the mac. After less than six months I can see keyboard marks starting to appear on the xps screen. The xps 13 keyboard is far better than the Latitude I had previously, which was outright hell, but the mac is higher quality, precision engineering. No contest for me, but I do wish Apple had built a Linux OS for compatibilty reasons. And the reason I'm still on a 2014 model is because the subsequent models haven't appealed. I've been considering an x1 carbon as a mac replacement. Time may soon force my hand.

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vzaliva 7y ago

I am moderately happy with XPS-13. My main problem is touchpad ergonomy http://lambda-files.crocodile.org/2019/01/dell-xps-13-touchpad-problem-analysis.html http://lambda-files.crocodile.org/2019/01/dell-xps-13-touchp... which I was able to alleviate a bit by "moving furniture in my home" per your analogy.

tbrock 7y ago

I’d get a Thinkpad! Compatibility wise the dell is great but build quality is lacking. The Thinkpads (X, T, Carbons) are all light years ahead and have similar - if not better - compatibility out of the box. I have a X1 Carbon 6th gen and the battery life is awesome and everything besides the fingerprint reader works out of the box.

puranjay 7y ago
How does the trackpad perform compared to Macbooks? That's one area where I haven't found a Macbook equivalent
- tbrock 7y ago
  It is excellent.

supernintendo 7y ago

My work laptop is a Thinkpad T480 running Fedora. It’s a wonderful machine but not without some flaws: 1. The thermal situation on newer Thinkpads needs to be called out. Even with undervolting, there doesn’t seem to be a sweet spot where you can avoid regular throttling without the CPU hitting unsafe temperatures. I’ve heard it can be somewhat remedied by applying more thermal paste to the CPU than the meager amount Lenovo provides out of the box (doing it yourself voids your warranty). Ultimately, I think there is a clear regression in the thermal design between Lenovo’s newer laptops and classic Thinkpads like the X200. The internals just aren’t designed to properly dissipate heat and while it’s nice that the fan is quiet, I wish it did more to cool the device. This seems to be a common issue not just with the T480 but other newer Thinkpads like the X1 Carbon. If anyone has any advice here beyond iuvolt, throttled etc. please let me know. 2. My model has a WQHD display and I use an external monitor with the same resolution but a lower DPI. Linux in 2019 is still a bit dicey when it comes to mixed DPI setups. GTK+ 3.0 applications on Wayland scale perfectly between displays but Firefox is a bit buggy and Electron apps are laughably bad. It has come a long way for sure but there’s still work to be done. All that said, I’m coming from a 2017 MacBook Pro that had way more issues from the failing keyboard to dead speakers and screen burn-in. I’m happier with the Thinkpad and enjoy using it as my daily driver. It’s a solid machine and the keyboard and port selection are perfect. No issues with running Linux on this device either. Everything just worked on a clean install and I’m able to do everything I did before on macOS whether it be software development, multimedia creation or just personal computing. The “hotel vs. home” analogy you used is dead-on and speaks to what I’ve always loved about Linux. I’ll take an OS that lets me tailor my own software experience over the proprietary equivalent any day.

zarkov99 7y ago

I use a XPS 13 as well, KUbuntu with i3 as the window manager. Works great and the newest XPS I believe fixed the camera placement.

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socksy 7y ago

"Every time I plug in my headphones, there is some white noise and I have to run a command line tool alsamixer to get rid of it" Glad to see my suggestion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17314002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17314002 worked then :) But I run it once in my startup script along with my xmodmap changes and it seems fine to me...

mherrmann 7y ago
It did! :) I think I now also run it upon login.