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Is there any Linux distribution with MacOS levels of reliability, simplicity, and productivity, that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting

Is there any Linux distribution with MacOS levels of reliability, simplicity, and productivity, that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full, random things like thunderbolt docks not working, or sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep), or external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions? Most of my colleagues at work picked Linux over a MacBook, and they waste countless hours fixing their various Linux bugs.

vbezhenar 4y ago
Fedora was much better than macOS for me. Don't have your kinds of complications though.
c22 4y ago
I have a box I've been updating Mint on for the last 10 years with no real issues for the last 6 or 7.
joombaga 4y ago
> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full Who hurt you? Pop!_OS?
- bronson 4y ago
  Ubuntu, for like a decade. Made running Ubuntu servers real dicey.
nverno 4y ago
Sleep states are faulty on the Linux laptop I'm currently on, and I do occasionally waste time on interoperability with various commercial software, although countless hours seems excessive. But when it comes to running dev software or getting up and running with a new project, or compiling some github source, I think I save much more time than I've lost.
- jorvi 4y ago
  What frustrates me is that other Linux users will tell you with a straight face that you must be flat-out lying if you bring up sleep problems. Had three users tell me that on HN just about a day ago.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    It's really very hardware-dependent. You can have five machines and sleep and PM works just fine, but if you get unlucky you also can have five machines and three don't go to sleep and two have poor battery life. Sometimes this affects even devices marketed for Linux, like the framework.
    - jraph 4y ago
      > Sometimes this affects even devices marketed for Linux, like the framework I was interested in the framework laptop at some point but it increasingly looked like a Windows-first laptop on which the company is happy about you installing Linux on it. There are laptops marked 10/10 on iFixit on which Linux works perfectly, I'll pick them until this changes.
  - nverno 4y ago
    Yea, but this is something unique to Linux, since everyone runs a different distro on different, never 100%-supported, hardware. So, they likely have never run into sleep problems- my desktop linux box doesn't have any at the moment. Sometimes these difficulties have a silver lining, though, after they force you to learn more about the systems you're using. I thinks it's less of a trial-by-fire than it was even four or five years ago when I switched completely to linux, and only getting easier.
    - jraph 4y ago
      It indeed depends on the hardware. I had computers with capricious suspend in the past. The last ones worked fine, except one which sometimes hung on wake up and sometimes had graphical glitches and random hangs, but all this went away when I removed the faulty RAM stick it had…
Kukumber 4y ago
Bugs? sounds like they misconfigured their OS Linux is not a commercial product that'll suit everyone all at once, you need to learn about its components, linux is just a kernel If your argumentation is "various linux bugs", then you should stick to Windows, it has nice "various windows bugs", or macos, it has nice "various macos bugs" There must be a reason why linux empowers the world from micro controllers to datacenters as well as the Steam Deck and the nintendo switch for its FreeBSD variant Use what empowers you, no need to spread FUD
- Jorengarenar 4y ago
  > linux empowers the (...) nintendo switch for its FreeBSD variant But BSD isn't Linux... Both belong to *nix family, but so does macOS
- vlovich123 4y ago
  No FUD. On laptops I’ve repeatedly failed to get the correct battery life. I’ve also struggled with audio working correctly and reliably. Sure, something might be misconfigured but the universe of misconfiguration for a Mac and Linux are substantially different because Linux is a much sharper tool. Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the problems Linux has when people say it isn’t suitable for the desktop (and these days they mean laptop). Linux empowers from micro controllers to data centers because there are domain experts being paid to keep the whole thing running AND NONE of those use cases are for interactive day to day customer use on a laptop (eg power saving, audio, video playback, video conferencing, etc) b with the exception of steam deck and switch that have a carefully tuned and tightly controlled OS distribution for a carefully chosen hw configuration. Windows is arguably the closest to the problems Linux faces but generally Windows does a much better job providing usable and stable APIs that vendors build against whereas Linux does not always do such a good job (+ vendors care about Windows whereas Linux is generally an afterthought except if it’s relevant to Android).
