Some of us have the impression that "Linux doesn't work well on laptops", specifically when it comes to suspend/resume and power consumption.
Under that impression, you have to find on eBay one particular ThinkPad manufactured in 2005, and spend a day tweaking things. Then it will work. Usually.
That impression was accurate, not too many years ago. It looks like it's not anymore?
It seems to me that this update is a great way to change that old impression. If only because "X works faster" is a way to reinforce that "X works at all".
p.s. To clarify, I'm talking about perception/impression not reality. Changing how people think.
It is worth being a bit careful, but that basically boils down to doing a search for the models you're looking at to identify any particular pitfalls, and you may in particular want to pay attention to the graphics and wifi chipsets. Not so much because you're likely to have any major problems, as because there are annoying quirks with some chipsets from time to time.
While clearly anecdotal, my own experience is that things have really not improved all that much over the past seven years. I've been using Linux since 1995, so I remember the bad old days, and things had improved a lot leading up to 2007 when I installed OpenSUSE 10.2 on a Dell D620 with relatively few problems. I recently tried installing Linux on a Dell E5430 (another mainstream business laptop, which is certified to work with Ubuntu) and my experience was not nearly as good:
I'm a big fan of Linux, but things do not seem to have improved over the last seven years. It just feels sloppy and unstable. I'm sure some things have improved, but too much feels unpolished. Maybe I just have bad luck, but I was talking to a guy the other day who has been using Linux since 1996 who had the same impression (he was having problems with disk corruption on a desktop installation).
>I'm a big fan of Linux, but things do not seem to have improved over the last seven years. It just feels sloppy and unstable.
Is this a conclusion completely drawn from your trying to install two versions of Linux on a particular laptop? If so, I'd say it's a lot of generalization for a single data point.
Well, I was installing pretty common distros on a pretty common laptop, and most people would have probably given up after expending many fewer hours than I did, so I think the risk of a random person trying to install Linux and coming away with the impression that Linux doesn't work is pretty high.
Also, it's not just install problems, and not just the problems that I listed in my original post. It's the fact that desktop search doesn't seem to be able to search the contents of my LibreOffice files when it worked just fine in OpenSUSE 10.2 (I've now taken to using "deepgrep" from the command line when I need to search my spreadsheets). It's the fact that task icons on the KDE panel sometimes end up on top of each other. It's the fact that when I leave the computer idle for a little while it tells me that it is locked and a password must be entered, but simply touching any key gets me right in (making the user think the computer is locked and it is safe to walk away from it when it isn't - nasty from a security standpoint). It's the fact that when I ssh into another computer and hit CTRL-D to log out ssh gets stuck and I have to kill it. It's the fact that it sometimes gets stuck when shutting down, so I have to hold the power button down to shut it off (which makes me worry about the possibility of corrupting something). Like I said, it feels sloppy.
When I'm buying a laptop, I keep in mind that I plan to install Linux on it, and plan accordingly. Exactly what I would have to do if I was making a decision to buy Apple or Microsoft.
That a random distro fails to work on a random laptop means that it's Monday. OS X wouldn't have installed at all, and the wrong version of Windows may have failed even harder.
When I'm buying a laptop, I keep in mind that I plan to install Linux on it, and plan accordingly.
You do realize that the laundry list of flaky behavior described in the post are replying to has nothing to do with the hardware (except maybe the shutdown issues), right?
Also, as I stated in my original post this laptop was certified for Ubuntu (I found that out before purchasing), so I did keep in mind that I was going to install Linux on it when purchasing, and I was expecting drivers to not be a problem. You can call me a fool for expecting OpenSUSE to work on it when it was certified for Ubuntu, but there is only so much you can confirm in a advance (and, Ubuntu-derived Mint failed on it).
OS X wouldn't have installed at all, and the wrong version of Windows may have failed even harder.
This misses my point. I realize that Linux manages to accomplish quite a lot without the support from hardware vendors that Windows enjoys. But, between 1995 and 2007 there was a huge amount of improvement in "just works" and polish for Linux. Much to my disappointment, I don't think there has been that kind of improvement between 2007 and 2014. As I said from the beginning, my experience may just be a fluke. Or, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's caused by Novell no longer being behind OpenSUSE. Maybe it is caused by resources being spread across too many distros so none of them get enough polish. Maybe it is caused by a focus on selling enterprise licenses creating a disincentive to fix bugs in free versions. Or, maybe it's all just in my head.
