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This is very anecdotal but every single laptop I have bought in the last 10 years (4) worked perfectly out-of-the box with either Linux Mint or Ubuntu (which ar

This is very anecdotal but every single laptop I have bought in the last 10 years (4) worked perfectly out-of-the box with either Linux Mint or Ubuntu (which are the same on the inside). I only vaguely remember once I had to change some conf file for my trackpad to work after a dist update but that was it. Not sure why everyone in this thread is so hesitant about Linux on a laptop? It literally just works (tm) for me and I haven’t used windows for 10 years and will never have a personal Mac.

michaelgrafl 5y ago
Same here, although I have been mainly on Windows for the past 5 years because of other reasons. If I didn't use my computer for music production I'd have no problem going Linux only.
Skunkleton 5y ago
The short answer is that this is a different beast. Much of the hardware in Macs before the M1 was commodity hardware. Now it is all bespoke and undocumented. This is a big undertaking.
- monsieurbanana 5y ago
  He's not asking why it's hard to port linux to M1 (and it's never been easy either, even before M1), but why people in this thread have hesitations about linux on laptop in general.
- yellowapple 5y ago
  I mean, it's really just a case of being back to the good ol' days when Macs had PowerPC (or before then, m68k) processors. So if anything, I'd expect more success with this in the long run than with commodity x86 hardware, since it's a more-or-less new architecture rather than having to adapt an existing architecture to Apple-specific oddities. But yeah, short-term there's a bit of a barrier to entry. Once it's overcome, though, this might be what pushes me to voluntarily buy any piece of Apple hardware made after 2007.
  - Skunkleton 5y ago
    I don’t think so. The CPU itself isn’t the big problem here. You can see basic support is already there. The challenge is all of the surrounding hardware. I am not sure why would would expect better success with this processor than we have had with x86? Most PC hardware is directly supported by the OEM in Linux.
viraptor 5y ago
It really depends on what you buy / how recent it is. If you buy a just-released new model (that's not just a trivial bump in specs from the previous version), you will likely run into issues. But you're right - the experience is way better than a decade ago and these days I'd expect anything that's been on the shelf of a local office store to work just fine.
paxys 5y ago
The manufacturers of the laptops you mention (HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer, ASUS etc.) all directly support Linux for their hardware by publishing SDKs, developing drivers, pushing updates to the kernel and more. Some of these companies even sell Linux laptops themselves. Apple is a very different company.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
Got a Dell with an integrated GPU as well as a GTX1660. The laptop's display is hooked to the igpu, the HDMI to the GTX. Problems that have happened with Linux, in no particular order: * Bumblebee/Optimus is a pain in the ass to install * Performance on the second screen with Optimus is dreadful (sub 30Hz refresh rate) * Being an NVidia card, I have the choice between Nouveau which can only put it into its low power state (which fucks me over when I need to use the Android emulator), or the proprietary nvidia ones which are, well, shit. * Putting the laptop to sleep with an external display connected is a sure way to have it crash when it starts back up. * Just kidding it doesn't actually go to sleep, the GPU stays on and runs like crazy. I would _love_ to be running Debian on this machine. Sadly, the state of some things on Linux makes it impossible for me. My emergency laptop, an 8 year old low end HP with a broken keyboard is still happily running along with Debian though.
- gspr 5y ago
  I have a very similar Dell. I'm not sure it fits your use case, but I just run on the Intel graphics with the nvidia one powered down and no nvidia drivers installed. The Intel card runs multi-monitor 4K desktop stuff smooth as silk (I use Wayland, but I checked X too). Whenever I need to run CUDA stuff (my only use case for the nvidia GPU), I power it up, and pass it through to a VM that also runs Linux, but with the horrid nvidia stuff installed. Works like a charm.
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    I'd be curious to see your setup, purely because I have never found a way to have the iGPU handle the HDMI output. It seems it's directly soldered to the Nvidia card.
    - gspr 5y ago
      Strange. I thought that solution (output soldered onto the GeForce) was discontinued a long time ago for this range of machines. My setup works really well both with the HDMI output, with the Thunderbolt output, and of course with the laptop display. I have this going on two very similar machines: A circa 2017 XPS 9560, and a circa 2020 XPS 7590. Both are 15". I don't have the 9560 near me at the moment, but the 7590 has 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] 01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU117M [GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile / Max-Q] (rev ff) I'm happy to help you debug if you want. What happens if you remove all nvidia drivers and plug something into the HDMI port? Do you notice any response from the external screen if you hit for example control f2?
dhekir 5y ago
Every single laptop my company bought me in the last 10 years (3+) had kernel/driver issues, especially with Ubuntu, since the kernel version was usually lower than that from other distros, like Fedora. This includes mostly graphics driver issues (either simply Nvidia, or hybrids, or some exotic protocols such as DisplayLink), but also touchpad, power/suspend issues (e.g. wake-up failure), lack of fingerprint or smartcard reader drivers... Without mentioning certain manufacturers forcing you to use Windows simply to update docking station firmware drivers (like Dell does). I still favor Linux whenever I can, but there is a real issue in several models, especially bleeding-edge powerful laptops from brands favored by businesses. Linux certification does improve things, but it often omits "optional" components such as fingerprint readers. Overall, about 1-2 years after the new laptop model has been released, almost everything works fine, but when you're among the first users, some amount of time will be spent in forums trying to find solutions and workarounds for such issues.
