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Things like battery life, suspend/resume and proper handling of multiple/hidpi displays are the Achilles heels of open source projects. They are notoriously ha

by haspok 7y ago

Things like battery life, suspend/resume and proper handling of multiple/hidpi displays are the Achilles heels of open source projects. They are notoriously hard to get right, require lots of work invested, and easy to break (regressions!) but are not too sexy or interesting, require insane amounts of QA and don't have low hanging fruits. As a consequence, nobody wants to do them, and so the Linux desktop will probably always be a mess. Oh, and then there is that aspect of it that unixes in general were not built with the desktop in mind, so things like vm.swappiness defaults might be completely wrong (Ubuntu still defaults to 60 to this day!) and the kernel low memory handling is just outrageously bad, if you compare it to Windows, for instance. I would be the first person to pay proper money for any Linux-based OS that at least _attempts_ to solve these issues. I might even go as far to purchase a laptop specifically to get the OS on that laptop, like the Macs, however I'm not willing to sacrifice on the size and quality of said laptop, actually, I expect a very high quality product for my extra money, so unfortunately at the moment there is nothing out there right now that I'd buy based on this.

new_realist 7y ago
This matches my experience. Open source usability is terrible, especially in the laptop space. Apple is leagues ahead still.
lostmsu 7y ago
AFAIK, macOS only supports 2x DPI scaling, so Linux here is not the worst offender.
- mikhailt 7y ago
  No, it has extra options. It defaults to 2xDPI by default but you can choose a different resolution if you want. I often switch from 2x to higher resolution when I need more workspace. You can see how it works here: https://www.imore.com/how-change-display-settings-your-mac https://www.imore.com/how-change-display-settings-your-mac
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    That looks like a resolution change, not a DPI change.
supercommand 7y ago
POP OS seems to be trying to fix the problems every Linux user spends the first hour fixing on a fresh install. On some Lenovo hardware it’s usable, but still so far off of power management and suspend resume of both macOS and windows that it’s not an option for someone who spends a lot of time travelling with a machine. Desktop workstation wise it is fine.
c256 7y ago
There are Chromebooks that you can buy today that give you best-in-class battery life with good suspend/resume, and run android apps as well as containerized Linux. Multiple/hidpi displays are handled, but I don’t know how good it is, so I can’t say for sure. Full HD is fine, and hidpi & 4K displays exist, so it’s not impossible, but I don’t know how good it is. These are generally priced quite competitively compared to MacBooks Pro and higher-quality wintel laptops, and they also have a lower-quality, lower-cost tier that’s very close to the cheap end of wintel. They have pretty good security as well, although the Google connection is a problem for some people. What do they lack? Photoshop/AdobeCC. The high end of PC games. Some direct hardware access things (due to the security model). If those aren’t a dealbreaker, then it’s actually quite good.

by haspok 7y ago

new_realist 7y ago

This matches my experience. Open source usability is terrible, especially in the laptop space. Apple is leagues ahead still.

lostmsu 7y ago

AFAIK, macOS only supports 2x DPI scaling, so Linux here is not the worst offender.

mikhailt 7y ago
No, it has extra options. It defaults to 2xDPI by default but you can choose a different resolution if you want. I often switch from 2x to higher resolution when I need more workspace. You can see how it works here: https://www.imore.com/how-change-display-settings-your-mac https://www.imore.com/how-change-display-settings-your-mac
- lostmsu 7y ago
  That looks like a resolution change, not a DPI change.

supercommand 7y ago

POP OS seems to be trying to fix the problems every Linux user spends the first hour fixing on a fresh install. On some Lenovo hardware it’s usable, but still so far off of power management and suspend resume of both macOS and windows that it’s not an option for someone who spends a lot of time travelling with a machine. Desktop workstation wise it is fine.

c256 7y ago

There are Chromebooks that you can buy today that give you best-in-class battery life with good suspend/resume, and run android apps as well as containerized Linux. Multiple/hidpi displays are handled, but I don’t know how good it is, so I can’t say for sure. Full HD is fine, and hidpi & 4K displays exist, so it’s not impossible, but I don’t know how good it is. These are generally priced quite competitively compared to MacBooks Pro and higher-quality wintel laptops, and they also have a lower-quality, lower-cost tier that’s very close to the cheap end of wintel. They have pretty good security as well, although the Google connection is a problem for some people. What do they lack? Photoshop/AdobeCC. The high end of PC games. Some direct hardware access things (due to the security model). If those aren’t a dealbreaker, then it’s actually quite good.