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    > On laptops I’ve repeatedly failed to get the correct battery life You have to configure for it https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management Linux doesn't know nor care about what machine you use, it could be a microcontroller without battery to a datacenter to a laptop to a console, configure for what you use, it's not "windows for Intel PCs, RISC? what is that? fuck off" > I’ve also struggled with audio working correctly and reliably. That is very hard to believe, my bluetooth headset worked out of the box > with the exception of steam deck and switch that have a carefully tuned and tightly controlled OS distribution for a carefully chosen hw configuration That exactly prove my point, users usually misconfigured their OS, the moment you configure your Linux OS, just like Valve did, with your distro of choice to suit your HW, then everything works as expected, that's a one time job If that workflow doesn't suit you, then linux is not for you, and that's ok > Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the problems Linux has when people say it isn’t suitable for the desktop (and these days they mean laptop). Because that's the reality of it, the problem is the user who expect things to work for him while ignoring its dimensional capabilities That's not a linux problem, that's a user problem, it's arrogant and selfish to expect "Linux" to work just for your specific HW and specific usecase and all of the effort should be dedicated to you, just you, for your own sake Do like valve did with steam deck and configure your Linux OS for your HW, if you are not ready for that, then use windows or macos
choeger 4y ago
Pick a T-series thinkpad with an AMD CPU/GPU combo and the latest fedora. Done. Don't forget that MacOS ships with very Limited hardware, too.
- Arbortheus 4y ago
  Funnily enough, this is the exact spec of laptops (except with Nvidia GPUs) that all of my colleagues who have had these problems use.
  - fsh 4y ago
    Not surprising, since Nvidia is famous for terrible Linux support. I couldn't get scaling to work on my desktop with an Nvidia GPU, but my T-series Thinkpad (AMD CPU and GPU) works perfectly fine. In fact, sleep works better than on Windows since it doesn't do the stupid battery-draining "Modern Standby". If I send it to sleep on Linux, it actually stays asleep until I open the lid.
  - tokai 4y ago
    So exact spec except for the only spec that actually matters.
- hbogert 4y ago
  Sleep was broken for a year on those with the amd platform. Based on 4 laptops t14s gen 2 iirc. Latest kernels seem to fix it. But tbh I felt like a fool handing those things to our freelancers.
surrTurr 4y ago
Fedora Workstation
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mmphosis 4y ago
No. I am using Linux on PC hardware and I miss Mac OS X. I have a lot tweaks and hacks that just don’t cut it. For example, the PC Home and End keys for text boxes are hard coded into X.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Funny you should mention that because I always have to fix Home and End on Mac with Karabiner-Elements so they don't go the beginning and end of the entire document which is totally useless. That said, I agree with you.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    macOS is a mess. Some apps respect proper bindings home/end, some including native Apple ones are just crazy. Ctrl+A/Ctrl+E works as a super home/end for VSCode but as an ordinary home/end for Jetbrains. Mess, giant mess. The only thing that macOS did good is a separation between ctrl+C and cmnd+C, so I can interrupt apps in console and copy text without issues.
  - hpcjoe 4y ago
    I still haven't fixed that on my Macbook, as iterm2's changes mess with Karabiner's changes. It is a pain in the ass.
czx4f4bd 4y ago
Your description of macOS's and MacBooks' reliability doesn't match my experience. I've been using MacBook Pros for about 15 years now, and every single one that I've ever owned or used long-term has always had some kind of bizarre issue that ended up forcing me to replace it. It's actually funny that you mention issues with Thunderbolt docks and monitors, because I feel like those were some of the most frequent issues I've encountered. This year, I actually swapped my work MacBook Pro for a Linux laptop specifically because my Mac would completely and irrecoverably lock up every time I tried docking it to two 4K monitors. My new Linux laptop has some issues of its own, but nothing that severe, at least.
srcreigh 4y ago
> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full Funny you say that. I can't boot into my dual Windows-arch desktop atm. systemd-boot is broken after I tried to set up XBOOTLDR partition, which I only had to do since the default Windows EFI partition didn't have space after an update. 1h20m to backup the 500GB SSD. I had to restore it once already after a botched shrinking of a Windows data partition. There was also a problem where literally nothing would boot - not even a USB. I believe this happened because I accidentally copied my main SSD (with the arch/windows EFI partition at the front) to the 8GB USB drive, and (again, speculating) having two similar drives confused the BIOS enough that nothing would boot, it just kept defaulting to network boot. "(Drive not present)" on the Windows/arch boot options. Sigh... Anyways, I still need to try adding/removing a timeout for the systemd-boot config. I've already tried hosting everything on a separate, larger EFI partition. When I boot to Linux from the BIOS it just shows me options for Windows 10 and back to boot. TL;DR Linux is a huge PITA.
jraph 4y ago