>and there is other weird behavior, like the laptop screen not turning off when the laptop is in a docking station with the lid closed
hardware
>(did not have this problem with OpenSUSE 10.2), and the encrypted partition password prompt being off the screen if an external monitor is plugged in
hardware (questionable: more like how KDE deals with hardware. I don't know KDE, I's suggest switching to something that doesn't do what KDE did.)
I can't see anything that you mentioned what wasn't hardware related. Also, I don't actually know what Ubuntu certification entails, but I agree with you that it isn't meant to guarantee that OpenSUSE and Mint run perfectly.
And, none of that is from the post you replied to; it is from my first post two levels up. The post you replied to is the one where I pointed out that my claim that it feels "sloppy" is based not merely on a few failed installs but also on a whole lot of bugs that have nothing to do with the hardware. Why you would reply to that and imply that it was my fault for not researching the hardware I was purchasing is a mystery to me. Your post would have made some sense (if you ignore the fact that I already stated that the hardware was certified for Ubuntu) in response to my first post, but seems really odd where you chose to put it.
> I can't see anything that you mentioned what wasn't hardware related.
I listed five bugs that have nothing to do with hardware, and you didn't address any of them. I really think you replied to the wrong post.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7458973
They're also almost entirely bugs in things that aren't linux, but applications that run on linux. I don't have any of those problems, because I use different applications. It would be more logical to blame bugs in IE on Windows.
My Linux boxen always "just work". Then again I use Slackware without a DE. I think a lot of people mean by "just work", "just works" and looks pretty and is approachable by my mom. Well, you can't get that under Linux, and as long as the Linux software stack is developed by different groups working at different organizations without a Gates or Jobs to crack the whip, you may never be able to. But I didn't put Linux on my machine to have an off-brand Mac, I put Linux on my machine because it's more robust and functional and stays out of my way when I need it to.
This is definitely the frustrating thing about anecdata about linux. The expectation that it work on absolutely every device perfectly is one that nothing could possibly pass, and even windows (without the OEM disc) probably doesn't pass without installing a bunch of crappy drivers from the OEM's hard to use website via sneakernet. The last time I clean installed windows on my laptop it didn't even have a compatible ethernet driver.
If you know you're going to use linux, look up the laptop you're buying. But as a general rule I find if it's Intel all the way down it tends to work well (so ultrabooks work particularly well).
I have installed Ubuntu on an endless sequence of random laptops without trouble. You may have better luck with these popular "desktop" distros like Ubuntu since they get a lot of testing on typical consumer hardware.
But for everyone else I think that's enough data because that's how a user gets to use linux: given a laptop, pick random distro, try, if success: :) else: end. Unless we have linux laptops widely available.
>But for everyone else I think that's enough data because that's how a user gets to use linux: given a laptop, pick random distro, try, if success: :) else: end.
That works for me a vast majority of the time, and isn't a standard that either Windows or Macs are held to.
Buy a ZaReason or System76 laptop with Linux preinstalled and support, then compare the experiences if you want to call Linux sloppy. You wouldn't dismiss Android because you had a hard time installing it on your iPhone, or if you do, iOS should likewise be judged due to the difficulty in installing it on a Nexus.
> But for everyone else I think that's enough data
Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure saying that would be "enough data" for someone, but it shouldn't be. Because, in fact, things have improved. It's pretty common to see that something doesn't work (both on Linux and Windows), but it's almost always can be fixed both on Linux and Windows. But what surprised me is the fact that everything just works out of the box (I mean in sense of hardware support) now on Linux more often than on Windows. It wasn't like that not so long time ago. There are few quite common problems (UEFI stuff, Nvidia drivers) that are quite "linux-specific", but range of supported right out of the box devices improved dramatically.
I tried Ubuntu several years ago, and really didn't think it lived up to all of the hype. I encountered a lot of obvious bugs (perhaps because I was using the 64-bit version, which was probably somewhat unusual at the time) and the admin tools seemed weak. Add to that some of the weird stuff that Canonical has been doing lately (privacy issues around their desktop search, Unity, Mir), and I'm just not too eager to go in the Ubuntu direction. If I hadn't gotten OpenSUSE 12.3 (mostly) working, Ubuntu would have been my next step.
When it comes to installability and compatibility nothing beats Ubuntu. I have installed Ubuntu on about 10 machines (desktops + laptops) in the past couple of years. Always worked out of the box.
