[out_sider]

Last December I bought a Asus Zenbook S14 with the Core 7 Ultra (lunar lake) and to be honest I'm loving windows + wsl, being able to have a premade ubuntu image configured with my building tools and just import and work on my balcuny for 9h is amazing. On top of that , although it's not the best gaming machine (far from that) I can still run a cs2 and Halo inifinity prety well :).

[diggan]

Some year ago I bought a Surface Pro 8 thinking it was the best hardware to run Windows on and holy hell was I wrong. Overheats in two seconds, performance is probably worse than my Steam Deck purchased years ago and the only way I can have it run relatively well is a barebones Linux install. Before that, I gave WSL(2) a try and besides giving me half the performance compared to running Linux the normal way and introducing various compatibility issues (although it's just a VM?!), a recent Windows update broke the WSL image on disk leading to a corrupted install, never managed to recover from that and gave up.

I can't wait for Ableton to (eventually) get their thumbs out of their asses and make Ableton work on Linux so I can dump Windows fully.

Written from my Linux X1 Carbon which also somehow magically works on my patio, don't ask me how.

[in_a_hole]

You may have already heard this but Bitwig runs on Linux and has an Ableton-like workflow, as well as a richer effects system, I'm told.

[vunderba]

Bitwig user here - it's developed by former Ableton developers and the sandboxing system they use for plug-ins makes it rock-solid. Even when a plug-in does crash (which is rare) - it doesn't take the entire DAW with it.

[epoxy_sauce]

I too want ableton on Linux but then what about our vsts. Would we need a Linux version for all those too?

[_fat_santa]

Dumb question but have you tried running Ableton via Wine/Proton?

[barrkel]

The Zenbook S14 is a lovely machine, and you can get it with 32G and 120Hz OLED HDR display without the weight or bulk of a macbook pro.

I don't like Windows 11. WSL2 is just about an acceptable Linux, but I don't like how there's no memory ballooning. I had to disable all the sleeping network access mechanisms to make it not run out of battery when suspended. Windows 11 is ugly and unpleasant to use in large part because of the proliferation of different UI themes over the years, which they can't easily remove due to how third party software plugs into things - multiple control panels, multiple Explorer menus, etc.

As soon as there is a solid Linux implementation (ideally Debian-flavoured) with competent power management I will switch. That may be a long while off though.

[wslh]

I wonder about the complexity of improving the battery management on Linux. I understand that macOS is highly optimized and Windows is in the middle or closer to Linux? I am not talking about the Apple Silicon chips but at the OS level.

[Naac]

The latest release of Ubuntu already provides this.

I'm running it on the latest zenbook S14, on the ultra 7. Great battery life, and no problems entering/exiting sleep mode.

[barrkel]

I also have the ultra 7, 258V. What kernel are you running? I saw advice that 6.12 is recommended but 24.10 is on 6.11, and I do not want to be spending any time building kernels.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1fq908x/fedora_41_be...

[billfor]

Sleep mode is not a problem but I tend to use hibernate, which is difficult to get to work under Ubuntu. I think it requires a dedicated encrypted swap -- it's all manual steps and configuration.

[StableAlkyne]

The WSL2 has been fantastic. It takes the unixy environment of a Mac and puts it on the Windows ecosystem my IT imposes. It fixes everything I hate about Windows by letting me avoid using Windows while using Windows.

It's a huge step up from Cygwin, too, since it's a proper Linux instead of just POSIX compatibility.

If you want a fun rabbit hole, look into how the WSL2 and 1 interact with Windows. WSL1 was a whole new shell around the NT Kernel. WSL2 is more of a VM, but using the Plan 9 (yes, that plan 9) filesystem implementation to talk with Windows.

[ohgr]

Until it breaks. I watched a colleague have to reinstall his laptop the other day because whenever he opened a WSL terminal, nothing happened and it banged the CPU at 100% and wouldn’t even shut down.

Have seen that a few times from different people.

[rhdunn]

My experience with that is that 100% CPU can happen if the WSL2 image is using more memory than available, and is then swapping. You should be able to check that by looking at the VmmemWSL process. There's also an option in the WSL config you can specify to limit the amount of memory it can use.

[ohgr]

Machines have 64 gig of memory. vmmem uses only 8. That process just jams at 100% and kills it. You can’t terminate it as it’s not actually a process as such. WSL shutdown does not work.

[StableAlkyne]

Never heard of that happening myself, and I've been on a few teams that used it going back to the WSL1 days.

Not saying that it didn't, either. Just that it might not be a widespread issue

[thebruce87m]

> fixes everything I hate about Windows

It fixes the forced reboots? Or are these a thing of the past?

[pjmlp]

That has been my experience since Windows 7, back then I used a mix of VirtualBox and VMWare Workstation, WSL makes it one less thing to install.

Windows 7 was my turning point, moving away from dual boot, something I have been doing since installing Slackware 2.0 on that 1995's summer.

[varispeed]

My friend has Zephyrus G16 with Core 9 Ultra and 32GB RAM. This thing is abomination. It is enough to just open a browser for fans to start "drilling". It is struggling with the basics needed for studying - browser with many tabs, few Word documents, Excel, Teams. Word sometimes is a slideshow on larger documents. Typing is lagging like you press a key and a letter appear after few seconds and so on.

After using Macs M1 and M2 I can't see how people can buy these laptops. This is massively worse experience.

[ohgr]

Standard PC experience these days. The very high end dell precision are just as bad. Getting an hour of battery life doing basic tasks after only 9 months.

Using a 2021 MBP M1 Pro MBP instead of the $3000 turd my outfit said I needed to use. It’s faster and doesn’t fuck up.

[varispeed]

One time my friend called me that she cannot do anything on this laptop, at first I was unable to figure out what is wrong. CPU usage was low, memory plenty available and yet it was a slideshow. Then it clicked - it was not plugged in.

I completely forgot about that PC laptops massively lose performance when on battery as well. Now she is always plugged in, which sort of defeats the purpose of having mobile device.

When going to uni she has to get a place with the outlet to plug it in.

Never had that problem with Mac (I can get it fully charged to work, do the whole day without plugging it in. I don't have a charger in my bag...).

Unfortunately some software she has to use only works on Windows and doesn't work well in VM (I tried on my Mac to see if it was viable, unfortunately not).

[ohgr]

Yeah that. My daughter has an M2 air and doesn’t take the charger with her any more. Doesn’t need it.

[sedawk]

Really? Are you suggesting you getting solid 9h on full charge, while developing on Windows+wsl?? That's very hard to believe, but if that's true color me impressed. I get no where near that (albeit older hardware).

[adultSwim]

I honestly think Windows with WSL is the best developer platform at the moment. Mac is great but software written for Linux is better integrated into Windows. I love Linux (particularly Debian, Fedora/RHEL, Qubes) for servers but Mac and Windows provide a more pleasant experience.

[globnomulous]

Did you post this comment in the wrong thread?