> without the boot partition getting full This is very annoying. Some distributions are able to boot directly from the main partition, without a need for a separate /boot though, even with Btrfs. This is the case for the computer I'm writing this comment with running openSUSE Tumbleweed, I think I had that with Debian or Ubuntu in the past. [a] > sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep) > or external monitor resolutions being wrong Fine on my computers too. > monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions? I gave up temporarily on this. It seems to work well on Wayland but I can't bear the blurry fonts that comes with fractional scaling on Wayland (and this is not just Linux, I think macOS is like this too), and I'm still on X11 the scaling is not very adaptative. HOWEVER KDE is getting proper fractional scaling support just right now [1]: > “What does this do?” you might ask. It allows the Qt toolkit to turn on its pre-existing fractional scaling support on Wayland that it always had on X11. No more rendering to an integer size and then scaling down! This should result in Qt apps that are scaled to anything other than 100%, 200%, or 300% scale having better performance, less visual blurriness, and lower power usage. And KDE on Wayland may be usable now, so that might be the thing that makes me switch in the coming months. [1] https://pointieststick.com/2022/12/16/this-week-in-kde-wayland-fractional-scaling-oh-and-we-also-fixed-multi-screen/ https://pointieststick.com/2022/12/16/this-week-in-kde-wayla... [a] edit: by the way, I just installed Debian on an old x86 tablet that was running Ubuntu (because i386 is not supported anymore, and recent versions of Debian are way better than recent versions of Ubuntu anyway). It had a separate /boot on Ubuntu, I installed Debian in a Btrfs subvolume, its /boot is there so now the separate boot partition is completely useless and I will get rid of it. So I can confirm it works on Debian too.
- srcreigh 4y ago
  What partition configuration do you have? Do you have a fdisk printout handy (aka `fdisk /dev/FOOBAR` and run the p command)
  - jraph 4y ago
    Disk /dev/sda: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors ... Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: gpt ... Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sda1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System /dev/sda2 1050624 972578815 971528192 463.3G Linux filesystem /dev/sda3 972578816 976773134 4194319 2G Linux swap sda1 is the EFI partition mounted on /boot/efi, /boot is a folder of /dev/sda2. sda2 is fully encrypted, subvolumes used to be managed by snapper and I installed openSUSE with its installer which does a lot of magic so my mount is a bit of a mess. Grub is able to find its config and boot the OS but takes ages to decrypt so I replaced it with systemd-boot. Here's mount: proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,size=4096k,nr_inodes=3048348,mode=755,inode64) securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,inode64) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000) tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=4883644k,nr_inodes=819200,mode=755,inode64) cgroup2 on /sys/fs/cgroup type cgroup2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate,memory_recursiveprot) pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) bpf on /sys/fs/bpf type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) /dev/mapper/cr_root on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=266,subvol=/@/.snapshots/1/snapshot) systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=28,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=16762) debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime,pagesize=2M) tracefs on /sys/kernel/tracing type tracefs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) configfs on /sys/kernel/config type configfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-sysctl.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /.snapshots type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=265,subvol=/@/.snapshots) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /boot/grub2/i386-pc type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=264,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/i386-pc) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /opt type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=261,subvol=/@/opt) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /srv type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=259,subvol=/@/srv) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=263,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /usr/local type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=258,subvol=/@/usr/local) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /root type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=260,subvol=/@/root) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /var type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=257,subvol=/@/var) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /home type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=281,subvol=/@/home) tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=12209112k,nr_inodes=1048576,inode64) /dev/sda1 on /boot/efi type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro) ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=2441820k,nr_inodes=610455,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000,inode64) portal on /run/user/1000/doc type fuse.portal (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000) gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000) tracefs on /sys/kernel/debug/tracing type tracefs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) portal on /root/.cache/doc type fuse.portal (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0) gvfsd-fuse on /root/.cache/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0) I have a similar setup on an nvme disk in another computer. I might as well delete the 2G swap partition by the way, with 24G of RAM I'm not sure it's that useful.
