15 ms·

Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

170 points by gpapilion 14y ago

leh0n 14y ago
I switched from linux to mac recently because my Ubuntu 12.04 laptop would randomly freeze after waking from sleep. I tried like 3 different solutions that I had googled but none of them worked.
induscreep 14y ago
Can someone explain to me what exactly is wrong with the OS X terminal?
- eropple 14y ago
  Terminal.app often feels sort of clunky to me. I use iTerm2 instead--being able to split panes is really nice (no, I don't want to use tmux). The default userland is kind of annoying, in that a lot of utilities are BSD ones and aren't compatible with my imported-from-Linux scripts, aliases, etc., but that's just an install of coreutils away.
  - Argorak 14y ago
    By the way, if you want to get the benefits of tmux with respect to attach, detach, but want to manage splits and tabs using the Terminal, iTerm2 has you covered: http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration
    - eropple 14y ago
      It does, but I'm still not a fan. I find its attach/detach on remote servers a little wonky.
  - mangler 14y ago
    So what's wrong with it is that it feels clunky to you...
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    Yeah, I get annoyed too when people use Linuxisms in scripts because they don't ever run right on FreeBSD.
    - eropple 14y ago
      "ls --color=auto" is not what I consider a "Linuxism", it's what I consider "basic functionality" (and yes I'm quite aware of BSD ls's -G, but it doesn't honor my other custom settings). I have no interest in rewriting all of my rc files and scripts to support BSD tools because doing so is a significant investment of time better spent elsewhere, moreso because of the simpler, easier option of installing GNU coreutils and findutils. I'm glad you could migrate your snark from Reddit, but it doesn't do a lot for a real conversation.
- brian_cloutier 14y ago
  It's been a while since I used it, but off the top of my head: - colors never worked right, you can certainly enable them but themes like solarized are impossible to get working. - it took forever to open. as in, a terminal on my machine is just a keypress away and it took the terminal on my osx machine a couple seconds to open a window, and even longer to show me a prompt - somehow they borked mouse input, so clicking the line you want to edit from within a vim session, for example, is a no-go. - this is a lion problem but terminal interacts with it especially badly, there's no easy way to open a second terminal window. I usually have tons of the things open and it's impossible to manage them properly.
  - induscreep 14y ago
    Hmm I faced some of the same problems: - Colors work perfect with the tomorrow theme, kinda similar to solarized (https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/OS%20X%20Terminal https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/O...) - I think I changed my shell to /bin/bash in the preferences, which fixed it - Haven't encountered this - Haven't encountered this
    - thealphanerd 14y ago
      Might i suggest trying iterm 2 http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      It's my understanding that bash has been the default shell in OSX for quite some time now, though I can't imagine tcsh started noticeably slower than it back when it was the default. On my incredibly underpowered machine the difference between the two is around 0.05s.
  - thealphanerd 14y ago
    Might i suggest trying iterm 2 http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home
  - Void_ 14y ago
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  One thing I don't like is you can't completely clear the scrollback, only the visible portion. I often use 'tput reset' when doing new build/test runs and it is nice when the scrollback only contains this time's output.
  - AngryParsley 14y ago
    Cmd + k clears scrollback how you want. If you want to script it, you can use osascript: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/31872/how-do-i-reset-the-scrollback-in-the-terminal-via-a-shell-command http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/31872/how-do-i-rese... Yeah, it's hacky. It's a usability trade-off. Defaulting to allow scripts to erase all your scrollback would be pretty annoying in a lot of cases. Ideally there would be a checkbox for this behavior, but Apple doesn't like config options. One thing I wish terminals had was a "scroll up to the last place I typed something." I think that would solve your problem as well.
    - rogerbinns 14y ago
      They are my scripts and I don't need "protection" from myself. Users don't use the command line so it isn't particular relevant to them - this is relevant to developers. I fully agree it shouldn't be an option, and that generally being highly configurable is a way of abdicating responsibility for making the right choices in the first place, and ensures that not everything is tested (there will be too many combinations of settings). In this particular case I just think Apple chose the wrong behaviour.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- unhammer 14y ago
  For me it was a combination of things. For one, I use emacs and a Norwegian keyboard layout, and Apple handily ensures that '\' is only possible to type using both shift, option and 7. Now, since I'm an emacs user, typing meta+\ should mean command+option+shift+7. As if that wasn't bad enough, I never found a way to configure neither Terminal.app nor iTerm2 or whatever it's called such that I could get both option functionality and a meta key (perhaps this has been fixed later? been a couple years), so when ssh-ing I had to use esc, then option+shift+7. Combine this with how difficult it is to get a real dev environment set up, on debian-based systems you just apt-get install build-essential etc., similarly on Arch Linux, whereas on a Mac it was installing that whole XCode from a CD which included a bunch of stuff I never needed, then waiting for hours for macports to compile gcc etc. (I never understood why macports didn't go with precompiled binaries, mac's are so uniform compared to linuxes it should be _easier_, shouldn't it?). And then waiting for hours every time gcc etc. got an update, thinking "I thought I did this already, what is this, gentoo?" And the annoyance of having to install GNU sed and ensure it was before OS X sed in PATH because OS X sed was horribly slow on certain regexes (I think they had a \1 in them, can't remember), it felt so … inelegant. And most of the projects I use and like working on just seemed to have better Linux support; of course I could rant about how OS X is a POSIX too and they should support it just as well as Linux, but, well, I chose convenience. For the sake of my fingers and my patience.
  - mironathetin 14y ago
    use an english keyboard, problem solved :o). I know, there are special keys ( I am german and we have special keys too). But that is solved with a handy tool named ukelele, that allows to change keyboard profiles. Very useful. Have you ever seen such a thing on linux?
- jlgreco 14y ago
  The few times I had to use it, I could not figure out how to turn off the chrome, though I suppose that is more of a general OSX complaint. Otherwise, color support at least used to be dreadful. I believe this has been fixed recently though? I think it still doesn't have proper mouse support though. Seems like a silly thing to have/want, but I find it very nice for resizing/focusing tmux panes/Vim windows, and scrolling in both.
digitalengineer 14y ago
This sums it up pretty nicely: "Ubuntu sucks but not on my Dell XPS 13, now I can -finally- ditch my Mac"
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
bravura 14y ago
