[timtadh]

Linux laptops: buy pre-installed. If you want linux and you want to be sure everything is functional, AND you don't want to devote lots of time to a "project" buy a pre-install. Dell Developer Edition laptops (XPS 13, 15) make great laptops. I hear good things about system 76 and purism as well.

Save time. Support having good laptops and good drivers. Buy pre-installed. Paying the "windows tax" and installing a Linux on a windows laptop isn't just more work, it is bad for the ecosystem.

[ePierre]

> Save time. Support having good laptops and good drivers. Buy pre-installed. Paying the "windows tax" and installing a Linux on a windows laptop isn't just more work, it is bad for the ecosystem.

I wish I could. Unfortunately, I live in a country (Taiwan) where no one knows about Linux. It's impossible to buy a pre-installed Linux laptop here.

You know the most ironic part? My job here is to certify hardware (including a lot of laptops) to work on Linux... so that you guys in the US and Europe can enjoy it :)

[majewsky]

> I live in a country (Taiwan) where no one knows about Linux. It's impossible to buy a pre-installed Linux laptop here.

Quite some years ago, I went into a smaller electronics store in Germany because I had seen a nice notebook model on their website that had an SKU without operating system.

When I spoke to the clerk, he was completely puzzled that I would want a notebook without Windows. I can still hear his words in my ears: "But you need an operating system!" I tried to explain to him that there exist other OSs, but to no avail. I walked away from that purchase after imagining how support would go if I had any problems with the hardware.

[raverbashing]

Go online and buy corporate versions (that usually come with FreeDOS) so it gets a corporate license and no builtin windows

[yeukhon]

@ePierre:

> I wish I could. Unfortunately, I live in a country (Taiwan) where no one knows about Linux. It's impossible to buy a pre-installed Linux laptop here.

It's odd because Taiwan has a very strong IT root, and the Open Source community there is strong. It's true regular PC users don't use Linux, so are the regular PC users in America. Even government supports open source softwares.

[1]: https://www.mindmeister.com/303031964/open-source-community-...

[anuragsoni]

There was another post on hackernews today about some new Dell ubuntu-based workstations[1]. The webpage that the post refers to mentions worldwide availability, so maybe dell might be an option for you at some point?

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360339

Also, it looks like that their ubuntu edition and the windows edition of XPS-13 come with the same wireless cards this year (It used to be broadcom on windows, intel on ubuntu versions), so there might less differences between the two this time around.

[hobarrera]

Not sure about GP, but here in Argentina a packages can take lots of months (or just a few days if you're lucky!) to get through customs. Not to mention 50% import tax, amongst other things.

It ends up being so complicated and expensive, that just buying a winbook is cheaper. (fun fact: a plane ticket to NYC plus the price for my MBA is less than what it sells for here!).

[pjmlp]

That is not quite true.

For example, every time I see these type of news and go to the German web site, those laptops are usually listed as "product not available" or "product no longer available".

[kagamine]

Same, never have I gone to Dell and seen XPS in stock in a European store. EVER. It's a while since I checked and maybe I'm just always there at the wrong time in release and stocking cycles, but XPS seems almost impossible to get hold of from the Dell store.

Edit: just checked and they have them in stock. Well done Dell.

[deong]

For what it's worth, though the prior XPS line did come with Broadcom wireless on the Windows variants, they give you a full service manual describing how to replace it. It took me about $30 and half an hour to put the same Intel chip that the DE comes with in the Windows one I bought at CostCo. Wireless has been flawless with that chip.

[boomboomsubban]

That's bizarre, considering 40% of Dell computers sold in China come with Linux.

[akarambir]

Parent is from Taiwan and not China. They are different countries(for most parts of world).

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan,_China

  >> However, the term is problematic and potentially ambiguous because since 1949, two sovereign states with the name "China" exist, namely the Republic of China (ROC, founded 1912 and now commonly known as "Taiwan") and the People's Republic of China (PRC, founded 1949 and now commonly known as "China")

[boomboomsubban]

Sort of different countries that share a sea border and a common tongue, I have at least a base understanding of 20th century Chinese history. It would be bizarre if you were unable to buy a Linux laptop in Canada if 40% of Dell's sold in America came with Linux.

[gurkendoktor]

It's a sea border with visa requirements and mutual distrust, and the US does not hide behind a Great Firewall (yet :P). I don't even think the common tongue helps a lot, both the characters/translations and the physical keyboard are different. In my experience, the IT world in Taiwan is pretty independent and not any closer to China's than to that of the USA/Western world.

[neolefty]

My guess: They will not have Linux for long after their purchase.

[bigger_cheese]

I had the same issue I live in Australia I bought a XPS 13 from dell (same laptop as developer edition) I had not choice but to have Windows 10 preinstalled. No idea why they made the OS choice region locked...

[davidbanham]

The XPS 13 has a different wireless chipset than the developer edition. The only way to get the same chipset in Australia is in the Precision line.

[anuragsoni]

The xps 13 this year seems to have the same wireless chip on both windows and developer editions. They both seem to have the same killer wireless chip.

Developer edition xps13: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?3x_n...