blensor 4y ago
I believe the bigger "problems" happen when a random laptop is used instead of the few that are rock solidly supported by major distros. I am the same BTW, I usually buy a laptop that maybe kinda supported and then cross my fingers and hope that it works. Then I start fixing those issues that can be fixed or create little workarounds around those that can't. For my wife I just bought a Dell XPS and that was that, no tweaks or workarounds necessary.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
I occasionally try a Linux distro on a new computer that I'm building, like Ubuntu and Mint, and so far I've never been able to get it running satisfactorily without any major problems. Last time, I was using an Intel barebones NUC for a stepmania setup, and ran into major problems with both audio and display resolution. Gave up and went to Windows 10, no major issues there setting it up, though the occasional boot screen interstitial is very annoying.
- fsflover 4y ago
  Random hardware which is designed for Windows typically gets Linux support within a couple years after its release. But if you are actually serious about trying Linux, buy it preinstalled.
pizza234 4y ago
> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full I have the suspicion that this is caused by users who add extra kernels and don't use the system provided ones. Ubuntu retains only a certain number of (distro-provided) kernels. Ubuntu desktop version doesn't even use a separate partition for `/boot`, so there's no risk. I remember this being a problem for Ubuntu Server, but it was long ago (I think 16.04, or maybe earlier). > sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep) This problem can depend on two things. S3 (suspend to RAM) became a bloody mess in recent times (possibly, because of Microsoft's push for the Connected standby). The firmware of some laptops (and even desktops!) doesn't advertise the state. One can verify this with `sudo dmesg | grep "supports S"`: if there is no S3, it's the producers fault. In such cases, I actually don't know how Windows works (for example, if they patch the ACPI tables). If S3 is advertised, but it doesn't work well, then the producer didn't release proper drivers. Best thing is to open a bug in the kernel tracker; some producers do actually react. Kernel v6.1 released a lot of fixes for laptops, so it's worth giving a shot. I'm definitely not justifying the status quo, but it's a chicken and egg situation (small user base -> underdeveloped drivers -> small user base). > random things like thunderbolt docks not working I suspect this is a similar (hardware drivers) problem. > external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions I suspect this is an X11 problem, which can be considered "Linux", although I'm not sure exaclty. Scaling is a bloody mess, and I think it's not related to drivers. To summarize, the fault is a mixed bag. for hardware/driver cases (and they're many), there's nothing to do; some distros adopt kernels earlier, but that's not necessarily a good thing. For display scaling, I suspect there's nothing to do, either - this may still take some time.
- reisse 4y ago
  > In such cases, I actually don't know how Windows works (for example, if they patch the ACPI tables). It uses Modern Standby (aka S0 Low Power Idle). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/modern-standby-vs-s3?source=recommendations https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de... > if there is no S3, it's the producers fault Or it's Linux fault for not supporting the S0LP? Sure, there are a lot of problems with the S0LP implementation on Windows, but the idea itself is good - that's what all the phones have utilized for at least previous 10 years. Maybe Linux actually could do it better than Windows, if some effort was put into it?
hpcjoe 4y ago
My M1 Macbook pro is connected to a Dell thunderbolt desktop docking station. This had caused me so much grief with the screen, that I directly connected the 43 inch monitor to the M1 rather than go through the dock. Moreover, the ethernet on the dock is wonky, often dropping out. This makes the work VPN sometimes ... challenging. Was just as wonky when I had the windows laptop that the mac replaced. BSODs were common with it, and its crashed the MacOS machine multiple times. Linux OTOH, doesn't seem to have a problem with the other dock I have it connected to. Haven't had a crash. But hey, doesn't fit the "linux sux" narrative, so YMMV.
- antod 4y ago
  My M1 pro is also way fiddlier and flakier with thunderbolt docks than my Linux thinkpad. Just monitor detection and enabling itself seems slower and buggier on a mac.
QIYGT 4y ago
It's not exactly a desktop device (though it can be booted into a desktop), but Steam Deck is by far the best Linux experience I've had. It seems what you really need is a company with an incentive to make a good hardware+software package.
- autotune 4y ago
  Steam Deck is the only way I am going to indulge Linux Desktop long term in the future. Just have to save a bit so I can buy the 512 GB version.
  - NavinF 4y ago
    You can buy the cheapest version and upgrade the M.2 SSD