tl;dr: I've been using Mac for ten years. "Two days ago I got my Dell XPS 13 as part of a Dell beta progam called project Sputnik." After two days of use, I haven't run into any serious roadblocks, so I'm not using Mac anymore. a) Is writing this blog post a requirement of the Sputnik program? b) Regardless of the answer to a), how do I get into the Sputnik program?
- gpapilion 14y ago
  a. They would like us to be vocal, but there is no strict requirement. b. Its as simple as installing this image you can find here on an XPS 13 : http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/ http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/
mangler 14y ago
This posted by Dell or something?! What's with the over-excitement?
- fiatpandas 14y ago
  The Dell program he is in encourages testers to be vocal about their experience.
ars 14y ago
Why are people voting up this article? There is nothing interesting in it. I'm genuinely curious about what people are finding interesting here.
- mxxx 14y ago
  agreed. the guy barely even mentions why he decided to move to linux, just that he did. or do people just like the sentiment?
  - rz2k 14y ago
    I could imagine some interesting discussion about the relative merits between tcsh and bash given the stated history, but this has little if anything to do with crazy abstractions like graphical interfaces.
  - emilis_info 14y ago
    Freedom of choice, being able to fix things yourself, ability to work on the same OS your server uses, being able to run old programs or on older/cheaper hardware -- all these and other things are not sentiments. Why are you guys complaining about a guy choosing Linux over Mac? Is it because of the sentiment? :-)
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      They're complaining because the article is light on the why he made the choice, just that he made the choice.
- javert 14y ago
  "I used to really like Linux, and I can prove it. But I'm not willing to compromise on getting stuff done, and I can prove it. But now I can use Linux without compromising, and I can prove it." Except he actually gives the proof. Although anecdotal, that information is useful if you care about the state of the Linux desktop for any of a variety of reasons. Though the real reason it's getting upvoted, I think, is: he has fabulous style. The post reads like a narrative, and he doesn't digress. And he has really clever subtitles and a great title.
fingerprinter 14y ago
I have a Lenovo x220 running Ubuntu 12.04. Aesthetics of the machine aside, it is the best setup I've ever used for a development machine. Ubuntu is by far (we're talking leaps and bounds) better than OSX for dev work and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the keyboard on the x220. I don't have a XPS 13, but I can see any reasonable machine loaded with Ubuntu being a developers dream. Honestly, any machine loaded with Ubuntu these days would be more than reasonable for a most anyone. PS. Did I say I love the keyboard on the x220? Because I do.
- blrgeek 14y ago
  Fingerprinter - same questions for you on the Lenovo x220 you use 1. What's the battery life like? 2. Are all devices supported with drivers - Bluetooth, 3D, graphics, sleep/wake, 802.11n, webcam, internal mike, ... 3. Does it do instant sleep/wake like a Mac - 100s of times without crashing/rebooting? 4. How does it handle external displays? Plug and play like a Mac? Does it handle display rotate? The internal display is only 1366x768 ? 5. Does it detect a headphone and switch from speaker to headphone automatically (speaker driver?) 6. How's the trackpad compare to a Macbook Pro? 7. How's the keyboard compare to a Macbook Pro? Asking because I moved from Linux->OSX a long time ago, and I wouldn't mind switching back if the hardware is right and more importantly the Linux drivers work well.
  - unhammer 14y ago
    I've got Xubuntu on an X220. 1. About 5 hrs of web browsing (though I've gotten more once I was on a cabin w/o electricity and turned off wifi etc, there's a nice hardware switch to turn off all radio on the X220). About a year ago, there was this famous Linux Power Regression, where you had to append some stuff to your grub command line and worry about crashes. I tried it, and never got the crashes, and then they fixed the regression and I now run it unmodified with the same power usage. EDIT: there's several battery sizes, I think mine is the "medium" one, it sticks out a bit in the back … 2. Bluetooth: Tried it once, seemed OK. 3D: I don't really play games, but it seems to work w/o problems. Graphics just … work? Sleep/wake works just fine. No trouble with wifi. Webcam seems to work, but I've never tried video chat. I actually haven't tried the internal mike, maybe I should some day … 3. Yes. 4. Never tried. What's display rotate? It is unfortunately only 1366x768, yes. I tend to have one window on the left half and one on the right (got some keyboard shortcuts that do this for me even though I just run xfce). 5. Yes (isn't this handled by the hardware?) 6. Hehe … the trackpad is a bit weird: the buttons are on top. Takes a while getting used to. But it has the famous red Lenovo ball in the middle of the keyboard, which is nice for typists. And it has three mouse buttons! Scrolling works fine btw. 7. Infinitely better. You will never want to go back. If you really need OS X, buy a Lenovo and install it in Virtualbox, the keyboard is that good. Annoyances: it doesn't look as good, and on lending the computer to other people, they often take a while before understanding the trackpad buttons.
ifmw 14y ago
I'm glad to hear sleep and hibernate are improving on Linux laptops and I really hope more manufacturers will follow suit with their own initiatives like this. However, will any portable laptop get 7 hours of battery life on Linux with wifi on like the 13" Macbook Airs do?
- steevdave 14y ago
  Portable, yes, I do, although it's now almost two years old and the age shows when compiling. But on the other hand, I whip out my core i7, compile something and the battery is drained after an hour and a half. Disclaimer: the two year old machine is one our company used to make, and my version of development is on the Linux kernel or various packages like the MATE desktop.
- macco 14y ago
  Depends on the laptop :) But it's possible with low powered laptops.
- klaasvakie 14y ago
  I'm getting ~8 hours with wifi with Ubuntu 12.04 on an Asus Zenbook UX31E. Everything works out the box with no tweaking, see here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook If I had to buy now though, i'd get the UX31A (Full HD IPS in 13"), but looks like some things there don't work yet: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime
- lucian1900 14y ago
  I get about 6-7h if I don't do much more than use a browser, on a Thinkpad E325 (AMD). Playing a game it's about 2-3h, but it doesn't seem to ever overheat.
blrgeek 14y ago
1. What's the battery life like? 2. Are all devices supported with drivers - Bluetooth, 3D, graphics, sleep/wake, 802.11n, webcam, internal mike, ... 3. Does it do instant sleep/wake like a Mac - 100s of times without crashing/rebooting? 4. How does it handle external displays? Plug and play like a Mac? Does it handle display rotate? The internal display is only 1366x768 ? 5. Does it detect a headphone and switch from speaker to headphone automatically (speaker driver?) 6. How's the trackpad compare to a Macbook Pro? 7. How's the keyboard compare to a Macbook Pro? Asking because I moved from Linux->OSX a long time ago, and I wouldn't mind switching back if the hardware is right and more importantly the Linux drivers work well.
- batgaijin 14y ago
  1). Depends on ACPI support 2). Depends on the hardware, but surprisingly yes. Even the free Nouveau drivers do pretty decent 3d support. 3). Yep, configure it to suspend on closing the lid. 4). Depends on the wm you want. 5). Usually yes. 6). Pretty good, in fact you can enable the two finger scroll pretty easily. 7). More configurable. If you are considering a switch, I'd recommend installing Fedora or Ubuntu, they usually have pretty amazing defaults. However, if you are considering this using a Macbook/Mac, be prepared for a lot more effort.