I've got a Lenovo T400 that works... mostly great. It suspends and resumes well most of the time, but will occasionally freeze after about a minute of resuming OK. I did some research, sounds like it's possibly a race condition in the Intel video driver. Happens about 1/10 times I resume.
If you aren't buying a notebook for Linux intending to have to fight with it to work right, then DON'T buy a Windows computer and complain it isn't a good Linux one.
Instead, just buy from system76 https://www.system76.com/ or Thinkpenguin https://www.thinkpenguin.com/ or you can get something like that Dell Developer notebook. A lot of OEM manufacturers are starting to either support Linux preinstalled or will provide support information on product pages. You know, laptops that already come with Ubuntu so you know the retailors make sure that the power management works right, all the ports work, gpu switching works, etc. That is a linux notebook, not the newest Lenovo that was never tested to run Linux and has no support.
I see they (system76) added a model without an optical drive. Good for them. Though I see they still sell models with one. What is the reasoning behind that today, or anytime in the past couple years, is beyond me.
Edit: Same goes for the other manufacturer.
I understand there are people that will buy this, or OpenMoko, or anything like that.. but most of us are not ready to sacrifice basic needs just because we want to use Linux. (Not saying we need to, just as a response to suggestion to buy this kind of hardware)
> I understand there are people that will buy this, or OpenMoko, or anything like that.. but most of us are not ready to sacrifice basic needs just because we want to use Linux. (Not saying we need to, just as a response to suggestion to buy this kind of hardware)
What "basic needs" are you sacrificing on these notebooks?
I currently use a very cheap read ~250 dollar lenovo laptop. Running Ubuntu. Its default power settings are great, at light usage I can easily go a day or two without a charge.
Close lid + suspend works perfectly. I think I've booked about 2-3 months of it being continuously on. On open I get a black screen that states system resuming, then a login prompt not 1-2 seconds later (and I hear my hard drive begin to spin again).
Perfectly fluid, I'm honestly afraid to move away from unity, lest I lose this feature.
The only issue I have is since upgrading to FireFox 28.0.1 it sometimes crashes when it resumes. I've sent several reports to mozilla. I think the issue is flash.
Wow, we're pretty similar. I've been using Thinkpad T40, T41 and T42 laptops running Ubuntu for the past 8 years or so. Everything works hardware-wise. If you trash it, you're not out thousands or stuck waiting for a depot repair for a week. You're out the $100-$200 you paid for a spare and the time it takes to move the hard drive caddy over.
The amount of stuff I've built on a hundred dollar laptop over the years...definitely a lesson in there about making do and getting stuff done. If you're a student, living in an emerging country, or someone who beats up their laptop regularly via field work: give an old Thinkpad a shot.
A couple weeks ago, though, I broke my monastic vows and got one of the new Thinkpad X1 Carbons. It's got the 2560x1440 IPS display, 4 cores, and an SSD. Definitely a big step up, although the jury's still out on whether it's all worth it. As usual with new laptops and Linux, suspend-resume doesn't work yet. Also none of the Linux desktops I've tried have any idea what to do with a high density display yet, so I'm running at a lower resolution for now. :/ Supposedly the next Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release will have high dpi support [1].
Batteries: you're right, they're not cheap. For the T4x's I would buy a 9-cell lion for ~ $100. Almost the price of the laptop!
"Afraid that something will break" -- FWIW, I've replaced almost every FRU in those old Thinkpads at one point or another, and find them really easy to repair compared to other brands. But an R31, that's getting pretty up there in years. It's probably getting hard to find a spare for parts, let alone a relatively unused one that's got some years left in it as a backup machine.
Rather than purging and re-installing, have you considered just updating?
`sudo update-flashplugin-nonfree --install`
This command works on debian based systems (as far as I know) and I typically prefer it in place of using apt, since your distribution's repos may not have the most current version (Debian Wheezy, for example).
Bluetooth doesn't work. Changing screen brightness doesn't work. X crashes on startup. Even Ubuntu's GUI installer crashes on startup. Suspend works, but I can only resume by opening the lid, not by typing or clicking. Also, once I resume, focus is often on the last app, not the password input. The first time this happened, I typed my password. No effect. Confused, I clicked on the password input and tried again. Success, but my terminal said, "*K&GD#TYIBO(" command not found. That means anyone can run a command as my user simply by typing it at the password prompt. For some reason this only happens when resuming from suspend, not after locking the screen.
