[SamuelAdams]

Just curious, how’s the trackpad compared to a recent MacBook Pro?

I’ve been using my Thinkpad T490 with Debian for 3 years and it’s fine. But then I tried the new MacBook Pro and that trackpad is very nice indeed. Feels a lot more precise. And the attention to smaller details and a consistent UI is nice to see too.

I’ve also been kind of peeved about several small things in Linux lately. Installing apps is not simple anymore. It started as apt-get and deb files. Now there’s flatpak and app images and electron which all have different install flows. Sometimes my Ethernet connection would, after resuming from sleep, drop to 100 Mbps until I reboot. Suspend doesn’t really work consistently. Tried installing Alfred (spotlight-like search / app launcher) and that seems to be flakey too. Mapped it to alt+ space but that doesn’t always enable it to come up.

[rbut]

I’m pretty picky about trackpads and the XPS 13 is as good as my Late 2013 Macbook Pro, or even better. (The MacBook trackpad was only good in macOS, the windows/linux drivers were never as good)

Its large enough, no accidental registrations due to palm and the right click is actually physical (which I find better than the Macbook’s double finger right-click tap).

[timbit42]

You can avoid snaps and flatpack with Linux Mint or Debian. They still support them but their repos have had everything I need without using snaps or flatpack.