  - blrgeek 14y ago
    Actually - no offense - I'm looking for specific info on the drivers on this system than a generic response. I've heard far too often 'depends on driver/acpi support' to go down that road again :) Which specific system are you basing your answers on? Can you be more specific on (6) - how many points does the multitouch support?
    - anonymouz 14y ago
      For Thinkpads what you list under 2) will usually work without hiccups. Generally, Intel is very good with its driver support, so try to pick a laptop with Intel WiFi & GPU. Depending on your needs you may want an nVidia or ATI GPU though. Can't say anything on multitouch with the Touchpad, since I don't use it.
cloudwalking 14y ago
70% terminal, 30% browser. Sounds like he needs a Chromebook.
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  Yah, except he'd be 70% SOL.
  - cloudwalking 14y ago
    Na, Chromebooks have a full terminal built in.
    - WiseWeasel 14y ago
      Interesting; I did not know that was possible. But can you install AMP and do web dev on it? That's what the author was using it for.
perfunctory 14y ago
"I spend 70% of my time in a terminal, and 30% of my time in a web browser" One didn't have to wait till 2012 to be able to do that.
- abrahamsen 14y ago
  He was also a Linux user in 1998. The main difference seems to be that he now uses Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office, and thus spends more time in the browser.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  There was a period there in the early-mid 2000s in which an unfortunate number of websites, and rather more corporate / enterprise web-based tools (intranet or external portal) were very highly MSIE dependent. There were workarounds, and some of us stayed largely independent (absent a few VMs or Windows Terminal Server sessions), but it was fairly ugly. The embrace of Web standards by major players (thank you Google, and I don't say this often, Facebook) and availability of cross-platform standards-compliant browsers (thank you Mozilla and Google), and even the resurgence of Macs (thank you, Apple) have helped. That and the fact that proprietary application format usage for standard desktop functions (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) has dwindled dramatically. I won't say it's gone by any stretch, but even Microsoft touts open standards, and far more often you'll encounter Wikis, Google Docs, or git.
randomafrican 14y ago
Sophos tell me that this site is blocked because of Troj/Unif-B. Did it happen to anyone else ?
- tathastu 14y ago
  Sophos had a false positive bug today: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/09/19/sshupdater-b-fsophos-anti-virus-products/ http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/09/19/sshupdater-b-fsop...
  - bli 14y ago
    had the Troj/Unif-B warning too! seems to be an other warning then the false positive one!
atas 14y ago
Three major grammar mistakes. And nothing interesting.
fierarul 14y ago
> Two days ago I got my Dell XPS 13 as part of a Dell beta progam called project Sputnik. This makes it unclear if I can actually buy this thing (in Europe). >I got a special version of Ubuntu, with some kernel patches, and some patched packages for sleep and hibernation. Why isn't this in the official Ubuntu distro? I don't trust binaries from Dell.
- takluyver 14y ago
  Looks like they're bringing forward some fixes that the regular kernel is more cautious with. That makes sense, because they only have to worry about one set of hardware. There are PPAs with the patched packages: https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-kernel https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-k... https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-policykit https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-p...
  - fierarul 14y ago
    Hm, I guess it's better seing that it's Canonical doing the patches although I would prefer for these things to be part of the upstream kernel or at least of the official Ubuntu ISO. Right now the http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/ http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/ link warns you "this image is not considered an official Ubuntu release"; "this image is for demo purposes only". Not very reassuring. Still, it does put the Dell XPS on my watch list.
- gman99 14y ago
  From a comment further up: http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/ http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/
drivebyacct2 14y ago
I, for the heck of it, tried elementary OS in a VM on my Macbook Air. I can't stop using it. Except there's no smooth scrolling (there might be if it weren't in a VM). I'm tempted to grab a cheap XPS 13 and try it out for a bit.
ricardobeat 14y ago
So, if he spends 70% of his time in a terminal, and 30% in a browser, what is the advantage of the Linux laptop? It probably has worse battery life, is heavier and clunkier, has a shitty trackpad... And those patches will bite you in the ass on the first OS update (or when they are abandoned 6 months on). Other than it being cheaper, am I missing something?
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  Probably cost. His past 10 years were on Mac, which i'm sure worked nicely for him, but (i'll bet) was on average 1.5x to 2x more expensive. He's realizing that the old Penguin can finally give him what he needs for less.
expralitemonk 14y ago
I go to a coffee shop often and among other things, I notice people's machines and how they interact with them. Two observations: 1. People with non-Mac machines always plug their laptop into AC power before starting work (unless it's a netbook). My previous Windows laptop had battery life of about 2 hours while my Macbook Pro has about 5 hours. 2. People with non-Mac machines have to be very careful where they sit, or the glare from the outside makes it impossible for them to see their screens. This was my experience with a Windows laptop as well. With every new release the Mac operating system becomes, in my opinion, more complex and harder to use. Mac hardware on the other hand, just gets better.
- kami8845 14y ago
  This is pretty crappy generalization. Much more accurate would be to say "people with shitty laptops" or even better "people with laptops that have short battery life or glare screens". I have a non-Mac and I don't have to do either of the two things you listed. That's because I put great care into selecting my machine and because I don't like paying out the ass for Apple's overpriced laptops, although I know a lot of people who do. (I do have an iPhone 4S, but not because of the hardware)
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- antiterra 14y ago
  #2 also applies to most Macs, which is why I paid extra for a matte display on my Macbook Pro.
  - expralitemonk 14y ago
    Hmmm...I live in Florida so our outside glare is pretty bad. I have a one year old MacBook Pro and have never had a problem (even outside in the shade in the summertime). I'm sure there are very good Windows laptops. As the previous poster wrote, if you do your research, you can find one. I don't want to do research.* I want to walk into a store and say "I'll take that one," and have it work. * Useful, accurate online information on laptop battery life and other performance statistics is pretty much nonexistent. The only trustworthy information source is to ask strangers "How do you like your laptop?"
nicpottier 14y ago