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  I can live without the fingerprint reader. It’s the lack of hibernate that really sucks. I got my 2013 MBA battery replaced. Leave it unplugged for 10 hours. 1% battery drop. XPS 17 on Pop OS LTS with kernel 5.8. I have to shut down if I want battery left.
  - mike_pol 5y ago
    Had the same problem with mine. You need to change the sleep mode. You need to change sleep to mem_sleep_default=deep
    - Osiris 5y ago
      I found it much more difficult. I had to move my swap partition into the LUKS partition so it was encrypted, resize it to be much bigger than the default then figure our how to have the RESUME=disk-uuid boot flag enabled for EFI boot. I got it working but it was quite time consuming.
      - 5y ago
bawolff 5y ago
I think its like most things - people with bad experiences talk about them a lot. If it works perfectly why would you post about it. I've also had good experiences with linux laptops. Maybe not perfect, but more like easily resolved in 20 minutes of googling, which is totally reasonable to me.
computerex 5y ago
The experience has dramatically improved since when I first started using Linux with Ubuntu dapper. I have had very good success as well. Having said that, I have run into hibernation, track pad issues with Asus devices. Optimus is also a right pain in the ass. Your best bet is a Dell laptop with an integrated Intel gpu chip.
- globular-toast 5y ago
  Can confirm. Linux "just works" now to the extent that it's boring. I remember when I was a teen the struggle of getting things like WiFi to work and the joy when you finally did it. For years now I've been running Gentoo and it works better than most distros did back then!
  - guggle 5y ago
    Oh how I wish it would be boring... but now for me it's just annoying.
xyzzy123 5y ago
Not hesitant, just personal preference. Probably like that for a lot of people here. I used Linux on desktop (later, laptop) for a long time, since the late 90s - went through so many phases, "not enough RAM to run X", barebones X, "emacs for everything", enlightenment, gnome desktop, etc. At some point the churn got to me and I stopped customising my computer environments. Just use the defaults. By this time OSX was a "real UNIX" and I hopped over. No regrets. It does what I need it to do, which is still mostly to run a terminal and a browser. I will say that reliably turning on and off when I close the lid is a great quality of life improvement.
peteretep 5y ago
I feel like the pattern is that when you start to dig into people talking about their great experience with Linux on a laptop, you end up eventually getting them to admit that there are a lot of annoyances they’ve just resigned to living with
- starkruzr 5y ago
  I'm trying to think of one and literally can't. everything works these days. even Bluetooth audio isn't a problem anymore.
  - hashhar 5y ago
    Come on - Bluetooth headsets are unusable with the mic on due to HFP being the only bluetooth profile most Linux distros support.
    - edent 5y ago
      Nope. I run Pop OS and I get A2DP on all my Bluetooth headsets. I'm running a cheapish Clevo laptop.
      - hashhar 5y ago
        Thanks, I'll try PopOS out - hopefully I can finally use the integrated mic on my BT headset.
        KptMarchewa 5y ago
        A2DP works OOB with my Ubuntu 20.10 with Sony WH-1000XM3.
        hashhar 5y ago
        A2DP is an output only profile. For mics you need HFP or HSP but Ubuntu seems to only use HFP (the shitty one).
kelnos 5y ago
Also very anecdotal, but I've been running Linux on laptops for ~15 years, and have had many issues and difficulties. My first mistake was trying to run Linux on Mac laptops for the first 10 of those years. (To be fair, my first Mac+Linux experience was on a PowerBook, which surprisingly worked rather well, though power management was terrible so battery life suffered. Once the Intel train started, it was... not great.) In 2016 I bought a Razer Blade Stealth, and Linux ran perfectly on it; there was even 3rd-party support for custom things like the tweakable RGB keyboard backlight. Like a fool, I didn't learn from my mistakes, and in 2018 I installed Linux on an employer-provided 2016 MacBook Pro. At the time, the keyboard and trackpad required an out-of-tree kernel driver (so I needed a USB keyboard and mouse to install), and audio and suspend-to-RAM didn't work (well, suspend was fine, but the disk drive wouldn't wake up on resume). My timing here was actually good, as not long before this, the NVMe drive itself didn't even work. In 2019 I bought a Dell XPS 13, and aside from the fingerprint sensor, Linux again runs perfectly on it. So, if you get yourself a laptop that is either specifically made to support Linux, or you've determined via research works well with Linux on it, then you should be fine. Otherwise, you'll probably have issues, unless you're lucky. (Avoiding laptops with certain things, like Nvidia video and Broadcom WiFi, helps a lot.)
- hvis 5y ago
  Even Nvidia is less terrible these days: - Support for Optimus laptops with on-demand rendering offload, if one does the research and uses the correct env variables or tries the "Launch using Dedicated Graphics Card" menu item in GNOME. - Some whispers of Nvidia finally using dmabuf in the next version of its drivers. With appropriate code/kernel module restructuring for GPL compatibility, I guess.
f6v 5y ago
I wonder what happens when you close the lid and then open it again.
shmerl 5y ago
Some are better than others. Don't be hesitant - just find one that works well and use Linux.
piokoch 5y ago
I was investigating recently options which laptop I can buy to be able to use Linux without any issues. I've checked Lenovo Legion 5 with AMD processor. Looks like good machine for a price, but touchpad is not gonna work out of the box on the latest stable Ubuntu. Kernel upgrade is needed (or PopOs distro that already has needed patch). For me kernel update does not sound as something big, at least I know that something like kernel exists in Linux, the point is that average computer user these days does not have such knowledge. That was just one example. Many people can give more and more on various issues. Some edge cases with routers provided by ISP. With wifi repeaters/boosters. With printers. DLNA equipment connectivity (I had this one too - again, after googling I've installed some software and it started to work, but average... and so on). Typically older equipment and standard peripherals work ok. But people use all kind of stuff.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  If you don't need discrete GPU, check out Intel Dell with Linux support. I recently bought 3410 with pre-installed Ubuntu and it works flawlessly, both with Ubuntu and with latest Fedora. Touchpad is not Macbook-level, though. But may be XPS is better.
