10 ms·

This is great news. Honestly I've never had a problem with Ubuntu on machines that are just a 1-year or older. There are so many i7 laptops in the secondary mar

This is great news. Honestly I've never had a problem with Ubuntu on machines that are just a 1-year or older. There are so many i7 laptops in the secondary market that work perfectly.

danielscrubs 6y ago
Graphics drivers and WiFi drivers never worked without significant pampering for me in Ubuntu, and I've been using Linux for 15 years. Just last week I updated my working Nvidia drivers for my RTX 2070 card via Ubuntus GUI and lo and behold after restart the screen is just black. It's at a point where I just want it to get a working system and never update it, security and performance be damned. I know how to fix it because this has happened with pretty much all graphic cards I've had, I'll have to go into and mess with the grub config, make it run in safe mode, restart, try another grub config, restart, find out it doesn't work, run safe mode and reinstall the old drivers, cross my finger and wonder where my Saturday went. Gentoo was the most reliant by a long shot (maybe for the simple reason it always asked if it should replace my config), but that is a time sink in whole other league. Have heard good things about Fedora lately, but I dread throwing away the Debian knowledge I amassed.
- Lio 6y ago
  I guess it’s all about choice of hardware now. If you use components designed to support Linux life will be pretty smooth. I’m sure someone will point out the nvidia has a reputation for being linux hostile which does limit your choice a bit. Currently running Fedora on an XPS13 Dev edition laptop. Wayland, Gnome and Firefox are working together very nicely. Mixed HiDPI with standard seems to be solved now. I’ve seen the odd glitch where an app gets confused as you move from one screen to another but overall very good. Trackpad latency is improving but still not quite perfect. The fact that it’s close and constantly improving though makes me very positive about using Linux in place of my MBP full time. I actually miss the Gnome window management shortcuts when I move back to my Mac.
  - teruakohatu 6y ago
    Has Wayland figured out how to allow users to take screenshots? I would like to switch to Linux/Wayland from my mac but I need to share screenshots with co-workers.
    - Vogtinator 6y ago
      I've been using the Plasma Wayland session for quite some time now and screenshots have been working fine basically from the start and some time ago screensharing with pipewire got implemented. Chromium and krfb support that, so both WebRTC and VNC work as expected.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      You can take screenshots under Wayland, you just can not use random X11 tool that you were used to. All Wayland compositors come with some tool, that can take screenshots.
      - RMPR 6y ago
        The real issue is the clipboard which gets cleaned after closing the Window from where you copied.
        vetinari 6y ago
        I would guess that the format negotiation for clipboard data has something to do with that. You cannot negotiate when the originating app is not there anymore. But then, is it a real problem? I understand, that some users might be inconvenienced by that, because they got used to it in their workflow... but is it really a showstopper?
- mssdvd 6y ago
  Nowadays systemd distros like Fedora and Debian are quite similar.
- vetinari 6y ago
  > Graphics drivers and WiFi drivers never worked without significant pampering > my RTX 2070 I still do not understand, why you folks with Nvidia hardware expect it to work out of the box in Linux, when there have been two decades of experience that Nvidia doesn't care about that and won't allow anyone to do anything with that. So no, your RTX won't work as nice OOTB as Intel and AMD GPUs do. It will continue to be the case while you continue to give them money for them ignoring you.
  - fungi 6y ago
    Unfortunately AMD doesn't really compete in the machine learning space. Hopefully one day ROCm will offer a viable alternative but until then we are pretty much captive.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      If you really need nvidia so badly, put that GPU into headless machine, where you don't need any UI. Otherwise, you will be frustrated on desktop and it still won't work out of the box.
      - beojan 6y ago
        Or just use integrated graphics for the desktop, and reserve the GPU for GPGPU work.
        vetinari 6y ago
        Yes, that would be an option too.
