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The author doesn't state whether they installed Linux on a laptop that shipped with Windows, or bought an actual "Linux laptop". There's a huge difference, like

The author doesn't state whether they installed Linux on a laptop that shipped with Windows, or bought an actual "Linux laptop". There's a huge difference, like reviewing a Hackintosh and saying "Macs are shite". I did the same. I accidentally fubar'd my lovely 2015 Macbook by pouring a beer into it. I bought a Dell XPS and dual-booted Linux, which kinda worked but wasn't great. Then I bought a Purism 14, which has been awesome (after some teething troubles with the build quality). I'm kinda tempted by the M1 goodness. But to be honest, I'm not happy at all about going back into the walled garden of MacOS. I guess my main point of difference with the OP is that I never bought into the Apple ecosystem in the first place - I didn't use mail.app or calendar.app much. I never liked the Apple applications, they never seemed happy letting me take control of my life, and always seemed opinionated about what I should be doing. I'm now running i3wm on PureOS (debian-derived), tweaked to how I like it. And it's great. Couldn't be happier. Except for Zoom's Linux client, (but Spotify's Linux client is now pretty good, so there's hope!). And odd config issues with the USB ethernet. But the point is that I can go fiddle with those issues, and learn how Linux USB ethernet works, and generally mess about with my setup however I like. Yes I might brick it. But that's better than "oh it's gone dark, I have to take it to an Apple Store to get it fixed". Which is f-all use in a pandemic lockdown (or in rural SE Asia, which is where I was when I poured the beer in the Macbook in the first place). It's MY computer, not Apple's. That's actually important, not an ideological stance that doesn't matter in practice. Because Apple stuff doesn't "just work" any more. And if it doesn't "just work" there's f-all you can do except take it to the Store. And usually they'll just shrug and hand you a new one, and hope you backed everything up to their servers. I mean, sure, that's OK. But it's not what I want.

