10 ms·

After running Linux on MacBooks for the past 5 years I would strongly recommend against it. The basics usually work fine but you are constantly dealing with iss

by darren0 12y ago

After running Linux on MacBooks for the past 5 years I would strongly recommend against it. The basics usually work fine but you are constantly dealing with issues. Each MacBook revision introduces some new issue. For example the webcam recently switched from being usb attached to being attached to the PCI bus and Linux doesn't have drivers yet. Other things like GPU switching, multi monitor, display brightness, all have quirks. Just recently I gave up getting MacBooks to work with Linux and went back to ThinkPads and I couldn't be more happy. Granted you can still buy ThinkPads that have similar issues as the MacBooks. The difference is that you can find a ThinkPad (or some other brand) that works practically flawlessly. With the current line of MacBooks, not a single one doesn't have huge issues (like the webcam).

progman 12y ago
Which ThinkPad models work flawlessly for you?
- peatmoss 12y ago
  Not a high-end machine, but my wife recently got an x140e for peanuts (< $300 for the laptop during the XMas season sales, plus ~$150 to upgrade to an SSD + 8 GB RAM). She was upgrading from a Chromebook and decided that Linux fit her immediate use case better than Windows. My only guidance in this was, "plug in an ethernet cable during installation." Every single piece of hardware--touchpad, sound, webcam, suspend, wifi, etc.--worked out of the box. This machine is solidly built, and reasonably attractive. I'd say the thing that dropped the price was its weight. Functionally, it's easily a replacement for my MacBook Air or better. Physically, it's like three MacBook Airs stacked on top of each other. Sorry, forgot to mention linux distro. She is running stock Ubuntu 14.04 with Unity. Unity might get some hate from some segments, but seeing a novice user take to it with zero guidance was illuminating to me.
- davidy123 12y ago
  I've install Linux (typically Ubuntu) on an x60, x220, t400s, and now t530 and everything (except the fingerprint reader, which I don't care about) worked out of the box. Lenovo even mentions Linux in their material, which means a lot and is worthy of support.
- dagar 12y ago
  Any X or T series with intel video tends to work pretty well. I've personally had great results with Ubuntu on a T410, T420, T520, T530, X1, X60 in the last few years.
  - privong 12y ago
    I will add the X201 to that list. I have been using one, exclusively with linux, for the past 4 years.
    - vacri 12y ago
      I would remove the x201 from the list. It works fine with linux, but the TN screen is absolutely awful. The viewing angle is so narrow that even sited dead in front of it, I can't watch a video without some of the blacks looking wrong. This comment was typed on my own 4-year-old x201 :)
      - mng2 12y ago
        If you're talking about the 1400x900 screen, I agree, the viewing sweet spot is nearly nonexistent. I actually swapped out the top shell of my X200s and so I could put in an AFFS panel. (Running Mint 17.1, which broke the display popup for brightness, but curiously not for audio.)
      - ne0phyte 12y ago
        I replaced the TN screen of my x201 with a Boe Hydis AFFS panel with IPS like viewing angles and contrast so I would _not_ remove it from the list. It's a great laptop and you can get them really cheap used (I've never bought a ThinkPad new so far).
        vacri 12y ago
        I would remove it again, because if you don't already have an x201, you may as well buy an x220 instead of an x201 + replacement screen + labour (and the low risk you'll damage something in the swapover). You'll get slightly better specs in the deal. Looking on ebay now, x220s are only AU$100-200 more than x201s. Anyway, if you're going to mod laptops to say that they're good, then many laptops will re-enter the fray :)
- saosebastiao 12y ago
  I recently bought a T420 for $300. After upgrading my ram to 8G and the stock hard drive to a samsung SSD, the laptop is easily a better overall laptop than my wife's MacBook Pro. I'm running Ubuntu, although I may switch to Arch soon, but I haven't had any problems with drivers in Ubuntu and would imagine the same would go for Arch. So far, the only relative downsides compared to the MBP have been: 1) Battery life, although mostly fixed with TLP[a] 2) Keyboard quality...sometimes feels like some keys have more resistance than others 3) Screen contrast. My wife's MBP isn't a retina, but it still has much better resolution and contrast. [a] http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-man...
  - japhyr 12y ago