Ironically the biggest reason for me to stick with OS X is Microsoft Office. If you are working with other organizations, they will use Office. Excel seems to run the world and is used for accounting, specifications, I've even seen customers give us mockups they have made of the website they want in Excel. The various tools on Linux or the web for reading Word docs have come a long way and I'd say are mostly good enough, but when it comes to complicated Excel spreadsheets, you have to use the real thing. If it wasn't for that I'd see Linux as a viable alternative. I'd miss Photoshop, but could get by with the Gimp. But for the time being MS keeps me solidly in the OS X camp.
- Riesling 14y ago
  You might want to try PlayOnLinux. I used it to install Photoshop on Ubuntu recently and the process was painless. Office is also supported. http://www.playonlinux.com/en/ http://www.playonlinux.com/en/
- vetler 14y ago
  If I need Windows, I use a virtual machine. Works very well, and I usually don't need to stay in Windows-land for a long time. YMMV, of course.
  - ville 14y ago
    The problem with this for me was that I used Windows so seldom that when I started it, it would spend a long time installing all the updates accumulated since the last time.
    - wwwtyro 14y ago
      I just decline to install them, myself.
bli 14y ago
i got warned the site is affected by Troj/Unif-B?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
lsiebert 14y ago
I'm on a thinkpad t530 dual booting Mint 13 (which is Unbuntu based for those that don't know) and Windows 7. screen is 1920 by 1080. The disadvantage Linux has to Windows or Mac OS X at this point is mostly small ease of use issues and polish. Sometimes to have to do stuff to make stuff work, though most stuff worked out of the box. The stuff that is easier to do in Linux is really easy to do. The stuff that is hard to do is sometimes really hard, but I've yet to find anything to be impossible. Where as with Windows and Mac OS X, some simple things are easy, some simple things things are difficult, and some things, especially anything unusual, seem impossible to do. I think where Ubuntu occasionally falls is in a lack of unity a focus on functionality before ease of use, and a tendency towards a tabla rasa. I'd probably be on xmonad (a tiling window manager) now if it came with a nice setup to start and then let you select from built in user set ups, tweak existing setups, OR make your own. But that's also part of the strength of the linux ecosystem, people build things to be interoperable and flexible and hackable. And for a Developer, the latter is preferable anyway. tl:dr Linux isn't the same as windows or OS X. But it is perfectly viable as a desktop OS. And where it rocks, it rocks hard.
chmars 14y ago
Just as a reminder: 'Linux Is A Lemon On The Retina MacBook Pro' http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple_mbpr_linux&num=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple...
- lucian1900 14y ago
  For now. Linux DEs are very close to full support for variable DPI, much better than Windows. It'll change as high DPI devices become more popular.
  - chmars 14y ago
    Variable DPI is only one factor, there are apparently many other problems with Linux on current MacBooks (and Apple is probably more to blame than Linux). For now, running Linux in a virtual machine seems to be the most convenient way on current MacBooks (MacBook Pro Retina, new MacBook Air).
kyriakos 14y ago
my question might sound stupid but how can you guys develop on such a small screen? I use eclipse and running that on anything less than 14inch seems like a struggle to work with. especially at 720p resolutions.
lispm 14y ago
What's a 'Linux Laptop'? Wasn't Linus Torvald using a Macbook Air ... with Linux?
- wwwtyro 14y ago
  Indeed. So do I; 12.04 runs flawlessly on it out of the box.
nicholassmith 14y ago
Well this is a bit of a weird post. It feels almost that light on content and discussion that it comes across a bit like a promo for Dell. I'll assume it isn't, as everyone should get the benefit of the doubt. I'm weird. I develop Linux applications, and I primarily do it on a Mac as I'm happier on OS X than most Linux distros.
keithpeter 14y ago
"I got a special version of Ubuntu, with some kernel patches, and some patched packages for sleep and hibernation." What version of Ubuntu is this hardware specific patched one? Are Canonical or Dell guranteeing updates? If so, for how long... Best of luck with it.
- dschep 14y ago
  All the custom stuff is in a PPA[1]. Some of the patches are already merged into Quantal. [1] https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-kernel https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-k...
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    Good work, especially the practice of merging the patches into main kernel.
ToesByNoon 14y ago
Cool, enjoy your piece of junk Dell laptop.
sigzero 14y ago
Dell has done this before and the service went away. I have zero confidence that won't happen again. Sorry Dell.
omi 14y ago
speeeling
mironathetin 14y ago
Is my impression right: Apple stops to be cool! Now that Apple becomes vastly popular with everybody, hackers, early adopters and other trendsetters start bashing Apple and look for different stuff. The parent post is only one in a growing number of others.
buster 14y ago
The Dell XPS 13 certainly looks nice. And Linux, woohoo! But after using 13" for the last year, 16" for 2 years and 15" for another 3 years, i think 13" is too small for me. Does someone know if there will be such a slick Laptop with 15 or 16"? Preferably FullHD display?
bproctor 14y ago
Photoshop. For a web developer, it's pretty much pointless to even talk about using Linux until this is taken care of.
- mironathetin 14y ago
  Even for someone who only has to prepare presentations from time to time and cares about the quality of the graphics, Photoshop is more or less not replaceable. I tried gimp for a while but it did not nearly qualify. Do you have any idea, if there is linux-software that comes somewhat close to photoshop?
endlessvoid94 14y ago
For the life of me, I can't figure out what's going on here. There's certainly nothing wrong with moving to another platform, but the emotion flying around here is pretty strange. It feels like people just really, really want to find a good reason to hate Apple.
headShrinker 14y ago
You had me until here "with some kernel patches, and some patched packages for sleep and hibernation. After an hour of struggling with making a bootable USB drive from my Mac for my Dell" I know how this goes. There is untold functionality that is broken. Likely you might not know what until later. Updating your OS will likely be a bitch. I like so many other people, don't have time to patch my computer and patch my servers, and patch my phone. I just need shit that works. I am willing to pay for that.
christopherorr 14y ago
Yet another vote for the Thinkpad X220. Made the move from a Macbook myself about six months ago. Tried out a long list of distributions and just about everything works out of the box if you're using a desktop environment like KDE. I'm now running Arch and Openbox which takes a bit of configuring but it makes for the quickest laptop I've ever owned. I won't deny OSX is a good, polished operating system but I can honestly say there's nothing I miss about it. I love the simplicity and the control Linux gives you over the system and I think Apple bury a lot of the nitty gritty but that's quite understandable really. Sure, there's been plenty of roadblocks along the way but I've enjoyed solving problems when they come up. More than anything, running Linux has provided a valuable learning experience.
iflowfor8hours 14y ago
I've been running mint on my x220 for about a year with absolutely no issues. Prior to that I was running ubuntu on an x61 for 3 years, also with no issues. I use an external monitor every day and unplug it every night and don't have to change a thing. It 'just works'.