kitsunesoba 6y ago
I considered buying a System76 Lemur not too long ago because I liked the machine's specs and enjoy popOS, but after seeing QC issues with System76's OEM decided against it and got a Thinkpad X1 Nano instead. Interested to see how their in-house laptop project goes though.
- smoldesu 6y ago
  Thinkpads have always been the authentic Linux experience in my eyes, especially the models after 2009. I love what modern companies are doing with Linux laptops, but the Thinkpad is still the same, unrivaled, robust monster it has always been. There's nothing special about it, and that's why it's special. It feels standard issue, and hardware failure is a lot less sporadic than Macbooks.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  I am using Pop!_OS on Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 - everything works (though switching between dedicated and integrated graphics has rough edges). Perfectly fine for normal use.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  PopOS! is really nice and I am thinking about installing it on my (non-System76) hardware, instead of Ubuntu.
  - schmorptron 6y ago
    It is! The only issue afaik is that it doesn't support wayland yet, so you won't be getting any of the nice tracked trackpad gestures (unless something has changed since I last checked).
    - spacemanmatt 6y ago
      Wayland has trackpad gestures? I have plugged in a mouse, because I could not deal with a trackpad sans gestures.
zepto 6y ago
> Because Apple stuff doesn't "just work" any more. This is essentially a false statement for all intents and purposes. Apple software does “just work” with Apple hardware.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  My mac kernel panicked weekly for the last year. The software had stopped major development for the last 5 years on any area that doesn't help major media production or make it more like iOS. But the software does work. It just doesn't do much interesting stuff anymore.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > Apple software does “just work” with Apple hardware. This is essentially a false statement for all intents and purposes. Apple software is far from being immune to bugs, bad UX, etc., even on Apple hardware, as I can personally attest today from using a Macbook Pro daily for work.
  - arcatech 6y ago
    “It just works” never meant it was immune to bugs. No software is.
  - zepto 6y ago
    > being immune to bugs This is a total straw man. “Just works” has never meant free of bugs. It means not having to do a bunch of incidental configuration, tuning, and setup. Things do just work.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      > This is a total straw man. You use this word, "straw man". I do not think it means what you think it means. No, it is not a straw man to point out that bugs interfere with the notion that something "just works". When bugs interfere with getting things done - as I've found they often do in the course of using macOS daily, like when I can't open firewall ports for development or share my screen via Google Hangouts because the Big Sur update broke the password prompt for editing restricted things like firewall settings or app permissions, or when apps can't present an Open File dialog anymore across the board because God knows why, then it's a complete farce to call that "just working". There is no "just" nor "works" about that. Not to mention all the little paper cuts, like the lock screen taking 30 seconds to unfuck itself before I can actually type in a password, or constantly forgetting which applications I've set to open things by default (meaning that every so often I end up with a cacophony of fan whirring instead of an editor window when I try to open an XML file because macOS yet again decided to reset the default app to fucking XCode). (EDIT: oh, and the Touch Bar stops working if I plug in an external keyboard, which is just dandy) Also, I love how both comments immediately coming to defend Apple's honor stop at the "bugs" bit and entirely ignore that I'm taking a fat steamy deuce on Apple's UX, too. So on that note: > It means not having to do a bunch of incidental configuration, tuning, and setup. Which you have to do anyway, because the macOS UX sucks, and seems to be getting worse with each update. Want to have persistent named workspaces? Nope, gotta install some buggy hack of an extension to do it (which in turn required going through a whole bunch of red tape to bypass a bunch of security checks, because of course it does). Want to control where in which of those workspaces application windows open (or at the very least whichever workspace currently has the selected window)? lol fuck user intent, Workspace 1 Monitor 1, and switching away from whatever workspace was on Monitor 1 because double fuck user intent. Application menus are so far away from application windows that the Ever Given could do a goddamn u-turn between them with room to spare. Forward/back buttons on mice don't inherently set focus, so instead of navigating the history on the window my cursor's actually pointing at said buttons end up doing so for some random window on an entirely different monitor. (EDIT: and how could I forget the arcane screenshot shortcuts! Command-Alt-whatever-4? The fuck?) I could go on, but this comment's already enough of a deranged rant. A Chromebook has fewer bugs and a better UX. Even the grotesque hackjob that is the average GNU/Linux desktop has fewer bugs and a better UX. The bugginess and UX is maybe better than (modern, non-LTSC) Windows, but that bar is so low that even ants have to duck when crawling under it. ---- EDIT: I will, however, give Apple credit where credit's due: I do like the use of Command instead of Control for the CUA shortcut prefix (and the use of Emacs shortcuts for text navigation), and the touchpad gestures are nice, even if limited in options. It'd be great if more operating systems adopted these things. And the Touch Bar's kinda cool, I guess. Beyond that, I don't really have much praise for macOS. It's overrated, and "just works" is a myth in this day and age. It was arguably a lot more true back in the PowerPC days (even if OpenBSD is my current preference for my PowerPC Macs), but it's been getting worse and worse over the years. Maybe the switch to ARM will be an inflection point re: software quality. Fingers crossed. ---- EDIT 2: And even just now, doing an SMC reset (to fix that password issue in System Preferences) broke the UI, giving me no background, no dock, and no workspaces. Rebooted to find that no input devices worked until I unplugged my docking station. Background loaded briefly, then back to brokenness. System logs say that the dock is crashing due to a SIGILL. Here goes another night of troubleshooting macOS again instead of getting work done. "Just works" alright...
Klonoar 6y ago
Wait, Purism actually shipped the 14?
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I just went back to their site to check, and the 14 they show now looks different to mine. I guess there's a previous version that I bought back in late 2018?
hutzlibu 6y ago
Yes, he should have stated, what device he used. Linux main problems with laptops are drivers and firmware. The best you can hope for, when replacing windows - is that it runs somewhat stable. But startup time, performance and batterie life will be much worse on standard config. And like the article said, don't expect resume/sleep to work consistently. Which can be very, very annoying and time wasting. My use case is short(or long) bursts of working with it, and then stopping for some time and then later resuming, expecting everything to be as it was, when I reopen. And I can't do this consistently. Which sucks. On a old Linux laptop I got hibernation to work (mostly) consistently so that worked, too, but took even longer to resume. On my previous modell, I gave even up, trying it to get to work. And now I just bought a HP Pavillon gaming Laptop. And I actually run Windows now, even though I hate windows. But I need to get things done. And I don't want to mess with config settings, probably for weeks, to bring performance at least close to the stock values, windows provides. Now this is not the fault of Linux, proprietary hardware support and optimisation are just very complicated. But it still sucks. And it really does not help, when certain linux evangelist claim to everyone, especially newcomers, everything is fine and much better than on windows and co. Which is just not true. Especially startup time annoys me. It is just painfully slow. And the chromebooks are showing, that it does not have to be that way. My cheap Asus rugged chromebook, has by far the best startup time/wakeup time/standby life, of all the devices I ever used! I open it and can immediately resume working. Just what I want and need. Optimized linux drivers and firmware that work. (And reworked procedures under the hood) Everything else with ChromeOS is horrible, though. Shitty software, and lacking applications and all tied to google. So for now I have to work with windows again, which in its stock config comes with so many bloatware, ads and spyware - that it is hard to believe people put up with this. But what choice do they have? I probably have to try purism at some point, but sadly with all my mobile linux experience so far, I expect just a expensive, but mediocre experience. And there does not seem to exist a version with a decent gpu?
carlesfe 6y ago
I clarified now in the article that the "Linux Laptop" is a Dell XPS 13" Developer Edition, which is marketed indeed as a Linux laptop, and the Ubuntu is marketed as "Ubuntu Dell". It was stated in the previous article of the series but you are right that it was not evident in the text.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Does it actually ship with Linux installed though? That, I think, is the main difference. I had an XPS 15" and I was totally unable to get any support from Dell when running Linux on it. I understand the XPS 13's are marketed as being more "Linux-friendly", but I don't know how supported they are.
  - augusto2112 6y ago
    I have a XPS 13 as well, and it does ship with Ubuntu.
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      How are you finding that? I hear they work really well with Linux. I had such a bad time with the XPS15, I keep wondering why there's such a disparity between them.