    I have a t420s, and replacing the DVD with a bay battery was a very worthwhile trade.
    - saosebastiao 12y ago
      Do you have any links to these batteries? I'm very interested.
      - desdiv 12y ago
        Try the keywords "ultrabay slim battery".
      - lorenzhs 12y ago
        IIRC they only work with the T420s, not the T420. I might be wrong though, but Lenovo definitely removed the connectors that are required for that in some models of the T series at some point in time...
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  T530 here. Works flawless. Everything, from the function keys, to the webcam, to the fingerprint reader.
- kh_hk 12y ago
  With the X220, you can get a beefy i7 full of ram quite cheap on ebay. Not as happy as with the X60, but the upgrade was worth it.
- binky 12y ago
  Not all models are seamless in ThinkPad land. My X240 has Realtek wireless and it refused to work with any kernel earlier than 3.16 (Ubuntu < 14.10). Recognized on recent ones, but can't resume from Suspend.
- xorcist 12y ago
  Have had the T40, T60, X60 and X220. Suspend many times per day. No issues ever, except with fans and hard disks dying on me. Built like tanks.
- pizza234 12y ago
  I had, and all worked flawlessly: a X201s, a W520, and a Helix. I think that for a few weeks I even worked full-time on the X201s with Hackintosh.
- tbrock 12y ago
  Basically all of them. Linux loves thinkpads. I've personally run it on an old 770ED, T41P, T60, X301, and X1 Carbon flawlessly over decades.
- rakel_rakel 12y ago
  I'm currently running arch on an x240, and it works perfectly. I have also had really good experiences with x1 carbon (v2), x220 and x201. I've ran several different distros on macbooks too, mostly flavours of debian/ubuntu, but also arch and gentoo. In my experience it's all about the amount of work you're willing to put in, but you can defenitely more often than not, get a good setup running on macs(least the machines I tried it on). The silver lining of getting arch to run on a machine that's not really "plug and play" is that you get to learn a lot of it's internals during install. I would recommend it to anyone with an intrest in linux desktop systems :)
  - mdewinter 12y ago
    x240 here as well, except for (documented on the arch wiki) boot grub parameters for the acpi (brightness, suspend etc) it all works out of the box. Battery life with the extended 2 batteries is about 9 hours.
- Eldandan 12y ago
  T61 on Xubuntu 14.10 working great! Like others though, there is always a 'but': -correctly installed and configured Thinkfan to control fan speed. The default is a bit annoying.
- gcb0 12y ago
  > Which ThinkPad models work flawlessly for you? top of the line T models and some X models. anything else is worse than the cheapest toshiba or acer. if you doubt, buy yourself an E series for example. Lousy flimsy plastic quality, and all the corner cutting for costs that you find in an apple (like soldered RAM, devices changing bus based on what they found cheap on the market at that month, etc)
- JosephRedfern 12y ago
  I've not experienced any issues running Ubuntu (and Debian, as you'd expect) on both the T430 and the X230
fit2rule 12y ago
All of these issues can change - by people running Linux on their Macbooks, encountering the issues you describe - and then, scratching the itch and fixing the problem. But of course, unless someone actually tries, the itch never arises. So your discouragement could be interpreted as an attempt to reduce the effectiveness of Linux on the Macbook platform. Why would you actually encourage that?
- sroerick 12y ago
  Maybe he doesn't want to spend his time or his energy needlessly tinkering with a system for which the manufacturer doesn't give a damn about supporting linux, despite having used the code to build their own, proprietary operating system. All these issues could also be solved if Apple opened up their hardware. We would also collectively have many more hours to develop other FLOSS software. Why are you putting the onus of blame on OP?
  - GuiA 12y ago
    I have a hard time understanding the logical reasoning behind your post, but would love to. Are you implying that Apple went against the terms of a license under which code they used was placed? Or are you implying that even when you fully respect a license, you additionally have a moral obligation to follow certain rules unwritten in the license (which include opening up hardware, according to your post)?
    - sroerick 12y ago
      Neither. I was responding to the parent comment, which was implying that OP was somehow shirking his duties as a Linux user by not using hardware with broken driver support. I was suggesting that OP has better things to do than fix drivers that Apple couldn't give a damn about supporting.