- rkangel 5y ago
  If you want to use Linux on laptops, the best option is Fedora. Of all the mainstream dependable Linux distros it has the most up to date Kernel and other bits (like Gnome). This means that its support for hardware is usually the best. On Lenovo laptops with Intel graphics everything works perfectly out of the box with no issues (all the way down to fingerprint readers etc.). I also find it to be stable and generally good distro, but of course that's more subjective.
  - vetinari 5y ago
    It helps, that some Thinkpads do ship with Fedora OOB. Lenovo worked with Redhat to have the support for these models upstreamed to the respective projects.
presentation 5y ago
I'm on this M1 Macbook since it has both blazing fast performance and 20+ hours of battery life at the same time. No hardware on the market compares.
Osiris 5y ago
I have a System76 laptop that comes preinstalled with Linux. Everything graphics related is crap compared to Windows and MacOS. From Optimus not working to all kinds of high DPI issues, to the ease of not completely breaking things with a bad driver update. It's not really Linux's fault, but it affects the user experience for sure.
unixhero 5y ago
Yes it always works nowadays, and has been working for a long long time... Complainers are fanboys who want to nitpick.
- joseluisq 5y ago
  Yep, honestly running ArchLinux + KDE on my Acer TravelMateX since 4 years approx I never had hardware/drivers related issues. This laptop is not an ARM of course but works wonderful well. BTW it also came with a fingerprint reader but I never used it.
achempion 5y ago
It's a really fun how every thread that mentions how linux is ready for desktop got filled with bunch of low level driver configurations.
pizza234 5y ago
Sorry, this is not true :) The Ubuntu bluetooth stack has been misconfigured for a long time, and it still is (specifically, the pulseaudio bluetooth module is misnamed; there is an open bug). I use an Ubuntu MATE, but I think this applies to the other Ubuntu distros as well. It also had other misconfigurations in the past, and anyway, the bluetooth stack has always been poor quality (nowadays is much better though). Even the Dell XPS, which is supposed to be perfectly compatible, has minor niggles (in other areas). So, Ubuntu/Linux works acceptably... yes, but perfectly, definitely not.
ricardobayes 5y ago
At this point I just want my equipment to 'work'. In order for me to have mental capacity to spend elsewhere and debugging my equipment.
midrus 5y ago
Not my experience at all. Thinkpads are the one with the best support, but there are always problems with high DPI screens, plugging external monitors, suspending some times works some times doesn't, battery drains really quick, the trackpad just barely works (gestures, hardly work). I feel the only people that say Linux works great on a laptop is because A) it manages to boot it and 2) Never used a MacBook Pro or similar so they don't know what something working well means. I'd love to use a linux laptop and I've used it many years in the past, but not going back this year. It is not ready yet for my expectations.
- bradfa 5y ago
  I've used Linux mostly on IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads and Dell Latitudes. Overall I've had great success. Drivers work, suspend and hibernation work, plugging in monitors just works, wifi works, and battery life is decent enough. My current benchmark for laptop integration is a Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 that my previous employer bought me with Windows 10. It had a high-DPI screen and there were so many bugs it wasn't even funny. The touchpad was horrible to use. Connecting and disconnecting external monitors was a fun adventure not unlike playing roulette to see if the big presentation you're about to make will ever show on the projector. Overall, I'd say my Windows and Linux experiences on laptops has been about equal in terms of frustration and annoyance. I haven't had a Mac since like 2007 when I got rid of my G4 PowerBook which was probably the most polished laptop I've ever used in terms of hardware/software just working-ness. Windows 10 is a mess. It makes Linux on a laptop much easier to bear :)
  - midrus 5y ago
    I think the real advantage of Apple is that they're building both, the hardware and the software. I'm very skeptical we will ever see such a good integration in the linux or windows world because there isn't any single entity doing both. My ideal situation would be a Macbook Pro running linux to the perfection, or just having MacOS open source. I don't think I'm going to see any of this in my lifetime.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  >Thinkpads are the one with the best support, but there are always problems with high DPI screens Had no problems plugging my 4k LG CX with at 1440p@120Hz mode, which is kinda more than I managed to do with Mac. >Never used a MacBook Pro or similar so they don't know what something working well means Nope. Used three different macs over course of 4 years due to fact that three employers provided me them. I hated those machines, especially constant overheating issues when using external monitors. Maybe M1 fixed that, but they still won't offer it with 16' ones. Also hated the UI with burning passion. Only thing that made it usable is the fact that maximizing window switches the window to a different "workspace". If only those were numbered, persistently assigned to monitors and windows could be configured to only spawn on particular workspaces it would be pretty nice though. One thing I really liked though is retina display on two later ones.
physicsguy 5y ago
Anything to do with graphics if you have a dedicated card never works properly out of the box
viktorcode 5y ago
Hibernate is very useful on laptop.
Netcob 5y ago
My single experience with trying to use Linux daily on the laptop was 10 years ago. It had an "optimus" configuration, a combination of integrated/discrete GPU. I had to find instructions and resources online to get it to run for my specific model. Eventually whoever was posting these probably moved on to a different model, which meant mine would stop working correctly when I'd upgrade Ubuntu.