vbezhenar 4y ago

Fedora was much better than macOS for me. Don't have your kinds of complications though.

c22 4y ago

I have a box I've been updating Mint on for the last 10 years with no real issues for the last 6 or 7.

joombaga 4y ago

> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full Who hurt you? Pop!_OS?

bronson 4y ago
Ubuntu, for like a decade. Made running Ubuntu servers real dicey.

nverno 4y ago

Sleep states are faulty on the Linux laptop I'm currently on, and I do occasionally waste time on interoperability with various commercial software, although countless hours seems excessive. But when it comes to running dev software or getting up and running with a new project, or compiling some github source, I think I save much more time than I've lost.

jorvi 4y ago
What frustrates me is that other Linux users will tell you with a straight face that you must be flat-out lying if you bring up sleep problems. Had three users tell me that on HN just about a day ago.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  It's really very hardware-dependent. You can have five machines and sleep and PM works just fine, but if you get unlucky you also can have five machines and three don't go to sleep and two have poor battery life. Sometimes this affects even devices marketed for Linux, like the framework.
  - jraph 4y ago
    > Sometimes this affects even devices marketed for Linux, like the framework I was interested in the framework laptop at some point but it increasingly looked like a Windows-first laptop on which the company is happy about you installing Linux on it. There are laptops marked 10/10 on iFixit on which Linux works perfectly, I'll pick them until this changes.
- nverno 4y ago
  Yea, but this is something unique to Linux, since everyone runs a different distro on different, never 100%-supported, hardware. So, they likely have never run into sleep problems- my desktop linux box doesn't have any at the moment. Sometimes these difficulties have a silver lining, though, after they force you to learn more about the systems you're using. I thinks it's less of a trial-by-fire than it was even four or five years ago when I switched completely to linux, and only getting easier.
  - jraph 4y ago
    It indeed depends on the hardware. I had computers with capricious suspend in the past. The last ones worked fine, except one which sometimes hung on wake up and sometimes had graphical glitches and random hangs, but all this went away when I removed the faulty RAM stick it had…

Kukumber 4y ago

Bugs? sounds like they misconfigured their OS Linux is not a commercial product that'll suit everyone all at once, you need to learn about its components, linux is just a kernel If your argumentation is "various linux bugs", then you should stick to Windows, it has nice "various windows bugs", or macos, it has nice "various macos bugs" There must be a reason why linux empowers the world from micro controllers to datacenters as well as the Steam Deck and the nintendo switch for its FreeBSD variant Use what empowers you, no need to spread FUD

Jorengarenar 4y ago
> linux empowers the (...) nintendo switch for its FreeBSD variant But BSD isn't Linux... Both belong to *nix family, but so does macOS
vlovich123 4y ago
No FUD. On laptops I’ve repeatedly failed to get the correct battery life. I’ve also struggled with audio working correctly and reliably. Sure, something might be misconfigured but the universe of misconfiguration for a Mac and Linux are substantially different because Linux is a much sharper tool. Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the problems Linux has when people say it isn’t suitable for the desktop (and these days they mean laptop). Linux empowers from micro controllers to data centers because there are domain experts being paid to keep the whole thing running AND NONE of those use cases are for interactive day to day customer use on a laptop (eg power saving, audio, video playback, video conferencing, etc) b with the exception of steam deck and switch that have a carefully tuned and tightly controlled OS distribution for a carefully chosen hw configuration. Windows is arguably the closest to the problems Linux faces but generally Windows does a much better job providing usable and stable APIs that vendors build against whereas Linux does not always do such a good job (+ vendors care about Windows whereas Linux is generally an afterthought except if it’s relevant to Android).
- Kukumber 4y ago
  > On laptops I’ve repeatedly failed to get the correct battery life You have to configure for it https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management Linux doesn't know nor care about what machine you use, it could be a microcontroller without battery to a datacenter to a laptop to a console, configure for what you use, it's not "windows for Intel PCs, RISC? what is that? fuck off" > I’ve also struggled with audio working correctly and reliably. That is very hard to believe, my bluetooth headset worked out of the box > with the exception of steam deck and switch that have a carefully tuned and tightly controlled OS distribution for a carefully chosen hw configuration That exactly prove my point, users usually misconfigured their OS, the moment you configure your Linux OS, just like Valve did, with your distro of choice to suit your HW, then everything works as expected, that's a one time job If that workflow doesn't suit you, then linux is not for you, and that's ok > Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the problems Linux has when people say it isn’t suitable for the desktop (and these days they mean laptop). Because that's the reality of it, the problem is the user who expect things to work for him while ignoring its dimensional capabilities That's not a linux problem, that's a user problem, it's arrogant and selfish to expect "Linux" to work just for your specific HW and specific usecase and all of the effort should be dedicated to you, just you, for your own sake Do like valve did with steam deck and configure your Linux OS for your HW, if you are not ready for that, then use windows or macos