      - fit2rule 12y ago
        My response to the OP was not predicated on his/her personal non-desire to contribute to the expansion of Linux capabilities, but more his call for people "to just give up because its not worth it", which is a specious position for any hacker to be in, imho ..
redthrow 12y ago
In addition to Thinkpads, I would recommend Acer C720 which costs around $200 and everything works out of the box because a dedicated developer created distros just for C720. https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/12/ https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/12/ If you are not a gamer this is a perfect machine for Linux users. I really like this distro-per-hardware approach because people don't have to duplicate efforts in hunting for and following complex and lengthy tutorials and applying fixes.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  I'd also like to recommend the UX* line of ultrabooks from Asus. They range from decently-priced to fairly expensive and they are absolutely fantastic. They all work flawlessly on Linux (though I did not test the touchscreen from UX303LN on Linux yet). They are also really nice laptops. Similar feel to the Macbook Air. (I do not work for Asus)
  - cfallin 12y ago
    The UX302LA is great, especially after swapping the spinning disk for an SSD and maxing out the RAM. I had lots of issues with the graphics when I first bought it (April 2014), though, and had to run with a kernel patch to the 'quirks' code in the display-panel detection. Fortunately a dedicated developer put all this together with a kernel build script ([1]) so it wasn't too bad (... for an experienced Linux guy) to get Arch running. In general though I think several-year-old ThinkPads are more painless because stuff like that has made it back to mainline already. [1] https://bitbucket.org/motley/kernel_asus_ux302/src https://bitbucket.org/motley/kernel_asus_ux302/src
  - jbk 12y ago
    I concur. I just wish they did a version with 16GB of RAM.
  - redthrow 12y ago
    Can you suggest a particular model that people can buy today? Do they work flawlessly out of the box without fiddling with configuration files?
Diederich 12y ago
I also started running Linux on macbooks in 2009, three of them so far. I get them from the companies I've been working for. In general, I agree with you. It can be challenging, but as long as you don't have the bleeding edge macbook, the latest Ubuntu tends to work pretty well. The 2014 macbook pro I'm using now has everything working on Ubuntu 2014 LTS except suspend and the thunder bolt ports for video. Those are kind of a big deal, but I don't need them and I really like to run Linux on the exceptional mac hardware, so I take the hit. When I do need to project a presentation, I just boot it into OSX. Again, that might not work for most, but I'm fine with it. I just really like to run Linux on the bare metal mac hardware.
- kayoone 12y ago
  Sounds like a lot of compromises in daily usage just to be able to run Linux. I'd much rather put up with OSX, which i find is a rather compelling development platform but also has it's shortcomings of course.
cgb_ 12y ago
FWIW, I've been using linux on desktop/laptops for 16 years, and for last 1 1/2 years, I've been running Linux (Fedora, awesomewm) on VMware Fusion, on OSX, on a Macbook Air 2013 (June), and it's the smoothest Linux laptop experience I've ever had. When you think about it, all I'm doing is abstracting the hardware to a hypervisor, and the OS that hypervisor is hosted on is responsible for all hardware management. I continue to get 10-14 hour battery runtime, never ever had a failed suspend/resume, and every single hardware component is fully supported. Barely any other laptop can compare to it for battery life and the hardware itself is the best laptop experience I've had (although I do miss my 'pointing stick' from Toshiba or IBM/Lenovo gear). I'm surprised more people haven't suggested this.
- rifung 12y ago
  Thanks for sharing; I think I may have to consider this for my next upgrade!
- veidr 12y ago
  I've been doing this for years, too. The huge advantage is that you can update your MacBook to the latest version frequently, without having to deal with all the pain points the GP describes. The same benefits accrue even more so for Windows; not because of hardware incompatibility (there are Windows drivers for all Macbook hardware) but because of system decrepitude. I have never had a physical machine that booted Windows for 7 years (or even 2 years) that didn't become hopelessly fucked up, whether due to installing some weird open source thing, malware, or Windows Update. But I have had the same 3 Windows VMs (XP, 7, and 8.1) running since the day I installed Windows on them, albeit with significant help from my frequent use of VMWare Fusion's snapshot feature. The only big drawback is graphics performance -- if you want to play games I don't think you would be happy with the solution, but it works great for virtually any other usage.
