Linux really has come a long way
Linux really has come a long way
I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went. If you google it, you’ll get a lot of “lol good luck installing linux on that” type posts - so I was ready for a battle.
Turned off secure boot and tpm. Booted off a usb stick. Live environment, check. Start installer and wipe drive. Few minutes later I’m in. Ok let’s find out what’s not working…
WiFi check. Bluetooth check. Sound check (although a little quiet). Keyboard check. Screen resolution check. Hibernates correctly? Check. WTF I can’t believe this all works out the box. The touchscreen? Check. The stylus pen check. Flipping the screen over to a tablet check. Jesus H.
Ok, everything just works. Huh. Who’d have thunk?
Install programs, log into accounts, jeez this laptop is snappier than on windows. Make things pretty for my wife and install some fun games and stuff.
Finished. Ez. Why did I wait so long? Google was wrong - it was cake.
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Yes, if you don't have a computer that literally came out this year, don't have 2 separate graphics cards and don't need HDR, or specific Windows-only software, Linux generally just works.
And sometimes the Windows only software is more "Windows only" and works with Wine
Windows 3D Builder though is firmly in the Windows Only category though. Which is a bummer because in my experience it's the best at repairing 3D models for 3D printing that have errors like holes, redundant geometry, inverted faces, etc.
However, some older programs may actually behave better in Wine than say on Windows 11.
Oh, it also supports ancient 16 bit programs which Windows doesn't anymore.I didn't know about the 16-bit support, which is really cool to say the least
I see myself as still somewhat of a noob to Linux
Surely there are alternatives
Lychee Slicer (slicer used for resin printing) is usually pretty good but sometimes it'll still fail
Which basically means I'd have 2 choices, go in there manually with Blender or fire up Windows 3D Builder and let it work it's magic
I haven't fully given up on trying to find a way to get it to work on Linux but I've had to take a break from trying purely due to frustration
The dual GPU problem has actually for the most part also been solved; Optimus rarely poses a problem these days
Yup. Fedora on my laptop defaults the internal GPU and you can run any program with the dedicated card with a right click. Pretty nice compared to last year where I had to throw my laptop across the room 😂
Hopefully HDR can get crossed off that list soon
Hdr in games is the last frontier from me totally dumping windows.
It looks like it works in KDE 6, albeit a bit janky. Might be worth seeing if it works now, and if not come back in a year or so. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HDR_monitor_support
Yeah I'm using 6, it works well for desktop but not in most games yet
You should be able to get most games to work with some extra tinkering.
Got Armored Core running in HDR with this.
Also, I found it was enough to run the just the game in gamescope, no need to run the entirety of steam in a gamescope window. Just set the launch options for the game you want to enable HDR on.
Yeah I can get HDR to enable w game scope but it looks way off in stuff I've tested like elden ring or Tekken 8. Gets kinda blown out looking.
You probably won't be able to run an LTS kernel on a brand new PC that just hit the market. But using the most recent kernel for arch or a derivative like endevorOS should work after like a week maximum.
I did have an issue like this on Ubuntu and its what made me actually start distro hopping since it worked fine on fedora and Arch using the latest kernels.
Huge shout out to the people working faster than some do at their jobs and for 100% less pay.
I experienced this when installing my AMD Radeon RX 7600XT, it was released two weeks prior to me installing it, back then, and Linux Mint and games in it were clearly running off software rendering. Turns out LM uses a more tried and true LTS kernel by default, luckily ot easily allows you to switch or manage kernels through the GUI updater, so I got that fixed easily.
There's plenty of laptops with 2 separate graphics cards (mine included) and I'd say it's the ideal experience if you need an NVIDIA card. Everything related to your system is done in the integrated Intel/AMD GPU (which works perfectly) and games and GPU intensive work (like CUDA) gets done in the NVIDIA one.
My issue is family control. I haven't found a way to get Microsoft family type control yet on Linux, since my sibling uses my computer. The syncing time allowed across devices is the hard part.
Create separate user?
But I can't remotely set their allowable usage time and access list. Maybe dual booting would work though.
"Generally" is the key word. I'm a linux user since slackware on diskettes. My daily driver is Mint, because lazy. I have 2 VMs with kali and kinoite.
A couple of days ago a kernel update borked my install. A problem with the Ryzen graphics driver.
For me it was trivial. Boot into the previous kernel, timeshift roll back, and back in business, but I can see how a newbie woul go into panic.
A satisfied "customer" will recommend you to a friend. A pissed off one will tell 10.
What is the issue with laptops this year? I was planning to upgrade.
If you follow general newbie advice and install Mint, the kernel is older than your laptop and may not support everything.
Fedora, EndeavorOS or Manjaro would be a better choice then.I use endeavour os so fine I guess.
You can always install a newer kernel, or move to something Fedora or Arch based. My son has ZorinOS on 6.8
I know. But I wouldn't consider that "just works".