170 points by gpapilion 14y ago

leh0n 14y ago

I switched from linux to mac recently because my Ubuntu 12.04 laptop would randomly freeze after waking from sleep. I tried like 3 different solutions that I had googled but none of them worked.

induscreep 14y ago

Can someone explain to me what exactly is wrong with the OS X terminal?

eropple 14y ago
Terminal.app often feels sort of clunky to me. I use iTerm2 instead--being able to split panes is really nice (no, I don't want to use tmux). The default userland is kind of annoying, in that a lot of utilities are BSD ones and aren't compatible with my imported-from-Linux scripts, aliases, etc., but that's just an install of coreutils away.
- Argorak 14y ago
  By the way, if you want to get the benefits of tmux with respect to attach, detach, but want to manage splits and tabs using the Terminal, iTerm2 has you covered: http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration
  - eropple 14y ago
    It does, but I'm still not a fan. I find its attach/detach on remote servers a little wonky.
- mangler 14y ago
  So what's wrong with it is that it feels clunky to you...
- X-Istence 14y ago
  Yeah, I get annoyed too when people use Linuxisms in scripts because they don't ever run right on FreeBSD.
  - eropple 14y ago
    "ls --color=auto" is not what I consider a "Linuxism", it's what I consider "basic functionality" (and yes I'm quite aware of BSD ls's -G, but it doesn't honor my other custom settings). I have no interest in rewriting all of my rc files and scripts to support BSD tools because doing so is a significant investment of time better spent elsewhere, moreso because of the simpler, easier option of installing GNU coreutils and findutils. I'm glad you could migrate your snark from Reddit, but it doesn't do a lot for a real conversation.
brian_cloutier 14y ago
It's been a while since I used it, but off the top of my head: - colors never worked right, you can certainly enable them but themes like solarized are impossible to get working. - it took forever to open. as in, a terminal on my machine is just a keypress away and it took the terminal on my osx machine a couple seconds to open a window, and even longer to show me a prompt - somehow they borked mouse input, so clicking the line you want to edit from within a vim session, for example, is a no-go. - this is a lion problem but terminal interacts with it especially badly, there's no easy way to open a second terminal window. I usually have tons of the things open and it's impossible to manage them properly.
- induscreep 14y ago
  Hmm I faced some of the same problems: - Colors work perfect with the tomorrow theme, kinda similar to solarized (https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/OS%20X%20Terminal https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/tree/master/O...) - I think I changed my shell to /bin/bash in the preferences, which fixed it - Haven't encountered this - Haven't encountered this
  - thealphanerd 14y ago
    Might i suggest trying iterm 2 http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    It's my understanding that bash has been the default shell in OSX for quite some time now, though I can't imagine tcsh started noticeably slower than it back when it was the default. On my incredibly underpowered machine the difference between the two is around 0.05s.
- thealphanerd 14y ago
  Might i suggest trying iterm 2 http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home
- Void_ 14y ago
rogerbinns 14y ago
One thing I don't like is you can't completely clear the scrollback, only the visible portion. I often use 'tput reset' when doing new build/test runs and it is nice when the scrollback only contains this time's output.
- AngryParsley 14y ago
  Cmd + k clears scrollback how you want. If you want to script it, you can use osascript: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/31872/how-do-i-reset-the-scrollback-in-the-terminal-via-a-shell-command http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/31872/how-do-i-rese... Yeah, it's hacky. It's a usability trade-off. Defaulting to allow scripts to erase all your scrollback would be pretty annoying in a lot of cases. Ideally there would be a checkbox for this behavior, but Apple doesn't like config options. One thing I wish terminals had was a "scroll up to the last place I typed something." I think that would solve your problem as well.
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    They are my scripts and I don't need "protection" from myself. Users don't use the command line so it isn't particular relevant to them - this is relevant to developers. I fully agree it shouldn't be an option, and that generally being highly configurable is a way of abdicating responsibility for making the right choices in the first place, and ensures that not everything is tested (there will be too many combinations of settings). In this particular case I just think Apple chose the wrong behaviour.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
unhammer 14y ago
For me it was a combination of things. For one, I use emacs and a Norwegian keyboard layout, and Apple handily ensures that '\' is only possible to type using both shift, option and 7. Now, since I'm an emacs user, typing meta+\ should mean command+option+shift+7. As if that wasn't bad enough, I never found a way to configure neither Terminal.app nor iTerm2 or whatever it's called such that I could get both option functionality and a meta key (perhaps this has been fixed later? been a couple years), so when ssh-ing I had to use esc, then option+shift+7. Combine this with how difficult it is to get a real dev environment set up, on debian-based systems you just apt-get install build-essential etc., similarly on Arch Linux, whereas on a Mac it was installing that whole XCode from a CD which included a bunch of stuff I never needed, then waiting for hours for macports to compile gcc etc. (I never understood why macports didn't go with precompiled binaries, mac's are so uniform compared to linuxes it should be _easier_, shouldn't it?). And then waiting for hours every time gcc etc. got an update, thinking "I thought I did this already, what is this, gentoo?" And the annoyance of having to install GNU sed and ensure it was before OS X sed in PATH because OS X sed was horribly slow on certain regexes (I think they had a \1 in them, can't remember), it felt so … inelegant. And most of the projects I use and like working on just seemed to have better Linux support; of course I could rant about how OS X is a POSIX too and they should support it just as well as Linux, but, well, I chose convenience. For the sake of my fingers and my patience.
- mironathetin 14y ago
  use an english keyboard, problem solved :o). I know, there are special keys ( I am german and we have special keys too). But that is solved with a handy tool named ukelele, that allows to change keyboard profiles. Very useful. Have you ever seen such a thing on linux?
jlgreco 14y ago
The few times I had to use it, I could not figure out how to turn off the chrome, though I suppose that is more of a general OSX complaint. Otherwise, color support at least used to be dreadful. I believe this has been fixed recently though? I think it still doesn't have proper mouse support though. Seems like a silly thing to have/want, but I find it very nice for resizing/focusing tmux panes/Vim windows, and scrolling in both.

digitalengineer 14y ago

This sums it up pretty nicely: "Ubuntu sucks but not on my Dell XPS 13, now I can -finally- ditch my Mac"

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

bravura 14y ago

tl;dr: I've been using Mac for ten years. "Two days ago I got my Dell XPS 13 as part of a Dell beta progam called project Sputnik." After two days of use, I haven't run into any serious roadblocks, so I'm not using Mac anymore. a) Is writing this blog post a requirement of the Sputnik program? b) Regardless of the answer to a), how do I get into the Sputnik program?

