5 ms·

Out of curiosity, why not simply run Linux at that point?

TomMarius 6y ago
A huge number of small annoyances during "normal" usage of a computer. Issues with sleep, displays, hi DPI, even my wallpaper and fonts don't always display correctly...
- fsflover 6y ago
  Just don't buy "Windows certified" laptops... Upd: why downvotes? My Librem 15 and Lenovo T400 both work flawlessly for many years. They are designed for GNU/Linux.
  - TomMarius 6y ago
    I had Lenovo T530 and it worked OK, but with half the battery life. Then I had XPS 15 and I got it working after a lot of fiddling, but with a third of battery life and with hidpi issues on wake up. The battery thing is really a killer for me.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "Just don't buy "Windows certified" laptops..." All x86 servers, PCs, and laptops are designed to run Windows by adhering to a specification issued by Microsoft and certified by running a suite of compatibility tests provided by Microsoft (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/hlk/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/hlk/). The free OSes are piggybacking on that; there is no independent, neutral standard for the architecture of x86 PCs. > "My Librem 15 and Lenovo T400 both work flawlessly for many years. They are designed for GNU/Linux." Linux isn't even listed as a supported OS for the T400 on Lenovo's support site: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd005598 https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd005598
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- fphhotchips 6y ago
  I have issues with Sleep and Displays on my macbook, and I had to pay extra for the privilege of having windows snap to the sides, easily the best innovation in window managers since being able to put them over one another.
petepete 6y ago
I made the jump and it's been mostly smooth (7th gen X1 Carbon with Fedora). The one thing that is annoying is when using multiple monitors of different resolutions, Wayland doesn't seem to scale resolution on a per-monitor basis. With the laptop being 4k this is an issue when working anywhere but at home, I tend to just use the laptop screen (which is excellent btw). Stuff that worked without any extra config that in the past might not have been so smooth: wifi, fingerprint reader, thunderbolt dock with keyboard, mouse, monitor, external USB soundblaster and network cable plugged in), sleep, hibernate.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Thinkpad = Linux these days sadly... Any other laptop will boot linux, but you'll end up with a lot of rough edges... For example, on the laptop I'm typing this on (latest Ubuntu, old Acer 511G): * Random hangs every few days - some unpatched processor bug related to sleep states. * Wifi diconnects randomly. * Hotkeys don't work * Screen sometimes dims itself to zero, and since the hotkeys don't work, it's rather tricky to fix. * Bluetooth doesn't work * Hibernate and sleep are disabled by default and you have to go into a config file to enable them. SD card doesn't work after sleeping more than 3 times. * Fans don't work at all. System throttles almost immediately under any load. * There must be some issue with the SSD losing writes because even journaled ext4 seems to get data corruption after an unclean poweroff. * External monitors don't support hdmi audio. * of the 3 USB ports, 2 don't work for anything more than charging devices. * webcam LED state seems random, and does not correlate to webcam usage at all. All on one device! Linux on Thinkpad is great. Linux on any other hardware that core kernel devs don't use day to day is almost unusable due to these thousands of rough edges.
  - netsec_burn 6y ago
    From personal experience, I've only had that many issues once on a bleeding edge MSI. It took about a month to work out the issues. Every other system I've used has had a much smaller subset of those issues (I'm not using a Thinkpad). Namely Bluetooth or the fans not working, and individually resolvable.
  - 6y ago
cameronbrown 6y ago
Because the experience is terrible for the uninitiated. And this is coming from someone who ran Arch as their primary OS since I was 10. Laptop Linux on the whole is not a fun experience for those who just want a machine to work (which was what MacBooks were supposed to be about). I just bought a Surface Laptop 3, and the machine is great. The hardware is nice, Windows on a laptop has improved tenfold since I've last used it. WSL2 means Linux isn't left out. It's one machine/OS combo that does everything for me, including light gaming, whereas Linux and macOS both have significant compromises when using them.
- pachico 6y ago
  I must disagree with you. I have been installing Linux for people who barely know how to use a mouse and the experience was always successful. Of course, I choose a distro with simple UI and software with GUI every time. I don't want to get into the typical "if my mom gets it everyone can" (also because she is a power user) but trust me, the people I installed it for had the same problems they would have had with any OS (some quite funny).
  - _fullpint 6y ago
    I attempted to but the driver support just wasn’t there for my laptop. WSL2 works fine and it also means that when I want to game I have a wider selection of games to play.
    - pachico 6y ago
      Yup, I'm not a gamer anymore and when I was I used a PS, true. Anyhow, my target initiating Linux to wasn't precisely gamers either.
  - tuesday20 6y ago
    What is your preferred distro?
    - pachico 6y ago
calaphos 6y ago
I use both extensively but settled for windows + WSL2 for now. In the end it's the little things: - (fractional) scaling actually works quite well. - the shell works a big better. Feels like a good compromise between gnomes simplicity and KDEs over the top customisability to me. KDE has actually been the most stable out of the three though. - (Nvidia) driver support. Using Manjaro I had to reinstall the Nvidia driver every couple of months because a kernel update broke things. Again, not huge but annoying. - Working hardware video decoding in firefox. On Linux playing videos results in significantly higher CPU load, noise, slowed down browser, etc. Even on a fast machine. With wsl2 I can now do all my development in that environment and don't need to live with windows slow file system, missing package manager, etc. The remote development features of VSCode with wsl (and other ssh hosts) are also simply amazing.
blackoil 6y ago
For me, it limits the laptops available, with Windows I am pretty confident that any reasonable config laptop from Dell or Lenovo will not give me any issues. With Linux I have to be extra cautious while buying it. Also I am used to MS Office and occasionally play Age of Empires and Minecraft.
demosito666 6y ago
Enterprise software you need at work?