- metapunk 12y ago
  I do the same and also have a wonderful experience with Fedora running as a guest in VMware Fusion on a Macbook Pro Retina.
- tmandry 12y ago
imsofuture 12y ago
I've been running Ubuntu (12.04+14.04)+NixOS on my Macbook Air with zero issues for the past ~2 years. (Oh, suspend doesn't work, but my laptop is plugged in 99% of the time, and I haven't undertaken any effort to make it work.) That said, I do plan on buying a not-Macbook next time around.
- dima55 12y ago
  Hi. FYI "suspend doesn't work" is a major issue on a laptop.
cbd1984 12y ago
I personally have had a good experience buying a LC2430E from LinuxCertified.com, which sells laptops with Linux pre-installed (for no additional fee) and, as an option, dual-booting with Windows (for an additional fee which can't be much more than the cost of a Windows license, from what I saw). http://www.linuxcertified.com/ http://www.linuxcertified.com/ I mean, as long as we're doing product reviews.
espeed 12y ago
The new 2015 edition of the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 15 laptops are coming out in February with Ubuntu 14.04... http://www.zdnet.com/article/ces-2015-dell-refreshes-high-end-xps-business-laptop-line/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/ces-2015-dell-refreshes-high-en... You can select Ubuntu for the OS here, but the estimated ship date is Jan 29, 2015... http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/fs http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/fs
wyclif 12y ago
Why not do what a lot of devs do now, which is run OS X on the MacBook and run Linux in a VM?
- benaiah 12y ago
  Not OP, but that setup drastically reduces battery life and performance, since you're running two OSes at the same time.
  - JohnBooty 12y ago
    Not drastically, unless you're doing heavy I/O. Most non-budget desktop/laptop CPUs have had hardware acceleration for virtualization for close to a decade now.
    - wyclif 12y ago
      What do you think the pros/cons are if you're running Linux in VMWare Fusion or VirtualBox?
      - neurostimulant 12y ago
        It's fine for most development works, but not ideal if you regularly need to run i/o or cpu-heavy stuff due to virtualization overhead (e.g. gaming, simulation, etc).
      - JohnBooty 12y ago
        Number one pro, besides not having to deal with hardware issues, is the total ease of backing up and snapshotting your Linux VM. About to install a Arch/Ubuntu/Debian system update and you're not sure if it will break things? No problem. Take a snapshot of your VM. Do whatever you want. Problems? Just roll it back to an earlier snapshot. You can also back your VM up onto an external drive or move it to another machine easily. If my laptop dies or gets stolen you can be back up and running pretty quickly by running your VM on another computer. The main con would probably be a potential shortage of RAM if you have 4GB or less. Really depends on your workload and software of choice, obviously. The I/O thing is not a huge deal for most development work. Disk I/O is still fast if you're on an SSD.
neillyons 12y ago
There are a couple problems with running Linux on MacBook Pro's but I wouldn't recommend against it. I think if you like Linux go for it :) My mid 2010 MacBook Pro is setup to dual boot OSX and Crunchbang Linux. In the past I had Ubuntu setup as the Linux OS, but I switched to the Openbox window manager when Ubuntu opted for Unity as the desktop environment. Openbox comes preconfigured on Crunchbang. Really nicely done. http://crunchbang.org/ http://crunchbang.org/ I use Linux about 99% of the time on this laptop and have done since 2010. The only real problem is battery life. It isn't as good as OSX. I get about 2 hours. As well as being great hardware it is nice to boot into OSX to run programs that aren't available on Linux. I'm really happy with this computer. I've had it for about 4 1/2 years and I think I'd be happy to use it for another 2 or 3 years.
apricot 12y ago
A friend gave me an older Macbook Air (3,1) recently. I installed Linux Mint LTS on it, completely replacing MacOS (no dual-boot). Everything just works, you name it: wifi, webcam, sound, suspend. The only hard part was understanding that the nvidia driver is not compatible with EFI mode, and needs the legacy BIOS mode.