I have a mostly-working system today. Brightness is still stuck at maximum, limiting the battery to 6 hours. (Windows 8 gets 9 hours.) The latest beta Catalyst drivers fix X crashing, but I still get screen tearing so watching video is extremely annoying. Bluetooth no longer crashes, but it can't see any discoverable devices or pair with them. Wifi transfers at 802.11n speeds once I compile the latest drivers.
I thought I'd picked a good laptop to run Linux on, but it turns out that Ubuntu's hardware certification is worthless. It's so frustrating, because once you max-out the RAM and install an SSD, the x140e just needs working drivers.
I have an x230 and use fedora and literally everything worked out of the box and was quicker than windows by a long shot. I was just installing fedora for a dev environment, but quickly switched away from windows because it was so much better.
I'm sorry if this is obvious to you, but your post makes it sound like you may have bought a laptop in the configuration listed and then tried to install Ubuntu. Quoting from the Ubuntu website you linked,
Standard images of Ubuntu may not work at all on the
system or may not work well, though Canonical and
computer manufacturers will try to certify the system
with future standard releases of Ubuntu.
Did you use a standard Ubuntu image, or get one pre-installed?
I used the standard Ubuntu image. I tried 12.04LTS, 13.10, and 14.04LTS alpha/beta/whatever.
I'm not sure it's possible to buy an x140e with Ubuntu preinstalled. When purchasing from Lenovo's website, the OS choices are all versions of Windows 7 and 8. It would be nice if this potentially modified version of Ubuntu was released somewhere.
Not bad. The case is plastic and very cheap. Repeat usage will break the case around the hinges, which I find is an annoyance, but doesn't actually harm its functionality.
I followed these rules of thumb for laptops that run Linux well and didn't have any problem 99% of the time:
- no ATI graphics
- low end models that are manufactured and sold in high volumes (so if you encounter a problem you'll find an instant fix by googling for it, or most of the time the problem was already fixed and the fixes are in one of the popular distros), OR
- high end models that are popular among techies and are known to work well with Linux
...and never buy something that has/is:
- ATI hybrid graphics
- mid range models: stick to low end (had good luck even with ultra low end - think Acers with Intel B9xx cpus) or high end
...I don't know why but there's always tons of bugs that crop up on so called "mid range" or "well rounded" systems, not only with Linux, but with ...everything :) I don't have an explanation, but my advice is simple: dirt-cheap and massively sold/produced OR high-end.
Also, openSUSE is known to be kind of quirky and with a smallish user base nowadays. You'll have much better luck with Ubuntu and derivatives, Fedora, Debian (if you have the time to read the manuals or hunt the forums when you have a problem) or Arch if you want to get down-and-gritty.
I think part of this comes down to the vast improvements in documentation over the last ~10 years. The Arch Wiki is an incredible living document for installation and configuration of all Linux flavors. The Debian Wiki isn't as clean or up-to-date, but all the AskUbuntu stuff is helpful in that realm. Installing Debian on a desktop was a headache for me in 2002, but just last week I got it dual booting on my (recently abandoned by Apple) Macbook with 100% functionality.
I don't want to downplay the great work that's been done on the software side, but my experience really reinforced the fact that improving documentation is a real contribution to FLOSS projects.
I have a Dell XPS 13, and its been a great Linux (Ubuntu) laptop. Suspend resume is blazing fast, partially due to the SSD. Power consumption is pretty decent too. I usually charge in at night and its good until I get home. I don't use it all day, but its just in standby mode when I'm not.
I think the perception is changing because laptops are just getting so much better. With SSDs and battery technology making a huge difference. Linux laptops had a bad perception, but I think all laptops were pretty bad not too many years ago.
I recently got a new work laptop. I've used a Lenovo X200 for a few years and been immensely happy with it, but it was starting to show its age and the display was becoming less and less bright. The recent Thinkpads are utter crap, IMHO. Give me some fucking mouse buttons instead of going the Apple route and hiding them underneath the touchpad. The 'clit' is still there, but it's almost unusable. The resolution is too low.
I initially bought a T440, but it died in BIOS on second boot, and after 2 motherboard changes and 1.5 months in Lenovo's own lab they were still unable to even put in the serial numbers (needed for the Windows license that came with it). In the end, and after much delay, the gave me a new one. I promptly gave it to an employee running Windows instead of even trying.