choeger 4y ago

Pick a T-series thinkpad with an AMD CPU/GPU combo and the latest fedora. Done. Don't forget that MacOS ships with very Limited hardware, too.

Arbortheus 4y ago
Funnily enough, this is the exact spec of laptops (except with Nvidia GPUs) that all of my colleagues who have had these problems use.
- fsh 4y ago
  Not surprising, since Nvidia is famous for terrible Linux support. I couldn't get scaling to work on my desktop with an Nvidia GPU, but my T-series Thinkpad (AMD CPU and GPU) works perfectly fine. In fact, sleep works better than on Windows since it doesn't do the stupid battery-draining "Modern Standby". If I send it to sleep on Linux, it actually stays asleep until I open the lid.
- tokai 4y ago
  So exact spec except for the only spec that actually matters.
hbogert 4y ago
Sleep was broken for a year on those with the amd platform. Based on 4 laptops t14s gen 2 iirc. Latest kernels seem to fix it. But tbh I felt like a fool handing those things to our freelancers.

surrTurr 4y ago

Fedora Workstation

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mmphosis 4y ago

No. I am using Linux on PC hardware and I miss Mac OS X. I have a lot tweaks and hacks that just don’t cut it. For example, the PC Home and End keys for text boxes are hard coded into X.

IshKebab 4y ago
Funny you should mention that because I always have to fix Home and End on Mac with Karabiner-Elements so they don't go the beginning and end of the entire document which is totally useless. That said, I agree with you.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  macOS is a mess. Some apps respect proper bindings home/end, some including native Apple ones are just crazy. Ctrl+A/Ctrl+E works as a super home/end for VSCode but as an ordinary home/end for Jetbrains. Mess, giant mess. The only thing that macOS did good is a separation between ctrl+C and cmnd+C, so I can interrupt apps in console and copy text without issues.
- hpcjoe 4y ago
  I still haven't fixed that on my Macbook, as iterm2's changes mess with Karabiner's changes. It is a pain in the ass.

czx4f4bd 4y ago

Your description of macOS's and MacBooks' reliability doesn't match my experience. I've been using MacBook Pros for about 15 years now, and every single one that I've ever owned or used long-term has always had some kind of bizarre issue that ended up forcing me to replace it. It's actually funny that you mention issues with Thunderbolt docks and monitors, because I feel like those were some of the most frequent issues I've encountered. This year, I actually swapped my work MacBook Pro for a Linux laptop specifically because my Mac would completely and irrecoverably lock up every time I tried docking it to two 4K monitors. My new Linux laptop has some issues of its own, but nothing that severe, at least.

srcreigh 4y ago

> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full Funny you say that. I can't boot into my dual Windows-arch desktop atm. systemd-boot is broken after I tried to set up XBOOTLDR partition, which I only had to do since the default Windows EFI partition didn't have space after an update. 1h20m to backup the 500GB SSD. I had to restore it once already after a botched shrinking of a Windows data partition. There was also a problem where literally nothing would boot - not even a USB. I believe this happened because I accidentally copied my main SSD (with the arch/windows EFI partition at the front) to the 8GB USB drive, and (again, speculating) having two similar drives confused the BIOS enough that nothing would boot, it just kept defaulting to network boot. "(Drive not present)" on the Windows/arch boot options. Sigh... Anyways, I still need to try adding/removing a timeout for the systemd-boot config. I've already tried hosting everything on a separate, larger EFI partition. When I boot to Linux from the BIOS it just shows me options for Windows 10 and back to boot. TL;DR Linux is a huge PITA.