by darren0 12y ago

progman 12y ago

Which ThinkPad models work flawlessly for you?

peatmoss 12y ago
Not a high-end machine, but my wife recently got an x140e for peanuts (< $300 for the laptop during the XMas season sales, plus ~$150 to upgrade to an SSD + 8 GB RAM). She was upgrading from a Chromebook and decided that Linux fit her immediate use case better than Windows. My only guidance in this was, "plug in an ethernet cable during installation." Every single piece of hardware--touchpad, sound, webcam, suspend, wifi, etc.--worked out of the box. This machine is solidly built, and reasonably attractive. I'd say the thing that dropped the price was its weight. Functionally, it's easily a replacement for my MacBook Air or better. Physically, it's like three MacBook Airs stacked on top of each other. Sorry, forgot to mention linux distro. She is running stock Ubuntu 14.04 with Unity. Unity might get some hate from some segments, but seeing a novice user take to it with zero guidance was illuminating to me.
davidy123 12y ago
I've install Linux (typically Ubuntu) on an x60, x220, t400s, and now t530 and everything (except the fingerprint reader, which I don't care about) worked out of the box. Lenovo even mentions Linux in their material, which means a lot and is worthy of support.
dagar 12y ago
Any X or T series with intel video tends to work pretty well. I've personally had great results with Ubuntu on a T410, T420, T520, T530, X1, X60 in the last few years.
- privong 12y ago
  I will add the X201 to that list. I have been using one, exclusively with linux, for the past 4 years.
  - vacri 12y ago
    I would remove the x201 from the list. It works fine with linux, but the TN screen is absolutely awful. The viewing angle is so narrow that even sited dead in front of it, I can't watch a video without some of the blacks looking wrong. This comment was typed on my own 4-year-old x201 :)
    - mng2 12y ago
      If you're talking about the 1400x900 screen, I agree, the viewing sweet spot is nearly nonexistent. I actually swapped out the top shell of my X200s and so I could put in an AFFS panel. (Running Mint 17.1, which broke the display popup for brightness, but curiously not for audio.)
    - ne0phyte 12y ago
      I replaced the TN screen of my x201 with a Boe Hydis AFFS panel with IPS like viewing angles and contrast so I would _not_ remove it from the list. It's a great laptop and you can get them really cheap used (I've never bought a ThinkPad new so far).
      - vacri 12y ago
        I would remove it again, because if you don't already have an x201, you may as well buy an x220 instead of an x201 + replacement screen + labour (and the low risk you'll damage something in the swapover). You'll get slightly better specs in the deal. Looking on ebay now, x220s are only AU$100-200 more than x201s. Anyway, if you're going to mod laptops to say that they're good, then many laptops will re-enter the fray :)
saosebastiao 12y ago
I recently bought a T420 for $300. After upgrading my ram to 8G and the stock hard drive to a samsung SSD, the laptop is easily a better overall laptop than my wife's MacBook Pro. I'm running Ubuntu, although I may switch to Arch soon, but I haven't had any problems with drivers in Ubuntu and would imagine the same would go for Arch. So far, the only relative downsides compared to the MBP have been: 1) Battery life, although mostly fixed with TLP[a] 2) Keyboard quality...sometimes feels like some keys have more resistance than others 3) Screen contrast. My wife's MBP isn't a retina, but it still has much better resolution and contrast. [a] http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-man...
- japhyr 12y ago
  I have a t420s, and replacing the DVD with a bay battery was a very worthwhile trade.
  - saosebastiao 12y ago
    Do you have any links to these batteries? I'm very interested.
    - desdiv 12y ago
      Try the keywords "ultrabay slim battery".
    - lorenzhs 12y ago
      IIRC they only work with the T420s, not the T420. I might be wrong though, but Lenovo definitely removed the connectors that are required for that in some models of the T series at some point in time...
Mikeb85 12y ago
T530 here. Works flawless. Everything, from the function keys, to the webcam, to the fingerprint reader.
kh_hk 12y ago
With the X220, you can get a beefy i7 full of ram quite cheap on ebay. Not as happy as with the X60, but the upgrade was worth it.
binky 12y ago
Not all models are seamless in ThinkPad land. My X240 has Realtek wireless and it refused to work with any kernel earlier than 3.16 (Ubuntu < 14.10). Recognized on recent ones, but can't resume from Suspend.
xorcist 12y ago
Have had the T40, T60, X60 and X220. Suspend many times per day. No issues ever, except with fans and hard disks dying on me. Built like tanks.
pizza234 12y ago
I had, and all worked flawlessly: a X201s, a W520, and a Helix. I think that for a few weeks I even worked full-time on the X201s with Hackintosh.
tbrock 12y ago
Basically all of them. Linux loves thinkpads. I've personally run it on an old 770ED, T41P, T60, X301, and X1 Carbon flawlessly over decades.
rakel_rakel 12y ago
I'm currently running arch on an x240, and it works perfectly. I have also had really good experiences with x1 carbon (v2), x220 and x201. I've ran several different distros on macbooks too, mostly flavours of debian/ubuntu, but also arch and gentoo. In my experience it's all about the amount of work you're willing to put in, but you can defenitely more often than not, get a good setup running on macs(least the machines I tried it on). The silver lining of getting arch to run on a machine that's not really "plug and play" is that you get to learn a lot of it's internals during install. I would recommend it to anyone with an intrest in linux desktop systems :)
- mdewinter 12y ago
  x240 here as well, except for (documented on the arch wiki) boot grub parameters for the acpi (brightness, suspend etc) it all works out of the box. Battery life with the extended 2 batteries is about 9 hours.
Eldandan 12y ago
T61 on Xubuntu 14.10 working great! Like others though, there is always a 'but': -correctly installed and configured Thinkfan to control fan speed. The default is a bit annoying.
gcb0 12y ago
> Which ThinkPad models work flawlessly for you? top of the line T models and some X models. anything else is worse than the cheapest toshiba or acer. if you doubt, buy yourself an E series for example. Lousy flimsy plastic quality, and all the corner cutting for costs that you find in an apple (like soldered RAM, devices changing bus based on what they found cheap on the market at that month, etc)
JosephRedfern 12y ago
I've not experienced any issues running Ubuntu (and Debian, as you'd expect) on both the T430 and the X230