[bisby]

It is good to note though that not all "same laptop but different OS" are actually the same laptop. Be wary and check hardware before buying the windows version to put linux on... it wont always work. (In this case obviously, the wireless is at least a non issue)

[bigger_cheese]

yes the 9360 is exact same model I purchased in Aus.

[developer2]

>> Linux laptops: buy pre-installed.

The fact that hardware - though much improved in the past 15 years - is still a crapshoot on Linux, particularly when it comes to laptop hardware, is so frustrating.

Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware. OS X will work on any hardware it is permitted to operate on. Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "just work out of the box". I can't see how it's ever supposed to be "the year" for linux when just getting it to run properly on hardware requires buying OEM meant-for-Windows, but we-promise-it-works-with-linux garbage.

Is a "pre-installed" linux laptop even cross-distro compatible? If the laptop comes with Ubuntu pre-installed, what are the odds I can replace it with CentOS or Arch? Is the laptop "designed for linux", or "designed for exactly what is factory shipped, and nothing else"? Can I even do a fresh install of the shipped operating system, or do they hack in additional manufacturer packages/kernel drivers that require you to never reinstall on top of the shipped install? How about OS upgrades? Are they reliable, or do you risk running into compatibility problems, even with a new version of the same distro?

What we really need is a BSD/unix/linux[1] competitor to OS X. RedHat tried, and IMO failed. We need another closed-source unix/linux-based operating system that throws away X.org and its attempted modern replacements, that can directly compete with OS X. I'm tired of waiting for the open source world to try - and fail - to gather momentum. And tired of Apple, who has the best unix/linux operating system, fucking us over with every hardware release.

[1] How do you type a literal asterisk on HN? Backslash and double-asterisk don't work. nix. \nix. nix

[qplex]

>Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "just work out of the box".

Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience.

You'll also usually find pretty straightforward instructions how to get things going quickly if they do not work out of the box, or the simple fact that the machine is not well supported.

Also, if you had done enough Windows installs you'd know that things very seldom "work out of the box" if you do a clean install, especially with laptops. Instead, you'll have a fun time hunting bloated driver packages from some slow obscure chinese FTP server.

In addition hardware support on Windows gets worse over time. For example: Have an older Samsung laptop, wanna run Windows 10? Tough luck. [1]

On Linux you'll have this problem _very_ rarely, if ever, as hardware support (among other things) keep improving over time.

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/31/windows_10_samsung_f...

[bisby]

My dad and I have the same Samsung laptop from 2012-ish. It came with Windows 7, and after upgrading to windows 8, a lot of stuff stopped working. Samsung didnt have "special" drivers for windows 8, so a lot of stuff (like the backlight buttons) didnt work properly. Eventually they fixed the problem, but they were weird out of date drivers. Windows 10 had no drivers at all.

I moved my laptop to Linux full time around the Windows 8.1 transition (which had also re-broken the drivers somehow). Everything worked great in Linux for me until kernel 4.2 or something when backlight brightness stopped working. Then after a few weeks or searching, I found a parameter that made it work again.

After applying the fixes to my dad's laptop, and setting up a few of his "must have" programs under wine for him, he claims that Ubuntu runs better for him than Windows ever did.

[pawadu]

> Everything worked great in Linux for me until kernel 4.2 or something when backlight brightness stopped working.

Interestingly, this also happened to a lot of Vaios when people upgraded to Windows 10. Now, your Linux was eventually fixed while my Vaio is still running at 0% backlight with zero response from Sony.

[bisby]

I dont know what changed in linux at kernel 4.2 (or maybe it was 4.1 or 4.3? I dunno. it was early 4.x), but I was able to fix it with a kernel boot parameter (acpi_osi=linux acpi_backlight=video). This tells the GPU to control the backlight, and everything works. Theres a lot of different laptop configurations of who powers and who runs the backlight. linux has all these options set up, but it has to pick one by default. So my laptop didnt "just work" on a fresh installation, but I was able to fix it.

I think I know what happened in windows: windows itself has no backlight driver, and the standard GPU drivers have no backlight handling (or do, but its disabled by default). So previously, these laptops would ship with a special Windows 7 driver that would handle the backlight. But its "so much work" to port that driver to windows 10... so they don't. So in this scenario, my laptop originally worked. A fresh installation would require proprietary Samsung drivers, and samsung has stopped providing those for windows 10... literally no fix available (it's possible the windows 7 drivers still work? to be clear, Ive never checked if there are work arounds or other drivers available. I switched to linux before windows 10 came out, and my dad is happy with linux resolving his backlight issues, so Ive never had to look it up)

[pjmlp]

> Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience.

I would happily do this when was a university student about 20 years ago.

Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take what I want to buy.

Yes, there are some online stores for GNU/Linux, but as I discovered with the one I bought (Asus + Ubuntu), it might happen that some things don't quite work.

Also the models being sold aren't that enticing, XPS is the exception.

[luca_ing]

> > Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience.

> I would happily do this when was a university student about 20 years ago.

> Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take what I want to buy.