      - Havoc 6y ago
        >put that GPU into headless machine Possibly one of the saddest solutions ever proposed. Besides then one can’t game on it
        vetinari 6y ago
- panpanna 6y ago
  Ubuntu has been plug and play for me the last 4-5 years. It even supports devices no longer working on Macs and windows without any user interaction. Of course, high-end nvidia boards seem to have all kind of problem. Stay away from Nvidia if you are a Linux user.
- rkangel 6y ago
  My approach to Linux laptops: * Buy Lenovo * Have integrated graphics (i.e. Intel) * Run Fedora This combination has, for a few years now, given me excellent reliability 'out of the box'. I don't have to do anything and everything from the fingerprint scanner to the wifi Just Works. There's still a bit of a battery life penalty compared to Windows, but it's not enormous.
  - easytiger 6y ago
    This has been a source of much consternation. Basically want a 15" x1 Carbon without any of the complications of the dual GPU laptops. But no one seems to make it. I guess to push margins up they force higher prices on larger laptops as they become more "niche"
    - smichel17 6y ago
      I ran into the same issue when I was in the market for a laptop a year or two ago. In particular, it's difficult to find a 15" laptop with a 1920x1080 matte screen that doesn't have a dual gpu setup. I was also looking for something that wouldn't break the bank. I ended up getting an ASUS f510ua (cheap variant with a 1TB 5200rpm hdd) and adding a 256GB m.2 ssd for my boot drive. 8GB ram and an i5 8250U. Found a deal on the laptop so the total cost ended up ~$600 USD, although I think m.2 ssds are cheaper now. I've been pretty happy with the performance; it's just enough to comfortably do Android dev (I use vim though, not Android Studio). The aspect I had to compromise on was build quality. The body is plastic and especially the screen has little reinforcement to bending specifically. It's not completely flimsy but I don't like carrying it around open in crowded/public spaces where it's more likely I'll bump into something and I wouldn't bet on it surviving a fall unscathed (my previous laptop, a Dell XPS 14, did exactly that, from college dorm bed to uncarpeted floor). It has also grown a single dead pixel, that I don't notice in regular use. I expected the build quality going in, and overall I'm pretty happy with the purchase. I used it for 8+ hours daily for 9 months when I was separated from my desktop.
      - easytiger 6y ago
        Interesting. I was considering a more budget end laptop but was worried about the build quality. When I try most laptops in shops they feel terrible to be honest. My first laptop was an Asus. To be fair it was as well speced as laptops 2 years later but the screen bowed in the middle. How's the keyboard on those Asus laptops?
- fungi 6y ago
  Thanks Nvidia. There is little Linux can do with out sacrificing a lot (principles and technical). It's a pita, _hopefully_ one day AMD and ROCm will be a viable alternative.
- simion314 6y ago
  About your driver upgrade? Did you installed a driver PPA and installed some driver that was not guaranteed to work or it was a Ubuntu bug, you did your regular updates (no PPA) and it broke your system? I also had this issues because I wanted to try newer drivers, it is expected if the new driver does not work I go in terminal and install the previous working version. I personally prefer how easy is to test different driver version in Linux while in Windows I needed to make an account to upgrade my NVIDIA drivers(maybe you can avoid creating an account I am not 100% sure but at that time I was dual booting to play some game and I did not had a weekend to spend o how to upgrade my drivers without an account ... in the end I could not solve the issue where Oblivion had a black screen and I played it with Wine in Linux)
- gerdesj 6y ago
  "Gentoo was the most reliant by a long shot (maybe for the simple reason it always asked if it should replace my config), but that is a time sink in whole other league." I think I can see Arch showing off a bit of ankle at you. Think of Arch as a bit like Gentoo without the burning lap.
  - h91wka 6y ago
    I have used both Arch and Gentoo, and the only similarity between them is steep learning curve. They are based on completely different tech (pacman vs. portage, systemd vs. openrc) and philosophy, they pursue completely different goals and solve different problems (or, rather, I hesitate to give a quick answer what problem does Arch solve, unlike Gentoo that gives the ability to customize the system all the way down, for a hefty price, of course).
