[ActorNightly]

>but if you get a DisplayLink dongle it works perfectly.

LOL

Im currently typing this on a work issued Macbook thats about 2 years old at this point, and 40% of the time, when I plug in a cable, it decides it wants to turn on and turn off hdmi output in rapid succession.

[microtonal]

I always use DisplayPort over USB-C DP-Alt (or Thunderbolt on some displays) and I literally never have a problem across various LG, Dell and Apple Studio Displays.

MacBook Pro M1 Pro or MacBook Pro M5

Sounds like something is really broken in your setup?

On the other hand, sleeping/waking Thunderbolt displays on my ThinkPad with Linux regularly leads to kernel panics, across several kernel versions.

[necovek]

M1 non-Pro could only support one external screen through TB, and I think it carried on through at least M2 Air. It would also frequently get my Dell screen into a weird hung state after suspending and attempting to reconnect, frequently requiring a power cycle of the screen (not even connecting a Linux laptop back to it got it fixed). At some point, it seems to have gotten fixed and I am not seeing it anymore.

Linux, however, has worked great ever since I got the USB-C DP Alt-mode screen back around 8 years ago with my Thinkpad X1 Carbons over the years. I do have trouble getting a stable 8K at 60Hz through it with Iris Xe (gen13), but that does not work with Macs either.

Linux did have issues with using different scaling factors on multiple connected screens, but I only ever used one monitor so it never bothered me.

On top of that, it still does support subpixel rendering, and you can even tune pixel layout (RGB, BGR...) for VA and OLED panels, so text never looks crappy or janky as it can on Macs with low DPI screens (eg. large 4k screens of 40"+, but noticeable even on 32" 4k).

[ActorNightly]

Display over USB-C is very janky (as in very much depends on hardware in the display or the docking station that you use).

The only saving grace was that the Macbook has external HDMI which works flawlessly, just like it has been for the past decade on any laptop. But not all models of Macs have had external HDMI. My last one did not, and it was a piece of crap, that ended up also swelling the battery somehow.

[znpy]

Recent thinkpads are a bit of shit-tier laptops, and linux doesn’t help much (it’s not linux’s fault).

for personal use I gave up after almost twenty years of thinkpad+linux and got a MacBook neo. So far it’s been great, much much better than my shit-tier ryzen-based x13g1 with 8c/16t and 32gb RAM. (Edit: it’s also more reliable when driving my 34” 1440p external display).

[BirAdam]

I had used Linux since mid-1990s and gave it up for Apple Silicon. Not fighting my hardware/software has been great despite the diminution of Apple’s software stack.

[piperswe]

DisplayPort over DP Alt Mode != DisplayLink. DisplayLink is a way to send compressed video streams over a normal USB connection.

[microtonal]

Yes, I never said so. I was suggesting to use DP-Alt mode instead (if they have a MacBook without HDMI, even if they had, I'd still prefer DP-Alt).