guggle 5y ago
I have the complete opposite experience, including laptops that were initially shipped with Linux (yes, Dell). Lack of support for hibernate, lack of support for docking station, etc. And things also break after updates. Of course "this is not Linux fault, this is lack of vendor support". But that doesn't change anything for me: It's either I'm willing to fiddle with the system or I have to buy something else.
_Understated_ 5y ago
Here are my thoughts on Linux... I used Ubuntu on my sole/main machine for a month up until recently: i9 10900K, 32GB, 1TB NVMe SSD, GTX1080, MSI Z-490-A Pro, 3 x screens. In my day job I'm a .NET developer so I created a Windows 10 VM for VS 2019 and allocated 4 cores and 12GB RAM. I used VMWare Workstation 16. It was smooth as hell. I developed PHP/Laravel/Wordpress stuff in Linux using PHP Storm and VSCode. Docker on Linux natively is faster than in WSL2 (I know it's to do with accessing the file system but still...). I learned a whole bunch of commands in this time and learned to live inside the terminal for a chunk of my work. It was fantastic. I loved it. I also loved being able to configure Ubuntu and make it look like I wanted with new icons and whatnot: I didn't go mental, but it looked cool when I was finished. All in all, as a dev machine (and browsing 'n' stuff) it worked... quite ok, sort of: it wasn't all plain sailing. Here are the issues I had 1. Realtek 2.5GB nic would not work so I bought a 1G USB nic and it ran fine without all kinds of tweaking (yes, I tried a bunch of stuff I found online but I can't get the realtek nic to work: something to do with the older kernel) 2a. When waking from sleep it sometimes lost network so had to reboot 2b. When waking from sleep AND with NordVPN on in the background it always failed to find a network card... reboot fixed it 3. Printer (HP MFP M477DW) would disappear frequently. Ubuntu would find it again when I asked but it wouldn't print to it. This required wizardry to get it running... more miss than hit so I ended up only using it through the Windows 10 VM 4. It would hang sometimes. Music would still be playing in the background but would become unresponsive. Happened maybe 5 times in a month. Reboot to fix. 5. VMWare workstation wouldn't work properly if I had display scaling turned on inside Ubuntu: it had no idea what resolution to show so I had to turn it off making things smaller than I'd like on the Ubuntu DESKTOP 6. Sound would fail regularly: usually crackled when I opened a web page. So I either close every browser window or stop all sound playing for a minute or so. I use a soundblaster something-or-other card. 7. OnlyOffice would open off-screen every single time. I had to do Alt+Space every time. Works perfectly on Windows 10. I switched to Libreoffice All in all, it has come a long way since I last used it a few years ago but I NEVER have any of these issues in Windows 10. Ever. And, whether we like it or not, we tend to remember the bad stuff and I can't get away from the fact that W10 is just more stable.... for me, on my hardware, at least. But I should caveat that by saying that I've disabled literally EVERYTHING in W10 using O&O Shutup, including updates (I've also deleted the Windows Update Medic Service dll so it doesn't turn updates back on). I hate notifications and I want to pick when I run updates myself - given the spotty nature of the updates I usually wait a while, like when I've finished some client work and can afford a bit of downtime if the update fails) In Linux' defense, VMware workstation 16 running Windows 10 is smoother than a Windows 10 VM on VMware workstation on Windows. No idea why, it just runs smoother. If Linux stability was fixed (waking from sleep especially) I would switch immediately but all the tiny, annoying niggles that I just don't get with W10 are enough to keep me on W10... W10 is a tool and, for me, it's a better one for now.
jiofih 5y ago
I bet a dollar you’re conveniently forgetting a ton of little adjustments you’ve had to make, because they “are not complex at all” for you. Or all you do is use the browser.
- fps_doug 5y ago
  You don't seem very confident, betting only a dollar. ;-) But honestly, just buy a Thinkpad and everything works out of the box. Yes, everything.
  - jgalar 5y ago
    That's not true. For example, the microphone of the X1 Carbon 7th generation still doesn't work out of the box. You need to blacklist a handful of kernel modules and edit your PulseAudio configuration to force the loading of an ALSA source hooked to the correct device ID. The Arch wiki has an article cataloguing issues and workarounds (with various degrees of success) for every generation of the X1.
eloisant 5y ago
Same for me, however you can be sure I do my research before buying to make sure it will be compatible. You can't just blindly buy a Windows laptop and expect it to work flawlessly on Linux.
salamandersauce 5y ago
I had one of the first Nvidia Optimus laptops. It was a nightmare on Linux for a while even just trying to get the Nvidia card off (no BIOS option) so it wouldn't drain the battery was difficult let alone using it. I don't even think it was officially supported by Nvidia when they added support because the gen after they changed how Optimus worked? My laptop after that at least had a BIOS option to disable the Nvidia graphics. I only bought an Nvidia model again because the OEM made a mistake and sold it for hundreds less than the Intel one on their website. Every distro needed me to do something to get the screen brightness keys to work. WiFi chipsets could also be a hassle though they have gotten much better. My current laptop, a 2018 MacBook Pro, is basically near unusable as a Linux laptop. By default the trackpad and keyboard don't work and you need someone's kernel patch to use them. You can't currently have both sleep and sound. A bunch of little other gremlins.
m463 5y ago
I remember I gave up on linux on a macbook once. When I tried again ONE change made all the difference. reconfiguring the trackpad settings. I think before there were confusing click regions for different buttons. I think I changed to one-finger two-finger tap and it was like a different machine.
sumitgt 5y ago
Even on a Dell XPS Developer Edition (that comes with Linux) I can't get the webcam to use the full resolution or get bluetooth audio to work reliably. So I get where folks are coming from.