It would mean installing the most popular beginner distro, finding out it doesn't work, and then first having to google what is even a kernel...True. PopOS has pretty current kernels, and is very beginner friendly. What I mean is that there are options, regardless of hardware (unless your on an m3 Crapple chip).
They are fine with newer kernels
I just did that with hdr on alderlake n95. Easy as hell with NixOS.
Or a Mac ime. I tried to run mint OS on a 2016 intel MBPro and it was a disaster. I got it up and running but the Touch Bar didn’t work, the Wi-Fi didn’t work, all kinds of issues.
I got it up and running but the Touch Bar didn’t work, the Wi-Fi didn’t work, all kinds of issues.
That's because Apple doesn't release drivers for all those components.
Running anything but a Mac OS on a Mac is a nice pet project, but you can't expect Linux to work.NixOS on an M2 Air here. Works fine, other than the fingerprint reader.
It depends. I installed mint on a 2011 MBP a couple of years ago and it was a breeze. I installed arch on it recently and the only snag was having to install the proprietary Broadcom driver to get wireless. It runs great though — which is just as well because it would actually be more difficult to install OSX on the bloody thing, seeing as they no longer support it.
A 2016 MBP is still a bit recent, but, as a general rule of thumb, by the time a Mac stops getting software updates, Linux will be ready for it.
You should check out what the Asahi Linux project has been able to do with the ARM Macs already, it's pretty impressive.
I do check in on it every now and again, and it is impressive! I reckon they'll be able to offer a seamless transition once Apple stops servicing M1 Macs, which is really good going. But, depending on your use case, making the leap now would mean sacrificing some functionality
I hate to break it to you friendo, but 8 year old hardware isn't recent. It may still be usable, but that doesn't make it recent. It's ok though grandpa, let's get you back to bed
Learn to read.
I can read, and a 2016 MacBook pro is not even a bit recent; It's from 8 years ago :-)
Just a bit of light-hearted leg pulling, nothing to get worked up over
8 years is recent if it's apple hardware and you're expecting Linux to work flawlessly out of the box. Maybe things were different back in your day though
It was a lighthearted jab at calling 8 years ago recent; Not a political statement about Apple or operating systems.
8 years is a ton of time in tech, CPUs from 2016 are ancient. Single-core CPU performance has doubled in Intel's laptop chips since then, and modern laptop CPUs from Intel are often 12-core, versus the top end 2016 MacBook Pro having 4 cores.
Not trying to start any fights, was just poking fun at the choice to call 2016 recent
Dude, there are so many contexts in which 2016 could be considered 'recent', including the one I was speaking in, and yet you march into my mentions with the patronizing bullshit. I don't know, maybe you think you're being friendly, but it doesn't feel friendly to me.
I'm sorry, my goal wasn't to be a bother. My initial comment was intended to be friendly and funny - I'm not trying to patronize or be antagonistic. I learned a couple of years ago that I have autism, so I should have learned my lesson by now and stopped trying to be funny; It never pans out the way I mean for it to.
Hope I wasn't too much of a drag on your day, and I hope it gets better for you.
With that said, a genuine question with no jokes: Can you help me understand how 2016 counts as recent, given the context? It was almost a decade ago, and I'm having trouble comprehending how it counts at all as recent since in tech "recent" usually means "in the last 2-3 years" unless you're comparing to something from a much longer time ago like the 90s.
I know that now but I had a bunch of people encourage me to do it as if it was a reasonable thing for a novice to crack lol
The 2016-2017 MBP are unusually bad. Devices on either side of that? You're fine. But the 2016-2017 devices? No wifi (except in some extremely unusual cases) is the big problem. Even then, it amazes me how much does work, with zero configuration, with a simple graphical install. The problem with this vintage MBP isn't that it's hard to get running--it's that it's (almost) impossible, but the parts that aren't impossible are as smooth as they can be.
Yes, that's cold comfort. But I'm speaking from the POV of an owner of a 2017 MBP who desperately wanted to keep it going.
The coda to the story is that my wife used it for a while with her business but it fell victim to an absolutely bizarre heat issue where the heat sink vents hot air directly across the controller cable for the display, leading to inevitable failure. Again: not an issue on either side of this model year. It's sad because it could've served for another 4-5 years, making the initial purchase price substantially more tolerable.
Apple doesn't support Linux
I mean I got mint OS running so it depends on what you mean by “support.”
Surprisingly it was really easy to install fedora on my wife’s MacBook Pro from 2012.
The only thing I had to do for everything to work perfectly was to install the RPM fusion repository and accept that the @ is gonna be mapped to the wrong key.
It’s the easiest device I’ve had for installing Linux in quite a while..
If it is a mapping issue you can manually change it
I’ve found some tutorials online, but I’m always cautious with these things because the more I tinker, the more I break my systems 😅