jraph 4y ago

> without the boot partition getting full This is very annoying. Some distributions are able to boot directly from the main partition, without a need for a separate /boot though, even with Btrfs. This is the case for the computer I'm writing this comment with running openSUSE Tumbleweed, I think I had that with Debian or Ubuntu in the past. [a] > sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep) > or external monitor resolutions being wrong Fine on my computers too. > monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions? I gave up temporarily on this. It seems to work well on Wayland but I can't bear the blurry fonts that comes with fractional scaling on Wayland (and this is not just Linux, I think macOS is like this too), and I'm still on X11 the scaling is not very adaptative. HOWEVER KDE is getting proper fractional scaling support just right now [1]: > “What does this do?” you might ask. It allows the Qt toolkit to turn on its pre-existing fractional scaling support on Wayland that it always had on X11. No more rendering to an integer size and then scaling down! This should result in Qt apps that are scaled to anything other than 100%, 200%, or 300% scale having better performance, less visual blurriness, and lower power usage. And KDE on Wayland may be usable now, so that might be the thing that makes me switch in the coming months. [1] https://pointieststick.com/2022/12/16/this-week-in-kde-wayland-fractional-scaling-oh-and-we-also-fixed-multi-screen/ https://pointieststick.com/2022/12/16/this-week-in-kde-wayla... [a] edit: by the way, I just installed Debian on an old x86 tablet that was running Ubuntu (because i386 is not supported anymore, and recent versions of Debian are way better than recent versions of Ubuntu anyway). It had a separate /boot on Ubuntu, I installed Debian in a Btrfs subvolume, its /boot is there so now the separate boot partition is completely useless and I will get rid of it. So I can confirm it works on Debian too.

srcreigh 4y ago
What partition configuration do you have? Do you have a fdisk printout handy (aka `fdisk /dev/FOOBAR` and run the p command)
- jraph 4y ago
  Disk /dev/sda: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors ... Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: gpt ... Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sda1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System /dev/sda2 1050624 972578815 971528192 463.3G Linux filesystem /dev/sda3 972578816 976773134 4194319 2G Linux swap sda1 is the EFI partition mounted on /boot/efi, /boot is a folder of /dev/sda2. sda2 is fully encrypted, subvolumes used to be managed by snapper and I installed openSUSE with its installer which does a lot of magic so my mount is a bit of a mess. Grub is able to find its config and boot the OS but takes ages to decrypt so I replaced it with systemd-boot. Here's mount: proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,size=4096k,nr_inodes=3048348,mode=755,inode64) securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,inode64) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000) tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=4883644k,nr_inodes=819200,mode=755,inode64) cgroup2 on /sys/fs/cgroup type cgroup2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate,memory_recursiveprot) pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) bpf on /sys/fs/bpf type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) /dev/mapper/cr_root on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=266,subvol=/@/.snapshots/1/snapshot) systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=28,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=16762) debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime,pagesize=2M) tracefs on /sys/kernel/tracing type tracefs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) configfs on /sys/kernel/config type configfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-sysctl.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /.snapshots type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=265,subvol=/@/.snapshots) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /boot/grub2/i386-pc type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=264,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/i386-pc) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /opt type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=261,subvol=/@/opt) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /srv type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=259,subvol=/@/srv) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=263,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /usr/local type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=258,subvol=/@/usr/local) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /root type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=260,subvol=/@/root) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /var type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=257,subvol=/@/var) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /home type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=281,subvol=/@/home) tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=12209112k,nr_inodes=1048576,inode64) /dev/sda1 on /boot/efi type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro) ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=2441820k,nr_inodes=610455,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000,inode64) portal on /run/user/1000/doc type fuse.portal (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000) gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000) tracefs on /sys/kernel/debug/tracing type tracefs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) portal on /root/.cache/doc type fuse.portal (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0) gvfsd-fuse on /root/.cache/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0) I have a similar setup on an nvme disk in another computer. I might as well delete the 2G swap partition by the way, with 24G of RAM I'm not sure it's that useful.