michaelgrafl 5y ago

Same here, although I have been mainly on Windows for the past 5 years because of other reasons. If I didn't use my computer for music production I'd have no problem going Linux only.

Skunkleton 5y ago

The short answer is that this is a different beast. Much of the hardware in Macs before the M1 was commodity hardware. Now it is all bespoke and undocumented. This is a big undertaking.

monsieurbanana 5y ago
He's not asking why it's hard to port linux to M1 (and it's never been easy either, even before M1), but why people in this thread have hesitations about linux on laptop in general.
yellowapple 5y ago
I mean, it's really just a case of being back to the good ol' days when Macs had PowerPC (or before then, m68k) processors. So if anything, I'd expect more success with this in the long run than with commodity x86 hardware, since it's a more-or-less new architecture rather than having to adapt an existing architecture to Apple-specific oddities. But yeah, short-term there's a bit of a barrier to entry. Once it's overcome, though, this might be what pushes me to voluntarily buy any piece of Apple hardware made after 2007.
- Skunkleton 5y ago
  I don’t think so. The CPU itself isn’t the big problem here. You can see basic support is already there. The challenge is all of the surrounding hardware. I am not sure why would would expect better success with this processor than we have had with x86? Most PC hardware is directly supported by the OEM in Linux.

viraptor 5y ago

It really depends on what you buy / how recent it is. If you buy a just-released new model (that's not just a trivial bump in specs from the previous version), you will likely run into issues. But you're right - the experience is way better than a decade ago and these days I'd expect anything that's been on the shelf of a local office store to work just fine.

paxys 5y ago

The manufacturers of the laptops you mention (HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer, ASUS etc.) all directly support Linux for their hardware by publishing SDKs, developing drivers, pushing updates to the kernel and more. Some of these companies even sell Linux laptops themselves. Apple is a very different company.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

Got a Dell with an integrated GPU as well as a GTX1660. The laptop's display is hooked to the igpu, the HDMI to the GTX. Problems that have happened with Linux, in no particular order: * Bumblebee/Optimus is a pain in the ass to install * Performance on the second screen with Optimus is dreadful (sub 30Hz refresh rate) * Being an NVidia card, I have the choice between Nouveau which can only put it into its low power state (which fucks me over when I need to use the Android emulator), or the proprietary nvidia ones which are, well, shit. * Putting the laptop to sleep with an external display connected is a sure way to have it crash when it starts back up. * Just kidding it doesn't actually go to sleep, the GPU stays on and runs like crazy. I would _love_ to be running Debian on this machine. Sadly, the state of some things on Linux makes it impossible for me. My emergency laptop, an 8 year old low end HP with a broken keyboard is still happily running along with Debian though.

gspr 5y ago
I have a very similar Dell. I'm not sure it fits your use case, but I just run on the Intel graphics with the nvidia one powered down and no nvidia drivers installed. The Intel card runs multi-monitor 4K desktop stuff smooth as silk (I use Wayland, but I checked X too). Whenever I need to run CUDA stuff (my only use case for the nvidia GPU), I power it up, and pass it through to a VM that also runs Linux, but with the horrid nvidia stuff installed. Works like a charm.
- ohgodplsno 5y ago
  I'd be curious to see your setup, purely because I have never found a way to have the iGPU handle the HDMI output. It seems it's directly soldered to the Nvidia card.
  - gspr 5y ago
    Strange. I thought that solution (output soldered onto the GeForce) was discontinued a long time ago for this range of machines. My setup works really well both with the HDMI output, with the Thunderbolt output, and of course with the laptop display. I have this going on two very similar machines: A circa 2017 XPS 9560, and a circa 2020 XPS 7590. Both are 15". I don't have the 9560 near me at the moment, but the 7590 has 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] 01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU117M [GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile / Max-Q] (rev ff) I'm happy to help you debug if you want. What happens if you remove all nvidia drivers and plug something into the HDMI port? Do you notice any response from the external screen if you hit for example control f2?

dhekir 5y ago

Every single laptop my company bought me in the last 10 years (3+) had kernel/driver issues, especially with Ubuntu, since the kernel version was usually lower than that from other distros, like Fedora. This includes mostly graphics driver issues (either simply Nvidia, or hybrids, or some exotic protocols such as DisplayLink), but also touchpad, power/suspend issues (e.g. wake-up failure), lack of fingerprint or smartcard reader drivers... Without mentioning certain manufacturers forcing you to use Windows simply to update docking station firmware drivers (like Dell does). I still favor Linux whenever I can, but there is a real issue in several models, especially bleeding-edge powerful laptops from brands favored by businesses. Linux certification does improve things, but it often omits "optional" components such as fingerprint readers. Overall, about 1-2 years after the new laptop model has been released, almost everything works fine, but when you're among the first users, some amount of time will be spent in forums trying to find solutions and workarounds for such issues.