For my new, new laptop I chose a Dell XPS 13 (9333) Developer Edition. No Microsoft tax! I'm not an Ubuntu person, so I ditched the pre-installed (though not after booting it up and noticing that Dell wanted me to sign some EULA before continuing on to the desktop).
Instead I went with Debian. The monitor shows up as "Synaptics Large Touch Screen". Bluetooth and wireless works after installing non-free drivers. Suspend and resume works. It's fast.
There are only two problems. One is the irritating coil whine that the series exhibit. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. Usually I can remove it by toggling the keyboard backlight, but it doesn't seem to matter if it's from on to off or the other way around. The second, and somewhat worse, is that keys seem to get stuck. Sometimes, and I haven't actually found out the cause, the keys seem to get stuck and repeat until another key is pressed. It happened in emacs a few days ago and was almost catastrophic (I do keep my backups, but still..).
The last issue is with Dell rather than the computer. It seems weird to offer a Developer Edition with decent drivers and a pre-installed Ubuntu, and then only offer their BIOS upgrades as a Windows and a DOS executable. I used a USB stick with FreeDOS to apply the update, but seriously, why couldn't they just give me a utility that works? My little sister, my wife and my mother-in-law all run Linux, and they'd probably be able to work a simple program that had a one-click BIOS upgrade button. Boot FreeDOS with Grub, apply the update, reboot. Why do I have to do this by myself?
I'm using an X220 with Ubuntu. I suspend/resume at least once per day, and I've had two suspend/resume glitches in over two years. As far as I'm concerned, it works perfectly. My X60 before this worked about 90% of the time.
I still have an issue where my laptop (Toshiba EliteBook) sometimes does not hibernate when I close the lid. This causes overheating when I don't make sure hibernation happened & I put the laptop in my backpack.
Hopefully, the update will fix the issue.
Other than that, my installation of Crunchbang on Debian Sid is working great! If you havn't tried Crunchbang, give it a shot. It's lightweight & the UX is wonderful. IMO, better than Ubuntu ever was.
On my desktop, a certain desktop produced by a popular linux system reseller manufactured a couple of years ago, modern ubuntu seems to just reboot the machine when I select 'suspend'. So I leave it on all the time. An annoyance, for sure. I have hopes that it will work better in the next LTS release of ubuntu.
On my T430 laptop, suspend seems to work when I close the lid just fine.
Suspend runs perfectly on my 3 Linux systems. That is, laptop and desktop with Nvidia and closed source drivers, and a HTPC box thingie (Zotac Zbox nano) with Radeon and open source drivers. Suspend and resume takes about 2 seconds. Don't know about hibernate, probably works but takes longer.
Some things will screw you, especially if it has cutting-edge hardware. My last laptop had switchable-graphics (Intel and Nvidia graphics cards), it took a few years for that to be reasonably supported. Of course that's what I expected.
Yeah I have a laptop with intel/nvidia. I foolishly assumed it would work... several days of research and cursing later after installing ubuntu and I finally came to the realisation that the support just wasn't there. This was pretty recently too.
For what it's worth I just put an Ubuntu 14.04 nightly on my Nvidia Optimus laptop, and contrary to previous versions the dual-GPU setup Just Works (including choosing which GPU using the Nvidia utilities) after selecting the latest binary driver from the "Additional Drivers" page.
Quite a relief after fighting with the dual-GPU for so long.
AMD has excellent, free software, in-kernel drivers for all of their current GPUs. If you boot a linux distribution with a recent kernel the graphics drivers, including accelerated 3d, will "Just work". No need to install anything.
I'm interested what caused the slowdown in the first place. It must be architecture dependent, since my laptop (thinkpad) suspends fast enough that I never thought of measuring it. (2-3 seconds, I guess)
ACPI is, at the moment, the most labour-efficient way of getting suspend and resume working on the widest variety of hardware.
The alternative Mark is putting forward is for manufacturers to support Linux directly, which isn't going to happen until it's as dominant as windows. Compare the android situation, where you get manufacturer support but not updates or proper merges into upstream.
Under that impression, you have to find on eBay one particular ThinkPad manufactured in 2005, and spend a day tweaking things. Then it will work. Usually.
That impression was accurate, not too many years ago. It looks like it's not anymore?
It seems to me that this update is a great way to change that old impression. If only because "X works faster" is a way to reinforce that "X works at all".
p.s. To clarify, I'm talking about perception/impression not reality. Changing how people think.