fit2rule 12y ago

All of these issues can change - by people running Linux on their Macbooks, encountering the issues you describe - and then, scratching the itch and fixing the problem. But of course, unless someone actually tries, the itch never arises. So your discouragement could be interpreted as an attempt to reduce the effectiveness of Linux on the Macbook platform. Why would you actually encourage that?

sroerick 12y ago
Maybe he doesn't want to spend his time or his energy needlessly tinkering with a system for which the manufacturer doesn't give a damn about supporting linux, despite having used the code to build their own, proprietary operating system. All these issues could also be solved if Apple opened up their hardware. We would also collectively have many more hours to develop other FLOSS software. Why are you putting the onus of blame on OP?
- GuiA 12y ago
  I have a hard time understanding the logical reasoning behind your post, but would love to. Are you implying that Apple went against the terms of a license under which code they used was placed? Or are you implying that even when you fully respect a license, you additionally have a moral obligation to follow certain rules unwritten in the license (which include opening up hardware, according to your post)?
  - sroerick 12y ago
    Neither. I was responding to the parent comment, which was implying that OP was somehow shirking his duties as a Linux user by not using hardware with broken driver support. I was suggesting that OP has better things to do than fix drivers that Apple couldn't give a damn about supporting.
    - fit2rule 12y ago
      My response to the OP was not predicated on his/her personal non-desire to contribute to the expansion of Linux capabilities, but more his call for people "to just give up because its not worth it", which is a specious position for any hacker to be in, imho ..

