4 ms·

Ah yes, Linux on a laptop: wifi, sleep, graphics - pick any two

by JakaJancar 8mo ago

dgan 8mo ago
Hm i have all three
- OhMeadhbh 8mo ago
  Dell XPS? They were pretty good there for modern-ish devices. Not so much for random Inspirons. Lenovo had fairly decent support for their midrange on up models. HP makes crap, so it's unlikely I'll every touch another HP laptop in my lifetime. But... I think the poster above should have said something like "pick any two (for a depressingly large number of laptop models.)" Also see my post above about what seems to be XPS models falling out of support after eight years or so.
OhMeadhbh 8mo ago
Lol. Yes. I would like to say that's not true... and for quite a while my Dell XPS would do all three, but it wasn't a cheap device. I think their driver team isn't supporting my 8 year old XPS anymore as sleeping is... problematic. And power management on linux laptops has always been worse than windows. But... I will gnaw my left arm off before I go back to Mach or WinNT. (Maybe I'll try using HaikuOS as my daily driver...) Though... fwiw... I've been running a non-x version of leenucks and then booting into a X and experimental Wayland FreeBSD VM via KVM and it seems to work well. I can halt the machine and save state in about a minute and then turn off the hardware. I come back later and restore. It's not a seamless operation, but I'm happy to live with it. It's also pretty easy to checkpoint the virtual disk before installing the bazillion packages I sometimes have to install to test out various python extensions. So all I have to do is revert to a checkpoint and all that crap is gone. I don't have to worry about remembering which packages I have to manually uninstall.
Orygin 8mo ago
It's not 2005 anymore, most distros work 100% on install
- cpursley 8mo ago
  Maybe. And then what’s battery life like - half, one 3rd?
  - c0n5pir4cy 8mo ago
    Mostly similar - sometimes better, sometimes worse. It's not 2005 anymore.
  - leetnewb 8mo ago
    I have an x86 HP tablet that dual boots Windows 11 and Linux. I don't have specific numbers, but battery life is better on the Linux side.
  - Orygin 8mo ago
    It's better than Windows, but obviously worse than Mac (both hardware and software reasons). My laptops don't kill themselves waking up in my bags so I could argue it's at least 5x better than windows. Things moved on nicely in 20 years, you should try it for yourself.
    - cpursley 8mo ago
      Where did I say I haven’t?
      - Orygin 8mo ago
        You wouldn't be asking questions like this if you had, you'd know the same answers found in this thread.
        cpursley 8mo ago
        Just like the other replier, people who put words into others mouths are extremely annoying. And in both of your cases, come off as fanatical. I'd love to run Linux on a laptop (and have tried many times) but have actual work to get done.
orwin 8mo ago
I've never had any WiFi issues, and I think most people who started using Linux in the mid 2010s have the same experience. Graphic though, yes (I had as much sleep issues on windows than on Linux). Especially the dual graphics intel/Nvidia. I still have to force environment variables to launch my games with the correct GC

Ah yes, Linux on a laptop: wifi, sleep, graphics - pick any two

dgan 8mo ago

Hm i have all three

OhMeadhbh 8mo ago
Dell XPS? They were pretty good there for modern-ish devices. Not so much for random Inspirons. Lenovo had fairly decent support for their midrange on up models. HP makes crap, so it's unlikely I'll every touch another HP laptop in my lifetime. But... I think the poster above should have said something like "pick any two (for a depressingly large number of laptop models.)" Also see my post above about what seems to be XPS models falling out of support after eight years or so.

OhMeadhbh 8mo ago

Lol. Yes. I would like to say that's not true... and for quite a while my Dell XPS would do all three, but it wasn't a cheap device. I think their driver team isn't supporting my 8 year old XPS anymore as sleeping is... problematic. And power management on linux laptops has always been worse than windows. But... I will gnaw my left arm off before I go back to Mach or WinNT. (Maybe I'll try using HaikuOS as my daily driver...) Though... fwiw... I've been running a non-x version of leenucks and then booting into a X and experimental Wayland FreeBSD VM via KVM and it seems to work well. I can halt the machine and save state in about a minute and then turn off the hardware. I come back later and restore. It's not a seamless operation, but I'm happy to live with it. It's also pretty easy to checkpoint the virtual disk before installing the bazillion packages I sometimes have to install to test out various python extensions. So all I have to do is revert to a checkpoint and all that crap is gone. I don't have to worry about remembering which packages I have to manually uninstall.

Orygin 8mo ago

It's not 2005 anymore, most distros work 100% on install

cpursley 8mo ago
Maybe. And then what’s battery life like - half, one 3rd?
- c0n5pir4cy 8mo ago
  Mostly similar - sometimes better, sometimes worse. It's not 2005 anymore.
- leetnewb 8mo ago
  I have an x86 HP tablet that dual boots Windows 11 and Linux. I don't have specific numbers, but battery life is better on the Linux side.
- Orygin 8mo ago
  It's better than Windows, but obviously worse than Mac (both hardware and software reasons). My laptops don't kill themselves waking up in my bags so I could argue it's at least 5x better than windows. Things moved on nicely in 20 years, you should try it for yourself.
  - cpursley 8mo ago
    Where did I say I haven’t?
    - Orygin 8mo ago
      You wouldn't be asking questions like this if you had, you'd know the same answers found in this thread.
      - cpursley 8mo ago
        Just like the other replier, people who put words into others mouths are extremely annoying. And in both of your cases, come off as fanatical. I'd love to run Linux on a laptop (and have tried many times) but have actual work to get done.

orwin 8mo ago

I've never had any WiFi issues, and I think most people who started using Linux in the mid 2010s have the same experience. Graphic though, yes (I had as much sleep issues on windows than on Linux). Especially the dual graphics intel/Nvidia. I still have to force environment variables to launch my games with the correct GC