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    If I was still in college I'd be trying to trick out an Arch build and post screenshots of my hyper-cool DE. But now I'm a fatass network engineer and I don't have the desire to spend an iota of energy doing config work outside of actual paid work. Ubuntu and Fedora just work, and only require a heafty apt/yum one-liner to make everything work. Arch is awesome -- the Arch Wiki is useful even for non-Arch users -- but ain't no body got time for that.
    - gerdesj 6y ago
      I'm a company director (MD) and I do not spend much time fiddling with my gear. I expect it to simply work and it does. I document my builds/configurations in both my corp wiki and the Arch wiki (stuff that is generic.) On a Fri afternoon I run "yay -Syu" and reboot. I deploy Ubuntu minimal for servers. I document those as well. My personal systems are not exciting. I login with Active Directory creds and I have an Exchange account for email. I just happen to have multiple CAD apps available and lots of other stuff out of the box. When I update my PCs/laptops the whole lot update and off I trot. I get the occasional bit of breakage but because Arch is rolling it is only a small problem at a time and not a massive total meltdown. I'm 50 next year - I studied Civ Eng at college. I am a fat ass PHB and sysadmin all in one package. I should also point out that my company is running reasonably happily despite SARS-CoV-2, so I think me and my two partners have done a reasonable job of the PHB thing. We still have all of our 20 employees and expect to come out with a (low n) £n00,000 loss on the books due to a virus. Happily we had >£n00,000 in the bank before hand to deal with unforeseen cash flow snags because we are boring and like to sleep at night. To summarise: Don't diss Arch (or Gentoo) as a silly ricer distro. If you approach a problem with a true engineer's attitude and an open mind then unlikely solutions can arise. Also, keep some cash under the mattress for a rainy day.
- thdrdt 6y ago
  Some days ago I installed Ubuntu on a system with a RTX 2070 super. There were no problems at all with the Nvidia driver. But it was a kind of miracle it worked out of the box. Because before that I had to manually fix the Wi-Fi driver. Hardware changes sometimes turn into a hell on Linux (Ubuntu). But I still won't go to Windows or MacOS. I just like the freedom of Linux. And when things are working, most of the time they keep working. On an other pc I have over 6 years of Ubuntu upgrades and it is still running fine.

This is great news. Honestly I've never had a problem with Ubuntu on machines that are just a 1-year or older. There are so many i7 laptops in the secondary market that work perfectly.

danielscrubs 6y ago

Graphics drivers and WiFi drivers never worked without significant pampering for me in Ubuntu, and I've been using Linux for 15 years. Just last week I updated my working Nvidia drivers for my RTX 2070 card via Ubuntus GUI and lo and behold after restart the screen is just black. It's at a point where I just want it to get a working system and never update it, security and performance be damned. I know how to fix it because this has happened with pretty much all graphic cards I've had, I'll have to go into and mess with the grub config, make it run in safe mode, restart, try another grub config, restart, find out it doesn't work, run safe mode and reinstall the old drivers, cross my finger and wonder where my Saturday went. Gentoo was the most reliant by a long shot (maybe for the simple reason it always asked if it should replace my config), but that is a time sink in whole other league. Have heard good things about Fedora lately, but I dread throwing away the Debian knowledge I amassed.

Lio 6y ago
I guess it’s all about choice of hardware now. If you use components designed to support Linux life will be pretty smooth. I’m sure someone will point out the nvidia has a reputation for being linux hostile which does limit your choice a bit. Currently running Fedora on an XPS13 Dev edition laptop. Wayland, Gnome and Firefox are working together very nicely. Mixed HiDPI with standard seems to be solved now. I’ve seen the odd glitch where an app gets confused as you move from one screen to another but overall very good. Trackpad latency is improving but still not quite perfect. The fact that it’s close and constantly improving though makes me very positive about using Linux in place of my MBP full time. I actually miss the Gnome window management shortcuts when I move back to my Mac.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  Has Wayland figured out how to allow users to take screenshots? I would like to switch to Linux/Wayland from my mac but I need to share screenshots with co-workers.