redthrow 12y ago

In addition to Thinkpads, I would recommend Acer C720 which costs around $200 and everything works out of the box because a dedicated developer created distros just for C720. https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/12/ https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/12/ If you are not a gamer this is a perfect machine for Linux users. I really like this distro-per-hardware approach because people don't have to duplicate efforts in hunting for and following complex and lengthy tutorials and applying fixes.

scrollaway 12y ago
I'd also like to recommend the UX* line of ultrabooks from Asus. They range from decently-priced to fairly expensive and they are absolutely fantastic. They all work flawlessly on Linux (though I did not test the touchscreen from UX303LN on Linux yet). They are also really nice laptops. Similar feel to the Macbook Air. (I do not work for Asus)
- cfallin 12y ago
  The UX302LA is great, especially after swapping the spinning disk for an SSD and maxing out the RAM. I had lots of issues with the graphics when I first bought it (April 2014), though, and had to run with a kernel patch to the 'quirks' code in the display-panel detection. Fortunately a dedicated developer put all this together with a kernel build script ([1]) so it wasn't too bad (... for an experienced Linux guy) to get Arch running. In general though I think several-year-old ThinkPads are more painless because stuff like that has made it back to mainline already. [1] https://bitbucket.org/motley/kernel_asus_ux302/src https://bitbucket.org/motley/kernel_asus_ux302/src
- jbk 12y ago
  I concur. I just wish they did a version with 16GB of RAM.
- redthrow 12y ago
  Can you suggest a particular model that people can buy today? Do they work flawlessly out of the box without fiddling with configuration files?

Diederich 12y ago

I also started running Linux on macbooks in 2009, three of them so far. I get them from the companies I've been working for. In general, I agree with you. It can be challenging, but as long as you don't have the bleeding edge macbook, the latest Ubuntu tends to work pretty well. The 2014 macbook pro I'm using now has everything working on Ubuntu 2014 LTS except suspend and the thunder bolt ports for video. Those are kind of a big deal, but I don't need them and I really like to run Linux on the exceptional mac hardware, so I take the hit. When I do need to project a presentation, I just boot it into OSX. Again, that might not work for most, but I'm fine with it. I just really like to run Linux on the bare metal mac hardware.

kayoone 12y ago
Sounds like a lot of compromises in daily usage just to be able to run Linux. I'd much rather put up with OSX, which i find is a rather compelling development platform but also has it's shortcomings of course.

cgb_ 12y ago

FWIW, I've been using linux on desktop/laptops for 16 years, and for last 1 1/2 years, I've been running Linux (Fedora, awesomewm) on VMware Fusion, on OSX, on a Macbook Air 2013 (June), and it's the smoothest Linux laptop experience I've ever had. When you think about it, all I'm doing is abstracting the hardware to a hypervisor, and the OS that hypervisor is hosted on is responsible for all hardware management. I continue to get 10-14 hour battery runtime, never ever had a failed suspend/resume, and every single hardware component is fully supported. Barely any other laptop can compare to it for battery life and the hardware itself is the best laptop experience I've had (although I do miss my 'pointing stick' from Toshiba or IBM/Lenovo gear). I'm surprised more people haven't suggested this.

rifung 12y ago
Thanks for sharing; I think I may have to consider this for my next upgrade!
veidr 12y ago
I've been doing this for years, too. The huge advantage is that you can update your MacBook to the latest version frequently, without having to deal with all the pain points the GP describes. The same benefits accrue even more so for Windows; not because of hardware incompatibility (there are Windows drivers for all Macbook hardware) but because of system decrepitude. I have never had a physical machine that booted Windows for 7 years (or even 2 years) that didn't become hopelessly fucked up, whether due to installing some weird open source thing, malware, or Windows Update. But I have had the same 3 Windows VMs (XP, 7, and 8.1) running since the day I installed Windows on them, albeit with significant help from my frequent use of VMWare Fusion's snapshot feature. The only big drawback is graphics performance -- if you want to play games I don't think you would be happy with the solution, but it works great for virtually any other usage.
metapunk 12y ago
I do the same and also have a wonderful experience with Fedora running as a guest in VMware Fusion on a Macbook Pro Retina.
tmandry 12y ago