Well, if you do that little research, I suspect you might be disappointed even if you were to stick with Windows 10. With devices as complex as notebooks, I think a few hours of spec-reading and comparison is warranted.

Otherwise I quite plainly wouldn't know what to grab from the shelf once I'm at the store.

Maybe I'm more discerning (you might say: anal), but I like to do a little research for purchases like this.

[majewsky]

> Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take what I want to buy.

If you bring Linux on a USB stick, a good store will let you boot into it on the exhibition piece. At least, that was the case for me, and it definitely contributed to my buying my notebook at that particular store.

[thecrazyone]

I hadn't thought about this. Thanks for sharing :)

[Klover]

>Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take what I want to buy.

Look, I understand you that purchasing a Linux laptop with the same certainty of polish that a MacBook has is just problematic. But:

That honestly sounds like a personal problem. And quite a problematic one at that. Do you go into a grocery store and grab the most flashy looking product too? I would hope that you have read up a little bit about nutrition and can take the 5 seconds of your time to see that Flashy Box consists of 90% sugar.

And if a quick Google search of the suggested "model + Linux" is too much time for you whenever you spend $1000+, then how do you find the time to type out this comment?

You merely pointed out one small reason for why you find yourself getting a fully compatible Linux laptop problematic. Your time argument is applicable on the wider issue of not knowing, which you hinted at with your Asus experience.

See: there are a whole lot of things a newcomer doesn't know when they want to get a Linux laptop.

1. They have to know that they have to know beforehand how compatible the laptop is.

2. They have to know how to know how to install additional drivers.

3. They have to know how to revert or otherwise (guess what: I don't know) in case of a similar Wi-Fi driver problem you experienced.

4. They have to know that, in order to get a competitive battery life on the current LTS Ubuntu and Fedora 25, they have to use the terminal to install an additional package (TLP, I didn't know that without it battery life is quite miserable).

5. And this is the summary and the stresser: I don't know what else they, and I, don't know.

Not knowing the things you don't know, that's what you - at least I - don't have time for.

The Chromebooks, those look nice. Linux, without the hassle. I like those. They pass the parent gift test, because it seems like those are the only ones you can just give a family member and never hear about again. No driver issues, no TLP to know to install. And they're so fast! You open the lid and it's ready to go! Why doesn't a distribution pick up Chromium OS and GNU it up, or take the best pieces of it?

As a hardware side note, it appears to be that you sort of get what you pay for. If you want something that runs the seemingly workstation focused Fedora distribution, you probably want a "business" laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad, Dell Precision, HP Elitebook). Ubuntu is more lenient when you tick the 3rd party box during installation, which means most laptops worth their salt appear to work, think $1000+ (the non dev XPS, the ZenBook, VAIO). But don't quote me on that.

[gsmiro]

I have a 2013 MBP and mu wife a cheap 14" Dell bought around the same time. Fun fact: using my Samsung TV as a second display didn't work in MBP running Mavericks and worked in the Dell running Win 7. After I upgraded to Yosemite/Win10 things got inverted and now I have to stop coding in order my wife can watch Netflix in the TV with her girlfriends...

Bottom line: windows has crappy driver support for old hardware

[kriro]

I strongly disagree with the sentiment that the solution is "another closed-source unix/linux-based operating system that throws away X.org and its attempted modern replacements, that can directly compete with OS X"

We don't need more closed, we need more open. What we need is massive rewards for open hardware via customer money. As long as wireless cards and graphics cards are closed by default and drivers are BLOBed up it's a losing battle by default. I do believe there's an opening to mini-disrupt Apples hardware (specifically laptop) sales by providing the "Apple experience" of bundling up everything in a neat package with strong branding. Focus very hard on the professional niche, ignore everything else. The key is finding hardware vendors that will play ball (and investors that are willing to take the boring low margin hardware risk). Linux has 30-40% of Apple's market share.

I suppose a bigish player like Dell could also work. I had the feeling their Linux line was more of an afterthought but the current release note of an extended Linux line looks pretty great. I'm not sure about their marketing and approach it isn't focused enough (just sell it as the ultimate developer box imo) but that news had me very excited. Good job Dell :)

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's not the Apple experience. The Apple experience means - well, used to mean - an entire ecosystem of hardware, software, content, distribution, marketing, branding, business partnerships, and development.

Linux doesn't work with absolute consistency because FOSS people still don't understand that source code is a tiny part of the bigger user experience.

The big challenge in the PC business isn't the OS, it's the politics of community building around a platform - "community" meaning users, hardware suppliers, developers, investors, and channel partners.

Linux has a relatively tiny community which only really interests developers, which means that the big hardware companies don't feel any great commercial pressure to support it.

This might change if Team Linux had an evangelical organisation that could negotiate and do politics at the appropriate levels. But politics is a much harder problem than writing code, so that probably won't happen any time soon.

Edit: at the moment some of the distros have evolved to do some of that work, with varying levels of success. But if you want to play in the consumer space (which is a superset of the developer laptop market), you need to do a lot more than release distro installers and hope Dell or someone else will pick them for its hardware.

