3 ms·

Ironically, I first used it in 2010 It's definitely gotten better over the past decade, and maybe the jab is a little unfair if you're using off-the-shelf Ubun

by _bxg1 6y ago

Ironically, I first used it in 2010 It's definitely gotten better over the past decade, and maybe the jab is a little unfair if you're using off-the-shelf Ubuntu on very vanilla hardware. But that's mostly what I do when I use Linux, and yet I've never had it "just work" without several asterisks. Sure, the mouse and keyboard just work. The display and network adapter (usually) just work. Audio may or may not just work. A second display may not play very nicely. Setting up GRUB/dual-booting always takes some effort to get it running smoothly enough for daily use. Installing my dev tools, there's always one random things that goes wrong. Sometimes I'll install my browser the wrong way and it doesn't get an icon in my launcher; so I have to go look up how to configure that manually. I still have this weird issue where whenever I boot Linux and then boot back to Windows, my system clock (in Windows) is off by 6 hours; I gave up trying to fix it because it wasn't worth the effort. It's a death by a thousand cuts. I'm sure officially-supported installations like those on the XPS 13 work just fine, but if you're installing it yourself you're going to get pulled off track from what you were trying to do with your computer, and into forums trying to find someone else who had your exact issue. Some people revel in this experience, and I've been known to take a sense of accomplishment from it before, but most of the time I don't want to be messing with my computer, I want to be using it.

badRNG 6y ago
I've never had an experience with dual booting that wasn't absolutely miserable. > It's definitely gotten better over the past decade, and maybe the jab is a little unfair if you're using off-the-shelf Ubuntu on very vanilla hardware > I'm sure officially-supported installations like those on the XPS 13 work just fine That's fair, my use cases pretty much line up with that. I do view the XPS with Pop to be a MBP killer. I did install it myself (getting it on a USB drive is harder than literally the rest of the setup combined (did not dual boot, clean install,) and that wasn't bad at all) but Dell's Project Sputnik ensures Linux compatibility with the XPS line, and Pop!_OS noticed and applied firmware updates for my laptop. I compare the experience to choosing between a MBP and a Hackintosh. XPS + Linux seems to work better for dev work, better for software compatibility, far better for gaming, and is arguably a better experience overall compared to the MBP. Now, I do also run Pop!_OS on a desktop that I put together (Ryzen 5 & GTX 1060) (no dual booting) and have had a similarly flawless experience. Pop!_OS installed my NVidia driver on the initial install. Better experience for dev work than Windows (haven't given WSL a shot yet though,) but a small number of gaming titles don't work. No where near the experience of setting up a Hackintosh, and compatible with far more software than Catalina.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  Personally I couldn't care less about either one for gaming; I would never spend money on gaming hardware and then put anything other than Windows on it. I would certainly do Linux over a Hackintosh any day, because for me the entire point of Apple-anything is having the complete package that's been designed and ensured to work well together. At least with Linux they know you're trying to assemble something yourself and there's a large community of forum-goers giving you a good chance of finding all those little fixes you're going to need. Personally I use Windows for gaming and a Mac for dev and my Linux partition for that rare dev use-case that just doesn't quite work on the Mac (happens maybe once a year)
Nition 6y ago
I feel like Linux people have got so used to sorting out those thousand cuts, they don't really think about it as a problem anymore, just part of initial setup. But as soon as Joe Bloggs installs it and his wifi doesn't work or his graphics card has a minor glitch it's a complete dealbreaker. And I agree with your assessment that I don't think I've ever installed even Ubuntu and had everything work perfectly out of the box. In contrast, Windows has plenty of things you'll want to change configuration on, but usually nothing that's outright broken.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  That's true- and macOS has plenty of things I reconfigure whenever I set up a fresh install too, so I guess you could argue that takes up just as much time. I would say it's a do-once-and-forget thing, but then I'm sure there are people who would say the same about Linux issues.
randoantimine 6y ago
> I still have this weird issue where whenever I boot Linux and then boot back to Windows, my system clock (in Windows) is off by 6 hours; I gave up trying to fix it because it wasn't worth the effort. I fixed this in pretty quickly after install. The reason for the issue is that your Linux machine uses UTC to store time on the hardware clock whereas Windows uses the local timezone. The solution is to either let windows use UTC or Linux use local time. In my case I went with Windows on UTC based on this link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_time#UTC_in_Windows https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_time#UTC_in_Wind... Hope that helps

by _bxg1 6y ago

badRNG 6y ago

I've never had an experience with dual booting that wasn't absolutely miserable. > It's definitely gotten better over the past decade, and maybe the jab is a little unfair if you're using off-the-shelf Ubuntu on very vanilla hardware > I'm sure officially-supported installations like those on the XPS 13 work just fine That's fair, my use cases pretty much line up with that. I do view the XPS with Pop to be a MBP killer. I did install it myself (getting it on a USB drive is harder than literally the rest of the setup combined (did not dual boot, clean install,) and that wasn't bad at all) but Dell's Project Sputnik ensures Linux compatibility with the XPS line, and Pop!_OS noticed and applied firmware updates for my laptop. I compare the experience to choosing between a MBP and a Hackintosh. XPS + Linux seems to work better for dev work, better for software compatibility, far better for gaming, and is arguably a better experience overall compared to the MBP. Now, I do also run Pop!_OS on a desktop that I put together (Ryzen 5 & GTX 1060) (no dual booting) and have had a similarly flawless experience. Pop!_OS installed my NVidia driver on the initial install. Better experience for dev work than Windows (haven't given WSL a shot yet though,) but a small number of gaming titles don't work. No where near the experience of setting up a Hackintosh, and compatible with far more software than Catalina.

_bxg1 6y ago
Personally I couldn't care less about either one for gaming; I would never spend money on gaming hardware and then put anything other than Windows on it. I would certainly do Linux over a Hackintosh any day, because for me the entire point of Apple-anything is having the complete package that's been designed and ensured to work well together. At least with Linux they know you're trying to assemble something yourself and there's a large community of forum-goers giving you a good chance of finding all those little fixes you're going to need. Personally I use Windows for gaming and a Mac for dev and my Linux partition for that rare dev use-case that just doesn't quite work on the Mac (happens maybe once a year)

Nition 6y ago

I feel like Linux people have got so used to sorting out those thousand cuts, they don't really think about it as a problem anymore, just part of initial setup. But as soon as Joe Bloggs installs it and his wifi doesn't work or his graphics card has a minor glitch it's a complete dealbreaker. And I agree with your assessment that I don't think I've ever installed even Ubuntu and had everything work perfectly out of the box. In contrast, Windows has plenty of things you'll want to change configuration on, but usually nothing that's outright broken.

_bxg1 6y ago
That's true- and macOS has plenty of things I reconfigure whenever I set up a fresh install too, so I guess you could argue that takes up just as much time. I would say it's a do-once-and-forget thing, but then I'm sure there are people who would say the same about Linux issues.

randoantimine 6y ago

> I still have this weird issue where whenever I boot Linux and then boot back to Windows, my system clock (in Windows) is off by 6 hours; I gave up trying to fix it because it wasn't worth the effort. I fixed this in pretty quickly after install. The reason for the issue is that your Linux machine uses UTC to store time on the hardware clock whereas Windows uses the local timezone. The solution is to either let windows use UTC or Linux use local time. In my case I went with Windows on UTC based on this link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_time#UTC_in_Windows https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_time#UTC_in_Wind... Hope that helps