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I tried installing Ubuntu on a MBP my office bought for me. It was a while ago, but the killer for me was that the fans didn't work properly. It would overhea

by jayferd 15y ago

I tried installing Ubuntu on a MBP my office bought for me. It was a while ago, but the killer for me was that the fans didn't work properly. It would overheat within 5 minutes of use. I highly recommend a Strata from ZaReason (zareason.com). Unless you're going to be doing a lot of graphics-intensive stuff, definitely go for one with an Intel graphics card, b/c nvidia is a pain on Linux.

Zancarius 15y ago
> I highly recommend a Strata from ZaReason (zareason.com). Unless you're going to be doing a lot of graphics-intensive stuff, definitely go for one with an Intel graphics card, b/c nvidia is a pain on Linux. I'm assuming you meant to qualify that as NVIDIA's mobile chipsets. Though, I can't say I've had much trouble with them. I've certainly never had much trouble with their desktop products under Linux--I currently dual boot my home desktop between Linux and Windows with an NVIDIA card, and it runs just as well under either (ironically, Minecraft plays more smoothly under Linux...). Certainly there are some general complaints related to NVIDIA's Linux drivers, but to be completely honest, I've run many NVIDIA cards--including mobile--under a variety of Linux flavors over the years and had few troubles. I even tried installing Arch on an ancient Dell laptop of mine for fun which is equipped with one of the early GeForce Go chipsets, and it still works quite well (KDE4 not so much, but LXDE is perfect); however, it requires installing an older driver. I'd like to know where you got your information from, because I've run Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Arch all on top of fairly recent NVIDIA hardware. The only relatively minor difficulties I've had have all involved minor tweaks to xorg.conf but even those have greatly diminished in necessity.
- jayferd 15y ago
  Good points all. I can only speak from personal experience. With my laptop, I'm usually plugging in to various monitors of different sizes and in different positions. In order to configure the monitors, you have to use NVIDIA's proprietary configuration tool, which "works", but fails consistently in weird patterns. For instance, when I first try to configure a new monitor, it consistently freezes up for about 30 seconds, reverts to the old display, and then magically works when I try it again. And heaven forbid I want to align my monitors along the bottom edge (or "absolutely positioned"). There's a bug somewhere between the card, the configuration software, X, and Gnome that leaves half of one of my monitors black and inaccessible. As long as I leave my monitor setup as is and don't stir up too much dust, though, it works great.

by jayferd 15y ago

Zancarius 15y ago

> I highly recommend a Strata from ZaReason (zareason.com). Unless you're going to be doing a lot of graphics-intensive stuff, definitely go for one with an Intel graphics card, b/c nvidia is a pain on Linux. I'm assuming you meant to qualify that as NVIDIA's mobile chipsets. Though, I can't say I've had much trouble with them. I've certainly never had much trouble with their desktop products under Linux--I currently dual boot my home desktop between Linux and Windows with an NVIDIA card, and it runs just as well under either (ironically, Minecraft plays more smoothly under Linux...). Certainly there are some general complaints related to NVIDIA's Linux drivers, but to be completely honest, I've run many NVIDIA cards--including mobile--under a variety of Linux flavors over the years and had few troubles. I even tried installing Arch on an ancient Dell laptop of mine for fun which is equipped with one of the early GeForce Go chipsets, and it still works quite well (KDE4 not so much, but LXDE is perfect); however, it requires installing an older driver. I'd like to know where you got your information from, because I've run Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Arch all on top of fairly recent NVIDIA hardware. The only relatively minor difficulties I've had have all involved minor tweaks to xorg.conf but even those have greatly diminished in necessity.

jayferd 15y ago
Good points all. I can only speak from personal experience. With my laptop, I'm usually plugging in to various monitors of different sizes and in different positions. In order to configure the monitors, you have to use NVIDIA's proprietary configuration tool, which "works", but fails consistently in weird patterns. For instance, when I first try to configure a new monitor, it consistently freezes up for about 30 seconds, reverts to the old display, and then magically works when I try it again. And heaven forbid I want to align my monitors along the bottom edge (or "absolutely positioned"). There's a bug somewhere between the card, the configuration software, X, and Gnome that leaves half of one of my monitors black and inaccessible. As long as I leave my monitor setup as is and don't stir up too much dust, though, it works great.