[lottin]

One of the things that attracted me to FOSS in the first place was the complete lack of marketing, i.e. lies. At first I was a little taken aback by the way so many projects would advertise prominently flaws in their product (bugs, missing features, design limitations...), but quickly I got used to it, and now just seems the normal thing to do. Whereas marketing comes across as blatant, manipulative BS.

[majewsky]

> FOSS people still don't understand that source code is a tiny part of the bigger user experience.

I don't think that understanding is the major problem. The FOSS community just has a huge surplus of developers and practically no designers. From there on, it's a case of "if all you have is a hammer": If you're most adept at coding, you will try to solve every problem through code.

[pjmlp]

No, GNU/Linux needs less fragmentation.

It needs a full OS stack, from the kernel to the UI toolkit, that is guaranteed to be the same, across all distributions.

Where are the Mac OS X frameworks on GNU/Linux?

Nowhere, because each distribution might be using a total different way to play sounds, music, doing SIMD, process images, accessing databases, UI toolkit ....

[vacri]

> that is guaranteed to be the same, across all distributions.

Then there wouldn't be "distributions", plural.

> Where are the Mac OS X frameworks on GNU/Linux?

Where are the macOS servers? Where is macOS running on a raspberry pi? Where is macOS running on your home router? On your watch? On your supercomputer? GNU/Linux does just fine.

macOS suits one use case, and one only (though it's very visible); don't make it sound like everything else sucks.

[pjmlp]

From Apple point of view those examples aren't interesting from business point of view.

If GNU/Linux wasn't free as beer and people had to pay for it, all those use cases would never have happened.

Hence why it is almost impossible to sell software to GNU/Linux users, and one has to get by writing books, selling consulting services or support.

[jeena]

Wait, macOS is free as in beer but all those use cases didn't happen with it, coincidence?

[drvdevd]

This has actually always been one of the major benefits of FreeBSD (and other BSDs too).

I consider it an accident of history that Linux won out. We (devs, sysadmins, users) chose this fragmentation for some reason I still don't understand.

[therealidiot]

Choice, to me, is important.

I like that I don't _have_ to run a specific piece of software if I don't like the way it behaves/looks.

I can pick something else that gets the job done in a way I prefer

[empthought]

Don't kid yourself. If IBM had thrown its weight behind FreeBSD instead of Linux in 2000-2001, Linux would be the greener-grass "what if?" OS and FreeBSD would be on most of our phones. Individual users had nothing to do with it.

[ansible]

Even back then, Linux had more traction on embedded systems. FreeBSD was mostly desktop systems, though multiple architectures were supported.

The Sharp Zarus, Nokia stuff, and other efforts pioneered the way for Linux on phones.

[tomcam]

We all agree. How do you achieve that goal when device vendors have no interest in working with a distant third Linux in the OS ecosystem, much less your elegant but totally unproven PjmlpOS?

[pjmlp]

I don't, hence why I moved away from GNU/Linux as desktop OS.

For embedded use or being a POSIX clone on the server, it does just fine.

[Recurecur]

'I strongly disagree with the sentiment that the solution is "another closed-source unix/linux-based operating system that throws away X.org and its attempted modern replacements, that can directly compete with OS X"

We don't need more closed, we need more open.'

The main problem with Linux, IMO, is its inability to attract proprietary software. And while I really like many aspects of open source, it has devalued software (and software developers) in general for many people. Further, Linux has been largely an exercise in "borrowing" the most successful ideas from proprietary software. It has also been a poster child for poor UI design and inconsistency between applications.

I love the idea of a macOS competitor using FreeBSD. It could include Linux compatibility as FreeBSD does now. For bonus points, write the entire new GUI in Swift...

[peller]

> If the laptop comes with Ubuntu pre-installed, what are the odds I can replace it with CentOS or Arch?

Very high.

For the most part, drivers on Linux are determined by the kernel version[0]. Arch typically runs a pretty new kernel, so anything that Ubuntu supports, will most likely be fine. (That applies to pretty much all desktop-oriented distros.) CentOS is server-oriented, and typically runs a pretty old kernel, and as such you need to be more conservative in the hardware you choose. That said, they do backport a fair amount of hardware support from newer kernels.

[0] The exception to this rule are closed-source drivers, but even those tend to be tied/limited to certain kernel versions.

[mgbmtl]

Not to mention, that before buying my Dell XPS 15 (at the time) in order to run Debian, I mostly relied on Arch's documentation to know if it was a good purchase or not, and what wifi chipset to choose :)

[ankka]

The Arch linux wiki is one of the best maintained and up-to-date on hardware issues. It helps that Arch itself tries to ship only vanilla software: as few modifications as possible to the kernel, too, unlike the bigger distros.

Excellent source of information.

[stymaar]

A notable exception to this rule are Nvidia Drivers, which are close-source. When switching from the initial distribution to the newer one, you'll fall back to the free Nouveau driver and need to reinstall the NVIDIA zone by yourself.

It's not too difficult but can be surprising if you're not expecting it because your thought everything was in the kernel like I did.

[rl3]

>We need another closed-source unix/linux-based operating system that throws away X.org and its attempted modern replacements, that can directly compete with OS X.