kitsunesoba 6y ago

I considered buying a System76 Lemur not too long ago because I liked the machine's specs and enjoy popOS, but after seeing QC issues with System76's OEM decided against it and got a Thinkpad X1 Nano instead. Interested to see how their in-house laptop project goes though.

smoldesu 6y ago
Thinkpads have always been the authentic Linux experience in my eyes, especially the models after 2009. I love what modern companies are doing with Linux laptops, but the Thinkpad is still the same, unrivaled, robust monster it has always been. There's nothing special about it, and that's why it's special. It feels standard issue, and hardware failure is a lot less sporadic than Macbooks.
noisy_boy 6y ago
I am using Pop!_OS on Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 - everything works (though switching between dedicated and integrated graphics has rough edges). Perfectly fine for normal use.
spacemanmatt 6y ago
PopOS! is really nice and I am thinking about installing it on my (non-System76) hardware, instead of Ubuntu.
- schmorptron 6y ago
  It is! The only issue afaik is that it doesn't support wayland yet, so you won't be getting any of the nice tracked trackpad gestures (unless something has changed since I last checked).
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    Wayland has trackpad gestures? I have plugged in a mouse, because I could not deal with a trackpad sans gestures.

zepto 6y ago

> Because Apple stuff doesn't "just work" any more. This is essentially a false statement for all intents and purposes. Apple software does “just work” with Apple hardware.

lallysingh 6y ago
My mac kernel panicked weekly for the last year. The software had stopped major development for the last 5 years on any area that doesn't help major media production or make it more like iOS. But the software does work. It just doesn't do much interesting stuff anymore.
yellowapple 6y ago
> Apple software does “just work” with Apple hardware. This is essentially a false statement for all intents and purposes. Apple software is far from being immune to bugs, bad UX, etc., even on Apple hardware, as I can personally attest today from using a Macbook Pro daily for work.
- arcatech 6y ago
  “It just works” never meant it was immune to bugs. No software is.
- zepto 6y ago
  > being immune to bugs This is a total straw man. “Just works” has never meant free of bugs. It means not having to do a bunch of incidental configuration, tuning, and setup. Things do just work.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > This is a total straw man. You use this word, "straw man". I do not think it means what you think it means. No, it is not a straw man to point out that bugs interfere with the notion that something "just works". When bugs interfere with getting things done - as I've found they often do in the course of using macOS daily, like when I can't open firewall ports for development or share my screen via Google Hangouts because the Big Sur update broke the password prompt for editing restricted things like firewall settings or app permissions, or when apps can't present an Open File dialog anymore across the board because God knows why, then it's a complete farce to call that "just working". There is no "just" nor "works" about that. Not to mention all the little paper cuts, like the lock screen taking 30 seconds to unfuck itself before I can actually type in a password, or constantly forgetting which applications I've set to open things by default (meaning that every so often I end up with a cacophony of fan whirring instead of an editor window when I try to open an XML file because macOS yet again decided to reset the default app to fucking XCode). (EDIT: oh, and the Touch Bar stops working if I plug in an external keyboard, which is just dandy) Also, I love how both comments immediately coming to defend Apple's honor stop at the "bugs" bit and entirely ignore that I'm taking a fat steamy deuce on Apple's UX, too. So on that note: > It means not having to do a bunch of incidental configuration, tuning, and setup. Which you have to do anyway, because the macOS UX sucks, and seems to be getting worse with each update. Want to have persistent named workspaces? Nope, gotta install some buggy hack of an extension to do it (which in turn required going through a whole bunch of red tape to bypass a bunch of security checks, because of course it does). Want to control where in which of those workspaces application windows open (or at the very least whichever workspace currently has the selected window)? lol fuck user intent, Workspace 1 Monitor 1, and switching away from whatever workspace was on Monitor 1 because double fuck user intent. Application menus are so far away from application windows that the Ever Given could do a goddamn u-turn between them with room to spare. Forward/back buttons on mice don't inherently set focus, so instead of navigating the history on the window my cursor's actually pointing at said buttons end up doing so for some random window on an entirely different monitor. (EDIT: and how could I forget the arcane screenshot shortcuts! Command-Alt-whatever-4? The fuck?) I could go on, but this comment's already enough of a deranged rant. A Chromebook has fewer bugs and a better UX. Even the grotesque hackjob that is the average GNU/Linux desktop has fewer bugs and a better UX. The bugginess and UX is maybe better than (modern, non-LTSC) Windows, but that bar is so low that even ants have to duck when crawling under it. ---- EDIT: I will, however, give Apple credit where credit's due: I do like the use of Command instead of Control for the CUA shortcut prefix (and the use of Emacs shortcuts for text navigation), and the touchpad gestures are nice, even if limited in options. It'd be great if more operating systems adopted these things. And the Touch Bar's kinda cool, I guess. Beyond that, I don't really have much praise for macOS. It's overrated, and "just works" is a myth in this day and age. It was arguably a lot more true back in the PowerPC days (even if OpenBSD is my current preference for my PowerPC Macs), but it's been getting worse and worse over the years. Maybe the switch to ARM will be an inflection point re: software quality. Fingers crossed. ---- EDIT 2: And even just now, doing an SMC reset (to fix that password issue in System Preferences) broke the UI, giving me no background, no dock, and no workspaces. Rebooted to find that no input devices worked until I unplugged my docking station. Background loaded briefly, then back to brokenness. System logs say that the dock is crashing due to a SIGILL. Here goes another night of troubleshooting macOS again instead of getting work done. "Just works" alright...