gpapilion 14y ago
a. They would like us to be vocal, but there is no strict requirement. b. Its as simple as installing this image you can find here on an XPS 13 : http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/ http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/

mangler 14y ago

This posted by Dell or something?! What's with the over-excitement?

fiatpandas 14y ago
The Dell program he is in encourages testers to be vocal about their experience.

ars 14y ago

Why are people voting up this article? There is nothing interesting in it. I'm genuinely curious about what people are finding interesting here.

mxxx 14y ago
agreed. the guy barely even mentions why he decided to move to linux, just that he did. or do people just like the sentiment?
- rz2k 14y ago
  I could imagine some interesting discussion about the relative merits between tcsh and bash given the stated history, but this has little if anything to do with crazy abstractions like graphical interfaces.
- emilis_info 14y ago
  Freedom of choice, being able to fix things yourself, ability to work on the same OS your server uses, being able to run old programs or on older/cheaper hardware -- all these and other things are not sentiments. Why are you guys complaining about a guy choosing Linux over Mac? Is it because of the sentiment? :-)
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    They're complaining because the article is light on the why he made the choice, just that he made the choice.
javert 14y ago
"I used to really like Linux, and I can prove it. But I'm not willing to compromise on getting stuff done, and I can prove it. But now I can use Linux without compromising, and I can prove it." Except he actually gives the proof. Although anecdotal, that information is useful if you care about the state of the Linux desktop for any of a variety of reasons. Though the real reason it's getting upvoted, I think, is: he has fabulous style. The post reads like a narrative, and he doesn't digress. And he has really clever subtitles and a great title.

fingerprinter 14y ago

I have a Lenovo x220 running Ubuntu 12.04. Aesthetics of the machine aside, it is the best setup I've ever used for a development machine. Ubuntu is by far (we're talking leaps and bounds) better than OSX for dev work and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the keyboard on the x220. I don't have a XPS 13, but I can see any reasonable machine loaded with Ubuntu being a developers dream. Honestly, any machine loaded with Ubuntu these days would be more than reasonable for a most anyone. PS. Did I say I love the keyboard on the x220? Because I do.

blrgeek 14y ago
Fingerprinter - same questions for you on the Lenovo x220 you use 1. What's the battery life like? 2. Are all devices supported with drivers - Bluetooth, 3D, graphics, sleep/wake, 802.11n, webcam, internal mike, ... 3. Does it do instant sleep/wake like a Mac - 100s of times without crashing/rebooting? 4. How does it handle external displays? Plug and play like a Mac? Does it handle display rotate? The internal display is only 1366x768 ? 5. Does it detect a headphone and switch from speaker to headphone automatically (speaker driver?) 6. How's the trackpad compare to a Macbook Pro? 7. How's the keyboard compare to a Macbook Pro? Asking because I moved from Linux->OSX a long time ago, and I wouldn't mind switching back if the hardware is right and more importantly the Linux drivers work well.
- unhammer 14y ago
  I've got Xubuntu on an X220. 1. About 5 hrs of web browsing (though I've gotten more once I was on a cabin w/o electricity and turned off wifi etc, there's a nice hardware switch to turn off all radio on the X220). About a year ago, there was this famous Linux Power Regression, where you had to append some stuff to your grub command line and worry about crashes. I tried it, and never got the crashes, and then they fixed the regression and I now run it unmodified with the same power usage. EDIT: there's several battery sizes, I think mine is the "medium" one, it sticks out a bit in the back … 2. Bluetooth: Tried it once, seemed OK. 3D: I don't really play games, but it seems to work w/o problems. Graphics just … work? Sleep/wake works just fine. No trouble with wifi. Webcam seems to work, but I've never tried video chat. I actually haven't tried the internal mike, maybe I should some day … 3. Yes. 4. Never tried. What's display rotate? It is unfortunately only 1366x768, yes. I tend to have one window on the left half and one on the right (got some keyboard shortcuts that do this for me even though I just run xfce). 5. Yes (isn't this handled by the hardware?) 6. Hehe … the trackpad is a bit weird: the buttons are on top. Takes a while getting used to. But it has the famous red Lenovo ball in the middle of the keyboard, which is nice for typists. And it has three mouse buttons! Scrolling works fine btw. 7. Infinitely better. You will never want to go back. If you really need OS X, buy a Lenovo and install it in Virtualbox, the keyboard is that good. Annoyances: it doesn't look as good, and on lending the computer to other people, they often take a while before understanding the trackpad buttons.

ifmw 14y ago

I'm glad to hear sleep and hibernate are improving on Linux laptops and I really hope more manufacturers will follow suit with their own initiatives like this. However, will any portable laptop get 7 hours of battery life on Linux with wifi on like the 13" Macbook Airs do?

steevdave 14y ago
Portable, yes, I do, although it's now almost two years old and the age shows when compiling. But on the other hand, I whip out my core i7, compile something and the battery is drained after an hour and a half. Disclaimer: the two year old machine is one our company used to make, and my version of development is on the Linux kernel or various packages like the MATE desktop.
macco 14y ago
Depends on the laptop :) But it's possible with low powered laptops.
klaasvakie 14y ago
I'm getting ~8 hours with wifi with Ubuntu 12.04 on an Asus Zenbook UX31E. Everything works out the box with no tweaking, see here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook If I had to buy now though, i'd get the UX31A (Full HD IPS in 13"), but looks like some things there don't work yet: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime
lucian1900 14y ago
I get about 6-7h if I don't do much more than use a browser, on a Thinkpad E325 (AMD). Playing a game it's about 2-3h, but it doesn't seem to ever overheat.

blrgeek 14y ago

1. What's the battery life like? 2. Are all devices supported with drivers - Bluetooth, 3D, graphics, sleep/wake, 802.11n, webcam, internal mike, ... 3. Does it do instant sleep/wake like a Mac - 100s of times without crashing/rebooting? 4. How does it handle external displays? Plug and play like a Mac? Does it handle display rotate? The internal display is only 1366x768 ? 5. Does it detect a headphone and switch from speaker to headphone automatically (speaker driver?) 6. How's the trackpad compare to a Macbook Pro? 7. How's the keyboard compare to a Macbook Pro? Asking because I moved from Linux->OSX a long time ago, and I wouldn't mind switching back if the hardware is right and more importantly the Linux drivers work well.