In context of laptops, Microsoft is in a position to kick serious ass on this front should they wish to. Their Surface hardware line is vastly superior to Apple at the moment.

Windows Subsystem For Linux (WSL) looks promising but is still in its infancy. Unfortunately it will likely have severe limitations for some time, and even then there's no escaping the fact it runs atop Windows.

In my opinion, there's a few rather crazy options:

1. Ship the Surface line with a hypervisor by default. Provide full official driver support for the hardware in both Windows and Linux environments. That means first-class Wacom support on Linux. Ditto power management, touchpad and wireless. Run Windows and Linux simultaneously, with interop support.

2. Reengineer the Windows kernel to update itself without the incessant need to reboot all the time. Windows Update is a piece of crap that needs to be replaced by a proper package manager anyways (at least under the hood). Then, double down on WSL until it's practically at parity with a real Linux install. Failing that, integrate a guest VM with full hardware acceleration and driver support.

3. Microsoft develops their own Linux distro and calls it Windows Developer Edition. Fuse the best parts of each OS together. Windows' existing graphics infrastructure ported as a desktop environment. Native D3D. Native Windows binaries. First-class driver support. A UI oriented towards pure modularity and customization.

I concede the third item is simply fantasy, but we can always dream.

[hobarrera]

I don't get why people insist that the whole "bash on windows" things makes it a suitable replacement for Linux. It's like when people say "oh, but OS X has a terminal as well".

I don't use Linux just because of the terminal. Package managers (and the ability to deterministically install/uninstall packages!!) are one of the strongest pilars. WMs I like are another (we'll each have a preference, mine bine i3wm). And finally, a [somewhat] sane, understandable filesystem hierarchy.

Windows is still so, so far from all of those, that it's still not even close to being a suitable replacement.

[WayneBro]

> Package managers...

But bash on Windows includes apt. It's all of Ubuntu running on the Windows NT kernel instead of the Linux kernel...

> WMs...

Windows has one of the best window managers around and you can make it do pretty much anything you want.

> ...understandable filesystem hierarchy...

Done. And it's actually simpler than any Unix filesystem that I've seen. Obviously millions of users and devs use the Windows filesystem to great success. What parts of the Windows fileystem are you having trouble understanding?

Imagine a filesystem where you don't spread one single application's files around to 10 different locations which differ based on the target distro...that's Windows.

[hobarrera]

It's not the same to dumping some package manager on top of an OS (like apt on bash) to having it be part of the core OS.

When a package manager is part of the core OS, it handles ALL installed apps, and can update, or remove anything.

apt on bash won't update my firefox, or let me uninstall apps. Stuff will make it in sideways, and won't be tracked by any package manager.

> Windows has one of the best window managers around and you can make it do pretty much anything you want.

Like I said, there's a strong matter of preference, but what can objectively be said is that ONE window manager isn't enough for everybody, and everybody want something different. That's why you have different WMs on Linux.

Also, Windows' WM (whatever it's called) can't do any of the stuff i3wm does, so you're just exagerating.

> Obviously millions of users and devs use the Windows filesystem to great success.

Users don't count, because they barely interact with it. And when they do, they have to follow guides, because they can't understand it. Go ahead. Ask any windows user where specific stuff is stored.

> Imagine a filesystem where you don't spread one single application's files around to 10 different locations which differ based on the target distro...that's Windows.

Why is that a good thing? If you want to know how owns a file, we have package managers to track that.

[WayneBro]

> ...can't do any of the stuff i3wm does..

What exactly do you think i3wm can do that Windows 10 can't be made to do?

Windows 10 has tiling and workspaces. I can add any number of automations via AutoHotKey.

> Users don't count, because they barely interact with it...

Didn't I mention the millions of devs that are on Windows? I also live with a 3rd grade school teacher and she absolutely uses the heck out of the Windows file system. Anyway - as a developer, I use Linux, Mac and Windows to build Node.js and Cordova apps and I use them all fully. Linux for servers, Mac for iOS builds and the occasional Swift app...and Windows for Android and Web development. I just can't see what you think is so "unusable" about Windows filesystem.

Honestly, it just sounds to me like you just hate Windows without even knowing anything about it.

> It's not the same to dumping some package manager on top of an OS (like apt on bash) to having it be part of the core OS...

It might as well be since even on Linux you have to break out of the package manager often in order to get work done!

Have you not seen the hundreds of FOSS projects that ask you to install by curling a shell script right off their site? You can't do shit with just a package manager.

In any case - I'd rather not get stuck using one OS forever. Linux leaves a LOT to be desired. That's why I use multiple systems and I am well versed in each of them. Life would seem so dull if I only knew one OS. I feel sorry for people who are so adamant about never using some tech because of their politics or whatever.

[developer2]

>> Windows is still so, so far from all of those, that it's still not even close to being a suitable replacement.

As a developer who does not develop using any Microsoft technologies, this couldn't be farther from the truth. I left my previous job specifically because all 600+ employees were unequivocally required to use Windows. The company and coworkers were by far the best I've worked with, but it became no longer worth the daily frustration of fighting my toolset just to even try and get work done. Oh, you are using VMs on Windows? No, you cannot have a case-sensitive folder share. Symlinks accessible on both the host and guest? Never!