  - Vogtinator 6y ago
    I've been using the Plasma Wayland session for quite some time now and screenshots have been working fine basically from the start and some time ago screensharing with pipewire got implemented. Chromium and krfb support that, so both WebRTC and VNC work as expected.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    You can take screenshots under Wayland, you just can not use random X11 tool that you were used to. All Wayland compositors come with some tool, that can take screenshots.
    - RMPR 6y ago
      The real issue is the clipboard which gets cleaned after closing the Window from where you copied.
      - vetinari 6y ago
        I would guess that the format negotiation for clipboard data has something to do with that. You cannot negotiate when the originating app is not there anymore. But then, is it a real problem? I understand, that some users might be inconvenienced by that, because they got used to it in their workflow... but is it really a showstopper?
mssdvd 6y ago
Nowadays systemd distros like Fedora and Debian are quite similar.
vetinari 6y ago
> Graphics drivers and WiFi drivers never worked without significant pampering > my RTX 2070 I still do not understand, why you folks with Nvidia hardware expect it to work out of the box in Linux, when there have been two decades of experience that Nvidia doesn't care about that and won't allow anyone to do anything with that. So no, your RTX won't work as nice OOTB as Intel and AMD GPUs do. It will continue to be the case while you continue to give them money for them ignoring you.
- fungi 6y ago
  Unfortunately AMD doesn't really compete in the machine learning space. Hopefully one day ROCm will offer a viable alternative but until then we are pretty much captive.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    If you really need nvidia so badly, put that GPU into headless machine, where you don't need any UI. Otherwise, you will be frustrated on desktop and it still won't work out of the box.
    - beojan 6y ago
      Or just use integrated graphics for the desktop, and reserve the GPU for GPGPU work.
      - vetinari 6y ago
        Yes, that would be an option too.
    - Havoc 6y ago
      >put that GPU into headless machine Possibly one of the saddest solutions ever proposed. Besides then one can’t game on it
      - vetinari 6y ago
panpanna 6y ago
Ubuntu has been plug and play for me the last 4-5 years. It even supports devices no longer working on Macs and windows without any user interaction. Of course, high-end nvidia boards seem to have all kind of problem. Stay away from Nvidia if you are a Linux user.
rkangel 6y ago
My approach to Linux laptops: * Buy Lenovo * Have integrated graphics (i.e. Intel) * Run Fedora This combination has, for a few years now, given me excellent reliability 'out of the box'. I don't have to do anything and everything from the fingerprint scanner to the wifi Just Works. There's still a bit of a battery life penalty compared to Windows, but it's not enormous.
- easytiger 6y ago
  This has been a source of much consternation. Basically want a 15" x1 Carbon without any of the complications of the dual GPU laptops. But no one seems to make it. I guess to push margins up they force higher prices on larger laptops as they become more "niche"
  - smichel17 6y ago
    I ran into the same issue when I was in the market for a laptop a year or two ago. In particular, it's difficult to find a 15" laptop with a 1920x1080 matte screen that doesn't have a dual gpu setup. I was also looking for something that wouldn't break the bank. I ended up getting an ASUS f510ua (cheap variant with a 1TB 5200rpm hdd) and adding a 256GB m.2 ssd for my boot drive. 8GB ram and an i5 8250U. Found a deal on the laptop so the total cost ended up ~$600 USD, although I think m.2 ssds are cheaper now. I've been pretty happy with the performance; it's just enough to comfortably do Android dev (I use vim though, not Android Studio). The aspect I had to compromise on was build quality. The body is plastic and especially the screen has little reinforcement to bending specifically. It's not completely flimsy but I don't like carrying it around open in crowded/public spaces where it's more likely I'll bump into something and I wouldn't bet on it surviving a fall unscathed (my previous laptop, a Dell XPS 14, did exactly that, from college dorm bed to uncarpeted floor). It has also grown a single dead pixel, that I don't notice in regular use. I expected the build quality going in, and overall I'm pretty happy with the purchase. I used it for 8+ hours daily for 9 months when I was separated from my desktop.