batgaijin 14y ago
1). Depends on ACPI support 2). Depends on the hardware, but surprisingly yes. Even the free Nouveau drivers do pretty decent 3d support. 3). Yep, configure it to suspend on closing the lid. 4). Depends on the wm you want. 5). Usually yes. 6). Pretty good, in fact you can enable the two finger scroll pretty easily. 7). More configurable. If you are considering a switch, I'd recommend installing Fedora or Ubuntu, they usually have pretty amazing defaults. However, if you are considering this using a Macbook/Mac, be prepared for a lot more effort.
- blrgeek 14y ago
  Actually - no offense - I'm looking for specific info on the drivers on this system than a generic response. I've heard far too often 'depends on driver/acpi support' to go down that road again :) Which specific system are you basing your answers on? Can you be more specific on (6) - how many points does the multitouch support?
  - anonymouz 14y ago
    For Thinkpads what you list under 2) will usually work without hiccups. Generally, Intel is very good with its driver support, so try to pick a laptop with Intel WiFi & GPU. Depending on your needs you may want an nVidia or ATI GPU though. Can't say anything on multitouch with the Touchpad, since I don't use it.

cloudwalking 14y ago

70% terminal, 30% browser. Sounds like he needs a Chromebook.

WiseWeasel 14y ago
Yah, except he'd be 70% SOL.
- cloudwalking 14y ago
  Na, Chromebooks have a full terminal built in.
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    Interesting; I did not know that was possible. But can you install AMP and do web dev on it? That's what the author was using it for.

perfunctory 14y ago

"I spend 70% of my time in a terminal, and 30% of my time in a web browser" One didn't have to wait till 2012 to be able to do that.

abrahamsen 14y ago
He was also a Linux user in 1998. The main difference seems to be that he now uses Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office, and thus spends more time in the browser.
dredmorbius 14y ago
There was a period there in the early-mid 2000s in which an unfortunate number of websites, and rather more corporate / enterprise web-based tools (intranet or external portal) were very highly MSIE dependent. There were workarounds, and some of us stayed largely independent (absent a few VMs or Windows Terminal Server sessions), but it was fairly ugly. The embrace of Web standards by major players (thank you Google, and I don't say this often, Facebook) and availability of cross-platform standards-compliant browsers (thank you Mozilla and Google), and even the resurgence of Macs (thank you, Apple) have helped. That and the fact that proprietary application format usage for standard desktop functions (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) has dwindled dramatically. I won't say it's gone by any stretch, but even Microsoft touts open standards, and far more often you'll encounter Wikis, Google Docs, or git.

randomafrican 14y ago

Sophos tell me that this site is blocked because of Troj/Unif-B. Did it happen to anyone else ?

tathastu 14y ago
Sophos had a false positive bug today: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/09/19/sshupdater-b-fsophos-anti-virus-products/ http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/09/19/sshupdater-b-fsop...
- bli 14y ago
  had the Troj/Unif-B warning too! seems to be an other warning then the false positive one!

atas 14y ago

Three major grammar mistakes. And nothing interesting.

fierarul 14y ago

> Two days ago I got my Dell XPS 13 as part of a Dell beta progam called project Sputnik. This makes it unclear if I can actually buy this thing (in Europe). >I got a special version of Ubuntu, with some kernel patches, and some patched packages for sleep and hibernation. Why isn't this in the official Ubuntu distro? I don't trust binaries from Dell.

takluyver 14y ago
Looks like they're bringing forward some fixes that the regular kernel is more cautious with. That makes sense, because they only have to worry about one set of hardware. There are PPAs with the patched packages: https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-kernel https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-k... https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-policykit https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-p...
- fierarul 14y ago
  Hm, I guess it's better seing that it's Canonical doing the patches although I would prefer for these things to be part of the upstream kernel or at least of the official Ubuntu ISO. Right now the http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/ http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/ link warns you "this image is not considered an official Ubuntu release"; "this image is for demo purposes only". Not very reassuring. Still, it does put the Dell XPS on my watch list.
gman99 14y ago
From a comment further up: http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/ http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-q/dellxps/

drivebyacct2 14y ago

I, for the heck of it, tried elementary OS in a VM on my Macbook Air. I can't stop using it. Except there's no smooth scrolling (there might be if it weren't in a VM). I'm tempted to grab a cheap XPS 13 and try it out for a bit.

ricardobeat 14y ago

So, if he spends 70% of his time in a terminal, and 30% in a browser, what is the advantage of the Linux laptop? It probably has worse battery life, is heavier and clunkier, has a shitty trackpad... And those patches will bite you in the ass on the first OS update (or when they are abandoned 6 months on). Other than it being cheaper, am I missing something?

peterwwillis 14y ago
Probably cost. His past 10 years were on Mac, which i'm sure worked nicely for him, but (i'll bet) was on average 1.5x to 2x more expensive. He's realizing that the old Penguin can finally give him what he needs for less.

expralitemonk 14y ago

I go to a coffee shop often and among other things, I notice people's machines and how they interact with them. Two observations: 1. People with non-Mac machines always plug their laptop into AC power before starting work (unless it's a netbook). My previous Windows laptop had battery life of about 2 hours while my Macbook Pro has about 5 hours. 2. People with non-Mac machines have to be very careful where they sit, or the glare from the outside makes it impossible for them to see their screens. This was my experience with a Windows laptop as well. With every new release the Mac operating system becomes, in my opinion, more complex and harder to use. Mac hardware on the other hand, just gets better.

kami8845 14y ago
This is pretty crappy generalization. Much more accurate would be to say "people with shitty laptops" or even better "people with laptops that have short battery life or glare screens". I have a non-Mac and I don't have to do either of the two things you listed. That's because I put great care into selecting my machine and because I don't like paying out the ass for Apple's overpriced laptops, although I know a lot of people who do. (I do have an iPhone 4S, but not because of the hardware)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
antiterra 14y ago
#2 also applies to most Macs, which is why I paid extra for a matte display on my Macbook Pro.
- expralitemonk 14y ago
  Hmmm...I live in Florida so our outside glare is pretty bad. I have a one year old MacBook Pro and have never had a problem (even outside in the shade in the summertime). I'm sure there are very good Windows laptops. As the previous poster wrote, if you do your research, you can find one. I don't want to do research.* I want to walk into a store and say "I'll take that one," and have it work. * Useful, accurate online information on laptop battery life and other performance statistics is pretty much nonexistent. The only trustworthy information source is to ask strangers "How do you like your laptop?"

nicpottier 14y ago

Ironically the biggest reason for me to stick with OS X is Microsoft Office. If you are working with other organizations, they will use Office. Excel seems to run the world and is used for accounting, specifications, I've even seen customers give us mockups they have made of the website they want in Excel. The various tools on Linux or the web for reading Word docs have come a long way and I'd say are mostly good enough, but when it comes to complicated Excel spreadsheets, you have to use the real thing. If it wasn't for that I'd see Linux as a viable alternative. I'd miss Photoshop, but could get by with the Gimp. But for the time being MS keeps me solidly in the OS X camp.