imsofuture 12y ago

I've been running Ubuntu (12.04+14.04)+NixOS on my Macbook Air with zero issues for the past ~2 years. (Oh, suspend doesn't work, but my laptop is plugged in 99% of the time, and I haven't undertaken any effort to make it work.) That said, I do plan on buying a not-Macbook next time around.

dima55 12y ago
Hi. FYI "suspend doesn't work" is a major issue on a laptop.

cbd1984 12y ago

I personally have had a good experience buying a LC2430E from LinuxCertified.com, which sells laptops with Linux pre-installed (for no additional fee) and, as an option, dual-booting with Windows (for an additional fee which can't be much more than the cost of a Windows license, from what I saw). http://www.linuxcertified.com/ http://www.linuxcertified.com/ I mean, as long as we're doing product reviews.

espeed 12y ago

The new 2015 edition of the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 15 laptops are coming out in February with Ubuntu 14.04... http://www.zdnet.com/article/ces-2015-dell-refreshes-high-end-xps-business-laptop-line/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/ces-2015-dell-refreshes-high-en... You can select Ubuntu for the OS here, but the estimated ship date is Jan 29, 2015... http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/fs http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/fs

wyclif 12y ago

Why not do what a lot of devs do now, which is run OS X on the MacBook and run Linux in a VM?

benaiah 12y ago
Not OP, but that setup drastically reduces battery life and performance, since you're running two OSes at the same time.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  Not drastically, unless you're doing heavy I/O. Most non-budget desktop/laptop CPUs have had hardware acceleration for virtualization for close to a decade now.
  - wyclif 12y ago
    What do you think the pros/cons are if you're running Linux in VMWare Fusion or VirtualBox?
    - neurostimulant 12y ago
      It's fine for most development works, but not ideal if you regularly need to run i/o or cpu-heavy stuff due to virtualization overhead (e.g. gaming, simulation, etc).
    - JohnBooty 12y ago
      Number one pro, besides not having to deal with hardware issues, is the total ease of backing up and snapshotting your Linux VM. About to install a Arch/Ubuntu/Debian system update and you're not sure if it will break things? No problem. Take a snapshot of your VM. Do whatever you want. Problems? Just roll it back to an earlier snapshot. You can also back your VM up onto an external drive or move it to another machine easily. If my laptop dies or gets stolen you can be back up and running pretty quickly by running your VM on another computer. The main con would probably be a potential shortage of RAM if you have 4GB or less. Really depends on your workload and software of choice, obviously. The I/O thing is not a huge deal for most development work. Disk I/O is still fast if you're on an SSD.

neillyons 12y ago

There are a couple problems with running Linux on MacBook Pro's but I wouldn't recommend against it. I think if you like Linux go for it :) My mid 2010 MacBook Pro is setup to dual boot OSX and Crunchbang Linux. In the past I had Ubuntu setup as the Linux OS, but I switched to the Openbox window manager when Ubuntu opted for Unity as the desktop environment. Openbox comes preconfigured on Crunchbang. Really nicely done. http://crunchbang.org/ http://crunchbang.org/ I use Linux about 99% of the time on this laptop and have done since 2010. The only real problem is battery life. It isn't as good as OSX. I get about 2 hours. As well as being great hardware it is nice to boot into OSX to run programs that aren't available on Linux. I'm really happy with this computer. I've had it for about 4 1/2 years and I think I'd be happy to use it for another 2 or 3 years.

apricot 12y ago

A friend gave me an older Macbook Air (3,1) recently. I installed Linux Mint LTS on it, completely replacing MacOS (no dual-boot). Everything just works, you name it: wifi, webcam, sound, suspend. The only hard part was understanding that the nvidia driver is not compatible with EFI mode, and needs the legacy BIOS mode.