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
I can live without the fingerprint reader. It’s the lack of hibernate that really sucks. I got my 2013 MBA battery replaced. Leave it unplugged for 10 hours. 1% battery drop. XPS 17 on Pop OS LTS with kernel 5.8. I have to shut down if I want battery left.
- mike_pol 5y ago
  Had the same problem with mine. You need to change the sleep mode. You need to change sleep to mem_sleep_default=deep
  - Osiris 5y ago
    I found it much more difficult. I had to move my swap partition into the LUKS partition so it was encrypted, resize it to be much bigger than the default then figure our how to have the RESUME=disk-uuid boot flag enabled for EFI boot. I got it working but it was quite time consuming.
    - 5y ago

bawolff 5y ago

I think its like most things - people with bad experiences talk about them a lot. If it works perfectly why would you post about it. I've also had good experiences with linux laptops. Maybe not perfect, but more like easily resolved in 20 minutes of googling, which is totally reasonable to me.

computerex 5y ago

The experience has dramatically improved since when I first started using Linux with Ubuntu dapper. I have had very good success as well. Having said that, I have run into hibernation, track pad issues with Asus devices. Optimus is also a right pain in the ass. Your best bet is a Dell laptop with an integrated Intel gpu chip.

globular-toast 5y ago
Can confirm. Linux "just works" now to the extent that it's boring. I remember when I was a teen the struggle of getting things like WiFi to work and the joy when you finally did it. For years now I've been running Gentoo and it works better than most distros did back then!
- guggle 5y ago
  Oh how I wish it would be boring... but now for me it's just annoying.

xyzzy123 5y ago

Not hesitant, just personal preference. Probably like that for a lot of people here. I used Linux on desktop (later, laptop) for a long time, since the late 90s - went through so many phases, "not enough RAM to run X", barebones X, "emacs for everything", enlightenment, gnome desktop, etc. At some point the churn got to me and I stopped customising my computer environments. Just use the defaults. By this time OSX was a "real UNIX" and I hopped over. No regrets. It does what I need it to do, which is still mostly to run a terminal and a browser. I will say that reliably turning on and off when I close the lid is a great quality of life improvement.

peteretep 5y ago

I feel like the pattern is that when you start to dig into people talking about their great experience with Linux on a laptop, you end up eventually getting them to admit that there are a lot of annoyances they’ve just resigned to living with

starkruzr 5y ago
I'm trying to think of one and literally can't. everything works these days. even Bluetooth audio isn't a problem anymore.
- hashhar 5y ago
  Come on - Bluetooth headsets are unusable with the mic on due to HFP being the only bluetooth profile most Linux distros support.
  - edent 5y ago
    Nope. I run Pop OS and I get A2DP on all my Bluetooth headsets. I'm running a cheapish Clevo laptop.
    - hashhar 5y ago
      Thanks, I'll try PopOS out - hopefully I can finally use the integrated mic on my BT headset.
      - KptMarchewa 5y ago
        A2DP works OOB with my Ubuntu 20.10 with Sony WH-1000XM3.
        hashhar 5y ago
        A2DP is an output only profile. For mics you need HFP or HSP but Ubuntu seems to only use HFP (the shitty one).

kelnos 5y ago

Also very anecdotal, but I've been running Linux on laptops for ~15 years, and have had many issues and difficulties. My first mistake was trying to run Linux on Mac laptops for the first 10 of those years. (To be fair, my first Mac+Linux experience was on a PowerBook, which surprisingly worked rather well, though power management was terrible so battery life suffered. Once the Intel train started, it was... not great.) In 2016 I bought a Razer Blade Stealth, and Linux ran perfectly on it; there was even 3rd-party support for custom things like the tweakable RGB keyboard backlight. Like a fool, I didn't learn from my mistakes, and in 2018 I installed Linux on an employer-provided 2016 MacBook Pro. At the time, the keyboard and trackpad required an out-of-tree kernel driver (so I needed a USB keyboard and mouse to install), and audio and suspend-to-RAM didn't work (well, suspend was fine, but the disk drive wouldn't wake up on resume). My timing here was actually good, as not long before this, the NVMe drive itself didn't even work. In 2019 I bought a Dell XPS 13, and aside from the fingerprint sensor, Linux again runs perfectly on it. So, if you get yourself a laptop that is either specifically made to support Linux, or you've determined via research works well with Linux on it, then you should be fine. Otherwise, you'll probably have issues, unless you're lucky. (Avoiding laptops with certain things, like Nvidia video and Broadcom WiFi, helps a lot.)

hvis 5y ago
Even Nvidia is less terrible these days: - Support for Optimus laptops with on-demand rendering offload, if one does the research and uses the correct env variables or tries the "Launch using Dedicated Graphics Card" menu item in GNOME. - Some whispers of Nvidia finally using dmabuf in the next version of its drivers. With appropriate code/kernel module restructuring for GPL compatibility, I guess.

f6v 5y ago

I wonder what happens when you close the lid and then open it again.

shmerl 5y ago

Some are better than others. Don't be hesitant - just find one that works well and use Linux.

piokoch 5y ago

I was investigating recently options which laptop I can buy to be able to use Linux without any issues. I've checked Lenovo Legion 5 with AMD processor. Looks like good machine for a price, but touchpad is not gonna work out of the box on the latest stable Ubuntu. Kernel upgrade is needed (or PopOs distro that already has needed patch). For me kernel update does not sound as something big, at least I know that something like kernel exists in Linux, the point is that average computer user these days does not have such knowledge. That was just one example. Many people can give more and more on various issues. Some edge cases with routers provided by ISP. With wifi repeaters/boosters. With printers. DLNA equipment connectivity (I had this one too - again, after googling I've installed some software and it started to work, but average... and so on). Typically older equipment and standard peripherals work ok. But people use all kind of stuff.