Windows is a disaster. Neither Putty nor cygwin provide an acceptable remote terminal, and PowerShell is a joke as a local console. Multiple monitors with multiple spaces/desktops per screen is impossible to use on a native install, and the third party offerings are all buggy beyond belief. Win+Tab looks like something a 5 year old would design.

I'm back to working for a company who will buy the hardware you request. I finally realized I'm senior enough to be able to ask for the hardware and software licenses I need to be productive; any pushback during the interviewing phase or post-interview negotiations simply means I move on to the next company. I am grateful to have reached the point where I have the freedom to choose.

[cube2222]

If you don't get it, try it. It's not just bash. It's the whole Ubuntu userspace. Yes, you can use apt-get there.

[hobarrera]

See my above reply for details to sibling comment, but basically, dumping a package manager on a running OS isn't the same as having a package manager to properly track installed apps.

This apt-get will only track stuff installed via it, while there's dozens of other stuff that just made it in sideways.

Also, ¿Can I run X, i3wm, etc? ¿Can I get rid of the entire Windows DE?

My point is, I don't use bash, because I want all the above. I've no complaint if you prefer windows, that's your choice. But don't tell Linux users that windows is now the same just because you have bash.

[20after4]

but it's _on windows_ so what's the point?

:P

[pjmlp]

A better OS stack, where devs are busy moving beyond C, has better asynchronous IO stack, kernel level thread pools, embraces a mixed architecture with separated kernel and personalities, driver crashes don't bring the OS down, embraced by the games and graphics communities, allows for multi-GPU usage ....

[microtonal]

Hardware support + you can run the Adobe suites, Microsoft Office, etc.?

I think WSL will be very successful among developers. You can just get any laptop from the store that runs Windows 10 and have Linux running at native speed (except I/O, which is currently a bottleneck in WSL) at the same time without the hardware compatibility problems, etc.

[WayneBro]

More hardware support, more software, better software, more users...

What's your point?

[haspok]

Whenever in doubt buying a laptop for Linux, just consult the Arch Linux wiki on the specific model. If the given model (such as the XPS 13) is popular in the community, the amount and quality of the information collected there is mindblowing.

For example: the pages about the past 3 releases of the XPS 13: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(9343) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(9350) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(9360)

From the compatibility point of view, usually more important than the distro is the kernel version. There are some minor exceptions to this, such as Ubuntu vs Fedora 25 on the 9343.

Ubuntu compiles the kernel with CONFIG_ACPI_REV_OVERRIDE_POSSIBLE=y (due to Dell asking for it), and Fedora does not. This results in the soundcard working properly in HDA mode under Ubuntu, but not working properly in I2S mode under Fedora. But this can be fixed, it just takes time and effort to find these information yourself.

No, the year of the Linux desktop - when you can just buy and use a laptop with Linux just as you do with Apple - has not come yet, and will not come in the near future.

[fnord123]

>Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware.

I strongly disagree. When the dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I tried to dual boot, Debian ran everything on my desktop from the get go. For Windows, I had to hunt for drivers for all the hardware, or use the provided disks (which was annoying since I hadn't originally bought an optical drive)

[calvin_]

Nowadays, that's not an issue with Windows. On all my machines, the drivers either came with Windows or Windows downloaded them from Windows Update.

[jeena]

I disagree too, I had to install the ethernet driver, the wifi driver, the soundcard driver and the bluetooth driver manually frome some shady websites on the Internet. The worst was the ethernet driver because I couldn't just download it without internet, I had to use Linux to download it and put it on a FAT formated USB stick.

[BuildTheRobots]

I disagree. Installing Windows 7 and 10 on newer hardware usually leaves me hunting for network drivers _before_ windows can then go about automagically installing the rest of them.

Even after installing the network driver, there's usually some ACPI or platform device it can't automatically install and then I'm stuck hunting device IDs and chipset drivers.

[jeena]

Just buy from a company which specializes in building laptops for Linux, they chose those components for which there are free software drivers already available so it never will be a problem.

1. http://system76.com/ 2. http://tuxedocomputers.com/ 3. https://www.entroware.com/

and so on ...

This way you're not only helping yourself but also invest into companies which make sure stuff is working on Linux, as they grow all the other OEMs will see the potential and adapt (hopefully).

[kbp]

> OS X will work on any hardware it is permitted to operate on.

OS X is only "permitted to operate" on computers designed for it, though. Linux doesn't have issues running on models where the manufacturer actually supports Linux.

[chubuntu]

Asterisk show up fine if followed by white space * ... The question is how to show (asterisk)nix?

Apparently three asterisks + nix = *nix

[developer2]

Ha! Funny enough, triple asterisk actually renders as <i></i>* - an empty <i> tag followed by a single asterisk. Oh, HN, you. But thank you, something that visually renders properly.

[digi_owl]

I have taken to using _ as an alternative...