A huge number of small annoyances during "normal" usage of a computer. Issues with sleep, displays, hi DPI, even my wallpaper and fonts don't always display correctly...

fsflover 6y ago
Just don't buy "Windows certified" laptops... Upd: why downvotes? My Librem 15 and Lenovo T400 both work flawlessly for many years. They are designed for GNU/Linux.
- TomMarius 6y ago
  I had Lenovo T530 and it worked OK, but with half the battery life. Then I had XPS 15 and I got it working after a lot of fiddling, but with a third of battery life and with hidpi issues on wake up. The battery thing is really a killer for me.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "Just don't buy "Windows certified" laptops..." All x86 servers, PCs, and laptops are designed to run Windows by adhering to a specification issued by Microsoft and certified by running a suite of compatibility tests provided by Microsoft (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/hlk/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/hlk/). The free OSes are piggybacking on that; there is no independent, neutral standard for the architecture of x86 PCs. > "My Librem 15 and Lenovo T400 both work flawlessly for many years. They are designed for GNU/Linux." Linux isn't even listed as a supported OS for the T400 on Lenovo's support site: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd005598 https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd005598
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
fphhotchips 6y ago
I have issues with Sleep and Displays on my macbook, and I had to pay extra for the privilege of having windows snap to the sides, easily the best innovation in window managers since being able to put them over one another.

petepete 6y ago

I made the jump and it's been mostly smooth (7th gen X1 Carbon with Fedora). The one thing that is annoying is when using multiple monitors of different resolutions, Wayland doesn't seem to scale resolution on a per-monitor basis. With the laptop being 4k this is an issue when working anywhere but at home, I tend to just use the laptop screen (which is excellent btw). Stuff that worked without any extra config that in the past might not have been so smooth: wifi, fingerprint reader, thunderbolt dock with keyboard, mouse, monitor, external USB soundblaster and network cable plugged in), sleep, hibernate.

londons_explore 6y ago
Thinkpad = Linux these days sadly... Any other laptop will boot linux, but you'll end up with a lot of rough edges... For example, on the laptop I'm typing this on (latest Ubuntu, old Acer 511G): * Random hangs every few days - some unpatched processor bug related to sleep states. * Wifi diconnects randomly. * Hotkeys don't work * Screen sometimes dims itself to zero, and since the hotkeys don't work, it's rather tricky to fix. * Bluetooth doesn't work * Hibernate and sleep are disabled by default and you have to go into a config file to enable them. SD card doesn't work after sleeping more than 3 times. * Fans don't work at all. System throttles almost immediately under any load. * There must be some issue with the SSD losing writes because even journaled ext4 seems to get data corruption after an unclean poweroff. * External monitors don't support hdmi audio. * of the 3 USB ports, 2 don't work for anything more than charging devices. * webcam LED state seems random, and does not correlate to webcam usage at all. All on one device! Linux on Thinkpad is great. Linux on any other hardware that core kernel devs don't use day to day is almost unusable due to these thousands of rough edges.
- netsec_burn 6y ago
  From personal experience, I've only had that many issues once on a bleeding edge MSI. It took about a month to work out the issues. Every other system I've used has had a much smaller subset of those issues (I'm not using a Thinkpad). Namely Bluetooth or the fans not working, and individually resolvable.
- 6y ago

cameronbrown 6y ago

Because the experience is terrible for the uninitiated. And this is coming from someone who ran Arch as their primary OS since I was 10. Laptop Linux on the whole is not a fun experience for those who just want a machine to work (which was what MacBooks were supposed to be about). I just bought a Surface Laptop 3, and the machine is great. The hardware is nice, Windows on a laptop has improved tenfold since I've last used it. WSL2 means Linux isn't left out. It's one machine/OS combo that does everything for me, including light gaming, whereas Linux and macOS both have significant compromises when using them.

pachico 6y ago
I must disagree with you. I have been installing Linux for people who barely know how to use a mouse and the experience was always successful. Of course, I choose a distro with simple UI and software with GUI every time. I don't want to get into the typical "if my mom gets it everyone can" (also because she is a power user) but trust me, the people I installed it for had the same problems they would have had with any OS (some quite funny).
- _fullpint 6y ago
  I attempted to but the driver support just wasn’t there for my laptop. WSL2 works fine and it also means that when I want to game I have a wider selection of games to play.
  - pachico 6y ago
    Yup, I'm not a gamer anymore and when I was I used a PS, true. Anyhow, my target initiating Linux to wasn't precisely gamers either.
- tuesday20 6y ago
  What is your preferred distro?
  - pachico 6y ago

calaphos 6y ago

I use both extensively but settled for windows + WSL2 for now. In the end it's the little things: - (fractional) scaling actually works quite well. - the shell works a big better. Feels like a good compromise between gnomes simplicity and KDEs over the top customisability to me. KDE has actually been the most stable out of the three though. - (Nvidia) driver support. Using Manjaro I had to reinstall the Nvidia driver every couple of months because a kernel update broke things. Again, not huge but annoying. - Working hardware video decoding in firefox. On Linux playing videos results in significantly higher CPU load, noise, slowed down browser, etc. Even on a fast machine. With wsl2 I can now do all my development in that environment and don't need to live with windows slow file system, missing package manager, etc. The remote development features of VSCode with wsl (and other ssh hosts) are also simply amazing.

blackoil 6y ago

For me, it limits the laptops available, with Windows I am pretty confident that any reasonable config laptop from Dell or Lenovo will not give me any issues. With Linux I have to be extra cautious while buying it. Also I am used to MS Office and occasionally play Age of Empires and Minecraft.

demosito666 6y ago

Enterprise software you need at work?