vbezhenar 5y ago
If you don't need discrete GPU, check out Intel Dell with Linux support. I recently bought 3410 with pre-installed Ubuntu and it works flawlessly, both with Ubuntu and with latest Fedora. Touchpad is not Macbook-level, though. But may be XPS is better.
rkangel 5y ago
If you want to use Linux on laptops, the best option is Fedora. Of all the mainstream dependable Linux distros it has the most up to date Kernel and other bits (like Gnome). This means that its support for hardware is usually the best. On Lenovo laptops with Intel graphics everything works perfectly out of the box with no issues (all the way down to fingerprint readers etc.). I also find it to be stable and generally good distro, but of course that's more subjective.
- vetinari 5y ago
  It helps, that some Thinkpads do ship with Fedora OOB. Lenovo worked with Redhat to have the support for these models upstreamed to the respective projects.

presentation 5y ago

I'm on this M1 Macbook since it has both blazing fast performance and 20+ hours of battery life at the same time. No hardware on the market compares.

Osiris 5y ago

I have a System76 laptop that comes preinstalled with Linux. Everything graphics related is crap compared to Windows and MacOS. From Optimus not working to all kinds of high DPI issues, to the ease of not completely breaking things with a bad driver update. It's not really Linux's fault, but it affects the user experience for sure.

unixhero 5y ago

Yes it always works nowadays, and has been working for a long long time... Complainers are fanboys who want to nitpick.

joseluisq 5y ago
Yep, honestly running ArchLinux + KDE on my Acer TravelMateX since 4 years approx I never had hardware/drivers related issues. This laptop is not an ARM of course but works wonderful well. BTW it also came with a fingerprint reader but I never used it.

achempion 5y ago

It's a really fun how every thread that mentions how linux is ready for desktop got filled with bunch of low level driver configurations.

pizza234 5y ago

Sorry, this is not true :) The Ubuntu bluetooth stack has been misconfigured for a long time, and it still is (specifically, the pulseaudio bluetooth module is misnamed; there is an open bug). I use an Ubuntu MATE, but I think this applies to the other Ubuntu distros as well. It also had other misconfigurations in the past, and anyway, the bluetooth stack has always been poor quality (nowadays is much better though). Even the Dell XPS, which is supposed to be perfectly compatible, has minor niggles (in other areas). So, Ubuntu/Linux works acceptably... yes, but perfectly, definitely not.

ricardobayes 5y ago

At this point I just want my equipment to 'work'. In order for me to have mental capacity to spend elsewhere and debugging my equipment.

midrus 5y ago

Not my experience at all. Thinkpads are the one with the best support, but there are always problems with high DPI screens, plugging external monitors, suspending some times works some times doesn't, battery drains really quick, the trackpad just barely works (gestures, hardly work). I feel the only people that say Linux works great on a laptop is because A) it manages to boot it and 2) Never used a MacBook Pro or similar so they don't know what something working well means. I'd love to use a linux laptop and I've used it many years in the past, but not going back this year. It is not ready yet for my expectations.

bradfa 5y ago
I've used Linux mostly on IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads and Dell Latitudes. Overall I've had great success. Drivers work, suspend and hibernation work, plugging in monitors just works, wifi works, and battery life is decent enough. My current benchmark for laptop integration is a Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 that my previous employer bought me with Windows 10. It had a high-DPI screen and there were so many bugs it wasn't even funny. The touchpad was horrible to use. Connecting and disconnecting external monitors was a fun adventure not unlike playing roulette to see if the big presentation you're about to make will ever show on the projector. Overall, I'd say my Windows and Linux experiences on laptops has been about equal in terms of frustration and annoyance. I haven't had a Mac since like 2007 when I got rid of my G4 PowerBook which was probably the most polished laptop I've ever used in terms of hardware/software just working-ness. Windows 10 is a mess. It makes Linux on a laptop much easier to bear :)
- midrus 5y ago
  I think the real advantage of Apple is that they're building both, the hardware and the software. I'm very skeptical we will ever see such a good integration in the linux or windows world because there isn't any single entity doing both. My ideal situation would be a Macbook Pro running linux to the perfection, or just having MacOS open source. I don't think I'm going to see any of this in my lifetime.
KptMarchewa 5y ago
>Thinkpads are the one with the best support, but there are always problems with high DPI screens Had no problems plugging my 4k LG CX with at 1440p@120Hz mode, which is kinda more than I managed to do with Mac. >Never used a MacBook Pro or similar so they don't know what something working well means Nope. Used three different macs over course of 4 years due to fact that three employers provided me them. I hated those machines, especially constant overheating issues when using external monitors. Maybe M1 fixed that, but they still won't offer it with 16' ones. Also hated the UI with burning passion. Only thing that made it usable is the fact that maximizing window switches the window to a different "workspace". If only those were numbered, persistently assigned to monitors and windows could be configured to only spawn on particular workspaces it would be pretty nice though. One thing I really liked though is retina display on two later ones.

physicsguy 5y ago

Anything to do with graphics if you have a dedicated card never works properly out of the box

viktorcode 5y ago

Hibernate is very useful on laptop.

Netcob 5y ago

My single experience with trying to use Linux daily on the laptop was 10 years ago. It had an "optimus" configuration, a combination of integrated/discrete GPU. I had to find instructions and resources online to get it to run for my specific model. Eventually whoever was posting these probably moved on to a different model, which meant mine would stop working correctly when I'd upgrade Ubuntu.

guggle 5y ago

I have the complete opposite experience, including laptops that were initially shipped with Linux (yes, Dell). Lack of support for hibernate, lack of support for docking station, etc. And things also break after updates. Of course "this is not Linux fault, this is lack of vendor support". But that doesn't change anything for me: It's either I'm willing to fiddle with the system or I have to buy something else.