[vacri]

I go for ^nix

[jabajabadu]

Great point. I had two laptops with pre-installed Linux. Both were not even cross-update compatible. Video driver of my System76 laptop broke after the first major Ubuntu update. XPS 13 Developer Edition failed to hibernate the very fist time I closed the lid. WTF? Both laptops cost well over $1k.

[luca_ing]

> The fact that hardware - though much improved in the past 15 years - is still a crapshoot on Linux, particularly when it comes to laptop hardware, is so frustrating.

Anecdata: I've only ever had good luck with my laptops. All bought without OS (other than a make-believe FreeDOS installation).

Granted, I pondered a while which laptop to buy -- but I would do that in any case.

My personal experience is that it's surprisingly easy to get it right nowadays.

In fact I distinctly remember being baffled at how hard it was to install a particular driver -- only to discover that the system balked correctly: the driver didn't need to be installed, the device had been working all along, out of the box. I was banging my head against non-existing walls; these turned out to be harder than existing walls ;-)

[mrsernine]

> Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "just work out of the box"

I'm sorry to disagree, but after a fresh install of windows you still have to install a ton of drivers for specific hardware plus a ton of reboots after each one.

In fact IMHO Ubuntu offers a way better "out of the box" experience than windows does nowadays.

[qplex]

>OS X will work on any hardware it is permitted to operate on.

I've actually hacked the OS X installer to work on an older MacBook that wasn't "supported" anymore.

I think it was OS X 10.5 and the installer had something like this in there:

if(MacBook<3,1) ThrowError();

Rather amusingly everything worked after I changed that one line in the script...

[20after4]

I did the exact same thing! I was a tiny bit proud of that clever hack. It was just too easy to really feel good about it though.

[gonzo]

> We need another closed-source unix/linux-based operating system that throws away X.org and its attempted modern replacements, that can directly compete with OS X.

Jordan Hubbard is at iXsystems now. FreeNAS/TrueNAS & PC-BSD/ TrueOS.

So maybe.

[vacri]

> Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware. OS X will work on any hardware it is permitted to operate on. Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "just work out of the box".

Linux is exactly like Windows in this regard: it works just fine as long as you have the right third-party drivers. Hell, I remember having trouble installing my ATI drivers on win7 because win7 fallback was 640x480, and the braindead driver installer window was taller than that - you couldn't see the bottom of the window to click on the buttons (and windows wouldn't let you drag the top of the window offscreen). In the XP days, having windows completely fail to work with NICs was so frustrating that a friend of mine slipstreamed a vanilla installation disk with 676 NIC drivers on it, so 'no matter where you installed it, it would get network!'

So no, Windows doesn't work on 'practically any hardware' - you need to have the right drivers for it, same as linux/bsd/whatever.

[WayneBro]

> So no, Windows doesn't work on 'practically any hardware' - you need to have the right drivers for it, same as linux/bsd/whatever.

Sure. But it seems silly to acknowledge that fact while omitting the fact that hardware manufacturers actually always build drivers for Windows and they hardly ever build them for Linux.

[csdreamer7]

This is Linux laptop buying in a nutshell.

Used a nice little laptop for years in college. I kept fighting it on the headphone jack. It would not recognize when it was plugged in, or the sound did not work period. Hot keys would not work. Etc, etc. Besides that, everyone would always comment on what a nice little laptop it was as I ran it into the ground.

When it died I bounced from HP (horrible, came with AMD graphics that would overheat and AMD cut support for a month later, while still selling them) and then Dell (mostly horrible, but due to Sandy Bridge having horrible graphics support, the Dell had a short power cord, the USB shorted out)

Got System76 Lemur, it was like my old laptop, very small, very quiet, hardware switches for wifi, brightness & turning off screen so they would work. Ivy Bridge would freeze X if I closed and opened the lid enough, but that disappeared with the next version of Ubuntu. Similar issue with Skylake Lemur, went away when I used Manjaro with Mesa 13.

There is a small premium vs Dell or HP systems, but those are Dell and HP systems. You get what you pay for. Loud, poorly design pieces of crap (at least when I bought them). If you are willing to drop a grand and a half on a Macbook you would still save money on a System76.

[bwat48]

> Ivy Bridge would freeze X if I closed and opened the lid enough, but that disappeared with the next version of Ubuntu. Similar issue with Skylake Lemur, went away when I used Manjaro with Mesa 13.

This kind of issue is why I stopped bothering with linux on laptops and got a macbook.

EVERY single laptop I've used linux on (which were all researched before hand to include hardware that's not supposed to have issues with linux, and this includes a system76 lemur ultra laptop I had with ubuntu pre-installed) has had issues along these lines (e.g. random graphics driver freezes, suspend/resume issues, backlight issues, wifi issues, randomly freezing during boot etc...).

Random suspend/resume issues were by far the most common issue. With every laptop it would work like 95% of the time, but that remaining 5% of the time where it decides it doesn't want to resume is enough to make it unusable as far as I'm concerned. I've not once ever had a macbook (with OSX) refuse to suspend or resume on me.

Sometimes you could distro hop, update your kernel etc... to get past them, but there would always be some new issue along those lines that would crop up eventually. I felt like I was spending more time distro hopping, reporting bugs, trying to work around bugs etc... then I was actually doing anything productive.