blensor 4y ago

I believe the bigger "problems" happen when a random laptop is used instead of the few that are rock solidly supported by major distros. I am the same BTW, I usually buy a laptop that maybe kinda supported and then cross my fingers and hope that it works. Then I start fixing those issues that can be fixed or create little workarounds around those that can't. For my wife I just bought a Dell XPS and that was that, no tweaks or workarounds necessary.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

I occasionally try a Linux distro on a new computer that I'm building, like Ubuntu and Mint, and so far I've never been able to get it running satisfactorily without any major problems. Last time, I was using an Intel barebones NUC for a stepmania setup, and ran into major problems with both audio and display resolution. Gave up and went to Windows 10, no major issues there setting it up, though the occasional boot screen interstitial is very annoying.

fsflover 4y ago
Random hardware which is designed for Windows typically gets Linux support within a couple years after its release. But if you are actually serious about trying Linux, buy it preinstalled.

pizza234 4y ago

> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full I have the suspicion that this is caused by users who add extra kernels and don't use the system provided ones. Ubuntu retains only a certain number of (distro-provided) kernels. Ubuntu desktop version doesn't even use a separate partition for `/boot`, so there's no risk. I remember this being a problem for Ubuntu Server, but it was long ago (I think 16.04, or maybe earlier). > sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep) This problem can depend on two things. S3 (suspend to RAM) became a bloody mess in recent times (possibly, because of Microsoft's push for the Connected standby). The firmware of some laptops (and even desktops!) doesn't advertise the state. One can verify this with `sudo dmesg | grep "supports S"`: if there is no S3, it's the producers fault. In such cases, I actually don't know how Windows works (for example, if they patch the ACPI tables). If S3 is advertised, but it doesn't work well, then the producer didn't release proper drivers. Best thing is to open a bug in the kernel tracker; some producers do actually react. Kernel v6.1 released a lot of fixes for laptops, so it's worth giving a shot. I'm definitely not justifying the status quo, but it's a chicken and egg situation (small user base -> underdeveloped drivers -> small user base). > random things like thunderbolt docks not working I suspect this is a similar (hardware drivers) problem. > external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions I suspect this is an X11 problem, which can be considered "Linux", although I'm not sure exaclty. Scaling is a bloody mess, and I think it's not related to drivers. To summarize, the fault is a mixed bag. for hardware/driver cases (and they're many), there's nothing to do; some distros adopt kernels earlier, but that's not necessarily a good thing. For display scaling, I suspect there's nothing to do, either - this may still take some time.

reisse 4y ago
> In such cases, I actually don't know how Windows works (for example, if they patch the ACPI tables). It uses Modern Standby (aka S0 Low Power Idle). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/modern-standby-vs-s3?source=recommendations https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de... > if there is no S3, it's the producers fault Or it's Linux fault for not supporting the S0LP? Sure, there are a lot of problems with the S0LP implementation on Windows, but the idea itself is good - that's what all the phones have utilized for at least previous 10 years. Maybe Linux actually could do it better than Windows, if some effort was put into it?

hpcjoe 4y ago

My M1 Macbook pro is connected to a Dell thunderbolt desktop docking station. This had caused me so much grief with the screen, that I directly connected the 43 inch monitor to the M1 rather than go through the dock. Moreover, the ethernet on the dock is wonky, often dropping out. This makes the work VPN sometimes ... challenging. Was just as wonky when I had the windows laptop that the mac replaced. BSODs were common with it, and its crashed the MacOS machine multiple times. Linux OTOH, doesn't seem to have a problem with the other dock I have it connected to. Haven't had a crash. But hey, doesn't fit the "linux sux" narrative, so YMMV.

antod 4y ago
My M1 pro is also way fiddlier and flakier with thunderbolt docks than my Linux thinkpad. Just monitor detection and enabling itself seems slower and buggier on a mac.

QIYGT 4y ago

It's not exactly a desktop device (though it can be booted into a desktop), but Steam Deck is by far the best Linux experience I've had. It seems what you really need is a company with an incentive to make a good hardware+software package.

autotune 4y ago
Steam Deck is the only way I am going to indulge Linux Desktop long term in the future. Just have to save a bit so I can buy the 512 GB version.
- NavinF 4y ago
  You can buy the cheapest version and upgrade the M.2 SSD