_Understated_ 5y ago

Here are my thoughts on Linux... I used Ubuntu on my sole/main machine for a month up until recently: i9 10900K, 32GB, 1TB NVMe SSD, GTX1080, MSI Z-490-A Pro, 3 x screens. In my day job I'm a .NET developer so I created a Windows 10 VM for VS 2019 and allocated 4 cores and 12GB RAM. I used VMWare Workstation 16. It was smooth as hell. I developed PHP/Laravel/Wordpress stuff in Linux using PHP Storm and VSCode. Docker on Linux natively is faster than in WSL2 (I know it's to do with accessing the file system but still...). I learned a whole bunch of commands in this time and learned to live inside the terminal for a chunk of my work. It was fantastic. I loved it. I also loved being able to configure Ubuntu and make it look like I wanted with new icons and whatnot: I didn't go mental, but it looked cool when I was finished. All in all, as a dev machine (and browsing 'n' stuff) it worked... quite ok, sort of: it wasn't all plain sailing. Here are the issues I had 1. Realtek 2.5GB nic would not work so I bought a 1G USB nic and it ran fine without all kinds of tweaking (yes, I tried a bunch of stuff I found online but I can't get the realtek nic to work: something to do with the older kernel) 2a. When waking from sleep it sometimes lost network so had to reboot 2b. When waking from sleep AND with NordVPN on in the background it always failed to find a network card... reboot fixed it 3. Printer (HP MFP M477DW) would disappear frequently. Ubuntu would find it again when I asked but it wouldn't print to it. This required wizardry to get it running... more miss than hit so I ended up only using it through the Windows 10 VM 4. It would hang sometimes. Music would still be playing in the background but would become unresponsive. Happened maybe 5 times in a month. Reboot to fix. 5. VMWare workstation wouldn't work properly if I had display scaling turned on inside Ubuntu: it had no idea what resolution to show so I had to turn it off making things smaller than I'd like on the Ubuntu DESKTOP 6. Sound would fail regularly: usually crackled when I opened a web page. So I either close every browser window or stop all sound playing for a minute or so. I use a soundblaster something-or-other card. 7. OnlyOffice would open off-screen every single time. I had to do Alt+Space every time. Works perfectly on Windows 10. I switched to Libreoffice All in all, it has come a long way since I last used it a few years ago but I NEVER have any of these issues in Windows 10. Ever. And, whether we like it or not, we tend to remember the bad stuff and I can't get away from the fact that W10 is just more stable.... for me, on my hardware, at least. But I should caveat that by saying that I've disabled literally EVERYTHING in W10 using O&O Shutup, including updates (I've also deleted the Windows Update Medic Service dll so it doesn't turn updates back on). I hate notifications and I want to pick when I run updates myself - given the spotty nature of the updates I usually wait a while, like when I've finished some client work and can afford a bit of downtime if the update fails) In Linux' defense, VMware workstation 16 running Windows 10 is smoother than a Windows 10 VM on VMware workstation on Windows. No idea why, it just runs smoother. If Linux stability was fixed (waking from sleep especially) I would switch immediately but all the tiny, annoying niggles that I just don't get with W10 are enough to keep me on W10... W10 is a tool and, for me, it's a better one for now.

jiofih 5y ago

I bet a dollar you’re conveniently forgetting a ton of little adjustments you’ve had to make, because they “are not complex at all” for you. Or all you do is use the browser.

fps_doug 5y ago
You don't seem very confident, betting only a dollar. ;-) But honestly, just buy a Thinkpad and everything works out of the box. Yes, everything.
- jgalar 5y ago
  That's not true. For example, the microphone of the X1 Carbon 7th generation still doesn't work out of the box. You need to blacklist a handful of kernel modules and edit your PulseAudio configuration to force the loading of an ALSA source hooked to the correct device ID. The Arch wiki has an article cataloguing issues and workarounds (with various degrees of success) for every generation of the X1.

eloisant 5y ago

Same for me, however you can be sure I do my research before buying to make sure it will be compatible. You can't just blindly buy a Windows laptop and expect it to work flawlessly on Linux.

salamandersauce 5y ago

I had one of the first Nvidia Optimus laptops. It was a nightmare on Linux for a while even just trying to get the Nvidia card off (no BIOS option) so it wouldn't drain the battery was difficult let alone using it. I don't even think it was officially supported by Nvidia when they added support because the gen after they changed how Optimus worked? My laptop after that at least had a BIOS option to disable the Nvidia graphics. I only bought an Nvidia model again because the OEM made a mistake and sold it for hundreds less than the Intel one on their website. Every distro needed me to do something to get the screen brightness keys to work. WiFi chipsets could also be a hassle though they have gotten much better. My current laptop, a 2018 MacBook Pro, is basically near unusable as a Linux laptop. By default the trackpad and keyboard don't work and you need someone's kernel patch to use them. You can't currently have both sleep and sound. A bunch of little other gremlins.

m463 5y ago

I remember I gave up on linux on a macbook once. When I tried again ONE change made all the difference. reconfiguring the trackpad settings. I think before there were confusing click regions for different buttons. I think I changed to one-finger two-finger tap and it was like a different machine.

sumitgt 5y ago

Even on a Dell XPS Developer Edition (that comes with Linux) I can't get the webcam to use the full resolution or get bluetooth audio to work reliably. So I get where folks are coming from.