Klonoar 6y ago

Wait, Purism actually shipped the 14?

marcus_holmes 6y ago
I just went back to their site to check, and the 14 they show now looks different to mine. I guess there's a previous version that I bought back in late 2018?

hutzlibu 6y ago

Yes, he should have stated, what device he used. Linux main problems with laptops are drivers and firmware. The best you can hope for, when replacing windows - is that it runs somewhat stable. But startup time, performance and batterie life will be much worse on standard config. And like the article said, don't expect resume/sleep to work consistently. Which can be very, very annoying and time wasting. My use case is short(or long) bursts of working with it, and then stopping for some time and then later resuming, expecting everything to be as it was, when I reopen. And I can't do this consistently. Which sucks. On a old Linux laptop I got hibernation to work (mostly) consistently so that worked, too, but took even longer to resume. On my previous modell, I gave even up, trying it to get to work. And now I just bought a HP Pavillon gaming Laptop. And I actually run Windows now, even though I hate windows. But I need to get things done. And I don't want to mess with config settings, probably for weeks, to bring performance at least close to the stock values, windows provides. Now this is not the fault of Linux, proprietary hardware support and optimisation are just very complicated. But it still sucks. And it really does not help, when certain linux evangelist claim to everyone, especially newcomers, everything is fine and much better than on windows and co. Which is just not true. Especially startup time annoys me. It is just painfully slow. And the chromebooks are showing, that it does not have to be that way. My cheap Asus rugged chromebook, has by far the best startup time/wakeup time/standby life, of all the devices I ever used! I open it and can immediately resume working. Just what I want and need. Optimized linux drivers and firmware that work. (And reworked procedures under the hood) Everything else with ChromeOS is horrible, though. Shitty software, and lacking applications and all tied to google. So for now I have to work with windows again, which in its stock config comes with so many bloatware, ads and spyware - that it is hard to believe people put up with this. But what choice do they have? I probably have to try purism at some point, but sadly with all my mobile linux experience so far, I expect just a expensive, but mediocre experience. And there does not seem to exist a version with a decent gpu?

carlesfe 6y ago

I clarified now in the article that the "Linux Laptop" is a Dell XPS 13" Developer Edition, which is marketed indeed as a Linux laptop, and the Ubuntu is marketed as "Ubuntu Dell". It was stated in the previous article of the series but you are right that it was not evident in the text.

marcus_holmes 6y ago
Does it actually ship with Linux installed though? That, I think, is the main difference. I had an XPS 15" and I was totally unable to get any support from Dell when running Linux on it. I understand the XPS 13's are marketed as being more "Linux-friendly", but I don't know how supported they are.
- augusto2112 6y ago
  I have a XPS 13 as well, and it does ship with Ubuntu.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    How are you finding that? I hear they work really well with Linux. I had such a bad time with the XPS15, I keep wondering why there's such a disparity between them.