    - easytiger 6y ago
      Interesting. I was considering a more budget end laptop but was worried about the build quality. When I try most laptops in shops they feel terrible to be honest. My first laptop was an Asus. To be fair it was as well speced as laptops 2 years later but the screen bowed in the middle. How's the keyboard on those Asus laptops?
fungi 6y ago
Thanks Nvidia. There is little Linux can do with out sacrificing a lot (principles and technical). It's a pita, _hopefully_ one day AMD and ROCm will be a viable alternative.
simion314 6y ago
About your driver upgrade? Did you installed a driver PPA and installed some driver that was not guaranteed to work or it was a Ubuntu bug, you did your regular updates (no PPA) and it broke your system? I also had this issues because I wanted to try newer drivers, it is expected if the new driver does not work I go in terminal and install the previous working version. I personally prefer how easy is to test different driver version in Linux while in Windows I needed to make an account to upgrade my NVIDIA drivers(maybe you can avoid creating an account I am not 100% sure but at that time I was dual booting to play some game and I did not had a weekend to spend o how to upgrade my drivers without an account ... in the end I could not solve the issue where Oblivion had a black screen and I played it with Wine in Linux)
gerdesj 6y ago
"Gentoo was the most reliant by a long shot (maybe for the simple reason it always asked if it should replace my config), but that is a time sink in whole other league." I think I can see Arch showing off a bit of ankle at you. Think of Arch as a bit like Gentoo without the burning lap.
- h91wka 6y ago
  I have used both Arch and Gentoo, and the only similarity between them is steep learning curve. They are based on completely different tech (pacman vs. portage, systemd vs. openrc) and philosophy, they pursue completely different goals and solve different problems (or, rather, I hesitate to give a quick answer what problem does Arch solve, unlike Gentoo that gives the ability to customize the system all the way down, for a hefty price, of course).
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  If I was still in college I'd be trying to trick out an Arch build and post screenshots of my hyper-cool DE. But now I'm a fatass network engineer and I don't have the desire to spend an iota of energy doing config work outside of actual paid work. Ubuntu and Fedora just work, and only require a heafty apt/yum one-liner to make everything work. Arch is awesome -- the Arch Wiki is useful even for non-Arch users -- but ain't no body got time for that.
  - gerdesj 6y ago
    I'm a company director (MD) and I do not spend much time fiddling with my gear. I expect it to simply work and it does. I document my builds/configurations in both my corp wiki and the Arch wiki (stuff that is generic.) On a Fri afternoon I run "yay -Syu" and reboot. I deploy Ubuntu minimal for servers. I document those as well. My personal systems are not exciting. I login with Active Directory creds and I have an Exchange account for email. I just happen to have multiple CAD apps available and lots of other stuff out of the box. When I update my PCs/laptops the whole lot update and off I trot. I get the occasional bit of breakage but because Arch is rolling it is only a small problem at a time and not a massive total meltdown. I'm 50 next year - I studied Civ Eng at college. I am a fat ass PHB and sysadmin all in one package. I should also point out that my company is running reasonably happily despite SARS-CoV-2, so I think me and my two partners have done a reasonable job of the PHB thing. We still have all of our 20 employees and expect to come out with a (low n) £n00,000 loss on the books due to a virus. Happily we had >£n00,000 in the bank before hand to deal with unforeseen cash flow snags because we are boring and like to sleep at night. To summarise: Don't diss Arch (or Gentoo) as a silly ricer distro. If you approach a problem with a true engineer's attitude and an open mind then unlikely solutions can arise. Also, keep some cash under the mattress for a rainy day.
thdrdt 6y ago
Some days ago I installed Ubuntu on a system with a RTX 2070 super. There were no problems at all with the Nvidia driver. But it was a kind of miracle it worked out of the box. Because before that I had to manually fix the Wi-Fi driver. Hardware changes sometimes turn into a hell on Linux (Ubuntu). But I still won't go to Windows or MacOS. I just like the freedom of Linux. And when things are working, most of the time they keep working. On an other pc I have over 6 years of Ubuntu upgrades and it is still running fine.