[csdreamer7]

If I use an updated version of Mesa, the issues go away. This is Intel's fault, not X and not Ubuntu or Manjaro. This really is not different than waiting for an updated driver. I understand you had issues, but mine, that are similar to yours, went away with an update.

Intel hardware is not problem free on Windows or Mac OS X. I have a dual boot of Windows 7 on my older Lemur. The Intel driver, which last I checked, had not had an update in years for 7, still has graphic glitches in a few places. Firefox with Suspend tab extension will not render the side bar correctly (or the toolbars) on 7. Intel's drivers are just not that good.

I do not have this problem with the Mesa drivers on Linux. As far as I can tell, I do not have any problems. The Lemur is rock solid. The only reason I bought a new one was because I abuse the poor thing and System76 had a sale.

[rlonstein]

> I've not once ever had a macbook (with OSX) refuse to suspend or resume on me.

Oh, you're fortunate. I'd not seen it prior to Yosemite but the two MBP's (mid-2012 15" and early-2015 13") I have here running Yosemite and El Capitan both with external displays manage to wedge their graphics and have suspend/resume issues. The newer one in particular gets rebooted every day or it eventually wedges its display (ssh sessions continue to work, so I can sometimes recover).

[pjmlp]

I bought an Asus 1215B netbook that came with GNU/Linux pre-installed (Ubuntu), sold via Amazon a couple of years ago.

Guess what, the Ubuntu devs decided they should replace the Broadcom closed source WiFi drivers by the half-working open source ones, so during six months I didn't had a working wireless connection.

Asus could not support us, and Ubuntu forums were full of hacking the old drivers into the updated ones, or have patience and wait for the new working ones.

I had to disable sleep and hibernation, because it would only wake up again by forcing a full reboot, taking the battery out.

Still have it with GNU/Linux, just to have a machine around with it running directly on hardware, instead of a VM.

[pawadu]

I believe Ubuntu allows you to choose between closed source drivers from the vendor and open source ones.

It even asks you during install. I think it's on the very first page they show you.

[pjmlp]

Not in this case.

If you wish I can try to track down the online forum discussions, with the hacked down suggestions from the Ubuntu developers that decided to throw away the broadcom drivers during an update, just because.

[artursapek]

Just a PSA from my own research recently: be careful with the XPS. https://www.google.com/search?q=xps+coil+whine

As far as I know they haven't resolved it yet.

[blobert]

Can confirm, Precision M5510 (facsimile of XPS15). I usually have headphones on and even without them the whine is tolerable and becomes part of the background noise, however your annoyance tolerance level will vary.

[akulbe]

Does the coil whine only happen with Linux? or does it happen in Windows too?

Was thinking about the latest XPS w/Kaby Lake CPU... but this would give me pause.

[dkuntz2]

It sounds like it's an issue for Windows too

[leesalminen]

Can anyone point me towards the new Dell XPS 15 Developer Edition (does it exist)?

I'm able to find the Windows version [0], as well as the XPS 13 Developer Edition [1], but no XPS 15 Developer edition.

I just want my 15 inches. I did 13 for years and the pain still haunts me.

[0] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9560-laptop/pd

[1] http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...

[gingernaut]

It's the Dell Precision 5510.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...

[hvis]

I've looked at it, and they include a pretty useless NVIDIA Quadro instead of a video cart you could use for occasional gaming.

Granted, the last 3D game I've ran on my XPS 15 was Half-Life 2, and it's pretty fast even on the integrated Intel video card.

[deadbunny]

I use the XPS 15 (2015) and I run Linux with zero problems. While not marketed as a Linux machine I've had zero issues getting 16.04 server (no unity) working.

[hvis]

I'm using the 2015 XPS 15 too, likewise with no significant problems.

The default Ubuntu distro with Unity, because I think it's nice.

[nikatwork]

I've heard the XPS13 has a nearly-15 usable screen size because of the tiny bevel, any owners care to verify?

[jronald]

I have the Developer edition of the older 13 - its a 13" display in closer to an 11" form. The 13" and 15" have really tiny bezels to hit their dimensions, with the new 15.6" being 14" wide.

The 13" developer edition was close enough to perfect for me with the 1920x1080 display, battery life takes a hit with the 4k screens. Getting a 15" this time around, but expect delays on the developer edition, they usually launch a few months after the regular 15" while they sort new drivers.

[gshulegaard]

In a lot of ways, System76 was a better user experience for me than the Dell XPS 13. But yes both are good (from someone who has both).

[rlonstein]

I recently had good luck with the Dell Inspiron 5565 with the AMD A12 APU I got for my son though I knew it might be a crap shoot. Everything worked out of the box on Ubuntu 16.10 including sound and sleep but I had to blacklist, iirc, `i2c-hid` so the touchpad would work consistently.

[metafunctor]

Is the Dell XPS 15" Developer Edition model actually available in Europe? Where can I buy one online? I would rather not talk with a Dell salesperson to buy just one. There don't seem to be any resellers in Finland who give a rat's ass about Linux.