Riesling 14y ago
You might want to try PlayOnLinux. I used it to install Photoshop on Ubuntu recently and the process was painless. Office is also supported. http://www.playonlinux.com/en/ http://www.playonlinux.com/en/
vetler 14y ago
If I need Windows, I use a virtual machine. Works very well, and I usually don't need to stay in Windows-land for a long time. YMMV, of course.
- ville 14y ago
  The problem with this for me was that I used Windows so seldom that when I started it, it would spend a long time installing all the updates accumulated since the last time.
  - wwwtyro 14y ago
    I just decline to install them, myself.

bli 14y ago

i got warned the site is affected by Troj/Unif-B?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

lsiebert 14y ago

I'm on a thinkpad t530 dual booting Mint 13 (which is Unbuntu based for those that don't know) and Windows 7. screen is 1920 by 1080. The disadvantage Linux has to Windows or Mac OS X at this point is mostly small ease of use issues and polish. Sometimes to have to do stuff to make stuff work, though most stuff worked out of the box. The stuff that is easier to do in Linux is really easy to do. The stuff that is hard to do is sometimes really hard, but I've yet to find anything to be impossible. Where as with Windows and Mac OS X, some simple things are easy, some simple things things are difficult, and some things, especially anything unusual, seem impossible to do. I think where Ubuntu occasionally falls is in a lack of unity a focus on functionality before ease of use, and a tendency towards a tabla rasa. I'd probably be on xmonad (a tiling window manager) now if it came with a nice setup to start and then let you select from built in user set ups, tweak existing setups, OR make your own. But that's also part of the strength of the linux ecosystem, people build things to be interoperable and flexible and hackable. And for a Developer, the latter is preferable anyway. tl:dr Linux isn't the same as windows or OS X. But it is perfectly viable as a desktop OS. And where it rocks, it rocks hard.

chmars 14y ago

Just as a reminder: 'Linux Is A Lemon On The Retina MacBook Pro' http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple_mbpr_linux&num=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple...

lucian1900 14y ago
For now. Linux DEs are very close to full support for variable DPI, much better than Windows. It'll change as high DPI devices become more popular.
- chmars 14y ago
  Variable DPI is only one factor, there are apparently many other problems with Linux on current MacBooks (and Apple is probably more to blame than Linux). For now, running Linux in a virtual machine seems to be the most convenient way on current MacBooks (MacBook Pro Retina, new MacBook Air).

kyriakos 14y ago

my question might sound stupid but how can you guys develop on such a small screen? I use eclipse and running that on anything less than 14inch seems like a struggle to work with. especially at 720p resolutions.

lispm 14y ago

What's a 'Linux Laptop'? Wasn't Linus Torvald using a Macbook Air ... with Linux?

wwwtyro 14y ago
Indeed. So do I; 12.04 runs flawlessly on it out of the box.

nicholassmith 14y ago

Well this is a bit of a weird post. It feels almost that light on content and discussion that it comes across a bit like a promo for Dell. I'll assume it isn't, as everyone should get the benefit of the doubt. I'm weird. I develop Linux applications, and I primarily do it on a Mac as I'm happier on OS X than most Linux distros.

keithpeter 14y ago

"I got a special version of Ubuntu, with some kernel patches, and some patched packages for sleep and hibernation." What version of Ubuntu is this hardware specific patched one? Are Canonical or Dell guranteeing updates? If so, for how long... Best of luck with it.

dschep 14y ago
All the custom stuff is in a PPA[1]. Some of the patches are already merged into Quantal. [1] https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-kernel https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-k...
- keithpeter 14y ago
  Good work, especially the practice of merging the patches into main kernel.

ToesByNoon 14y ago

Cool, enjoy your piece of junk Dell laptop.

sigzero 14y ago

Dell has done this before and the service went away. I have zero confidence that won't happen again. Sorry Dell.

omi 14y ago

speeeling

mironathetin 14y ago

Is my impression right: Apple stops to be cool! Now that Apple becomes vastly popular with everybody, hackers, early adopters and other trendsetters start bashing Apple and look for different stuff. The parent post is only one in a growing number of others.

buster 14y ago

The Dell XPS 13 certainly looks nice. And Linux, woohoo! But after using 13" for the last year, 16" for 2 years and 15" for another 3 years, i think 13" is too small for me. Does someone know if there will be such a slick Laptop with 15 or 16"? Preferably FullHD display?

bproctor 14y ago

Photoshop. For a web developer, it's pretty much pointless to even talk about using Linux until this is taken care of.

mironathetin 14y ago
Even for someone who only has to prepare presentations from time to time and cares about the quality of the graphics, Photoshop is more or less not replaceable. I tried gimp for a while but it did not nearly qualify. Do you have any idea, if there is linux-software that comes somewhat close to photoshop?

endlessvoid94 14y ago

For the life of me, I can't figure out what's going on here. There's certainly nothing wrong with moving to another platform, but the emotion flying around here is pretty strange. It feels like people just really, really want to find a good reason to hate Apple.

headShrinker 14y ago

You had me until here "with some kernel patches, and some patched packages for sleep and hibernation. After an hour of struggling with making a bootable USB drive from my Mac for my Dell" I know how this goes. There is untold functionality that is broken. Likely you might not know what until later. Updating your OS will likely be a bitch. I like so many other people, don't have time to patch my computer and patch my servers, and patch my phone. I just need shit that works. I am willing to pay for that.

christopherorr 14y ago

Yet another vote for the Thinkpad X220. Made the move from a Macbook myself about six months ago. Tried out a long list of distributions and just about everything works out of the box if you're using a desktop environment like KDE. I'm now running Arch and Openbox which takes a bit of configuring but it makes for the quickest laptop I've ever owned. I won't deny OSX is a good, polished operating system but I can honestly say there's nothing I miss about it. I love the simplicity and the control Linux gives you over the system and I think Apple bury a lot of the nitty gritty but that's quite understandable really. Sure, there's been plenty of roadblocks along the way but I've enjoyed solving problems when they come up. More than anything, running Linux has provided a valuable learning experience.

iflowfor8hours 14y ago

I've been running mint on my x220 for about a year with absolutely no issues. Prior to that I was running ubuntu on an x61 for 3 years, also with no issues. I use an external monitor every day and unplug it every night and don't have to change a thing. It 'just works'.