[plug] Buy Linux laptop
Gregory Orange
home at oranges.id.au
Sun Feb 28 21:07:09 AWST 2021
I tried to buy a Lenovo X1 Carbon 8th gen on special, but they ran out.
After I recovered from the disappointment I bought a X1 Carbon 7th gen
on special. I told myself that I don't actually need top performance,
just SSD + sufficient RAM, and previous gen may give better
compatibility anyway.
Lubuntu ran very well on it, even with the proprietary DisplayLink
drivers making the Thunderbolt 3 dock drive my 2 screens. I was just
sorting out my interface fine tuning when the critical bug[1] started to
bite: Crash to login screen, multiple times a day, when I did anything
graphically interesting. Proprietary driver for the loss - no response
to support request[2].
Regular ol' Ubuntu 20.04 runs great on it - lid action, screen layout on
(un)plug Thunderbolt 3 dock, webcam, multitouch touchpad, battery life,
backlit keyboard control key, and so on. Crucially, DisplayLink driver
doesn't crash. Pop Shell[3] has replaced 'from my cold dead hands' LXDE.
I have a Windows KVM for minimal work purposes, but corporate security
rules have changed so I'm about to delete that. Oh well, I guess I get
some disk space back.
For interacting with a desktop OS, this is now my preference order:
Tied 1st: 'buntu with LXDE (Lubuntu or Ubuntu + lubuntu-desktop)
Tied 1st: Ubuntu + Pop Shell
3rd: Mac + Slate + Amethyst + HyperSwitch
4th: Windows. I haven't recently searched for ways to improve it.
Now I can get back to a hundred other jobs, including rebuilding server,
now with added software trinkets.
Thanks y'all,
Greg.
[1]
https://discourse.lubuntu.me/t/libc-2-31-so-general-protection-fault-external-monitor/1911
https://www.displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?p=91133
[2] I guess I could spend more money on a different dock or screen
connection thingo. It felt good to resolve it myself though.
[3] https://github.com/pop-os/shell
On 2/12/20 7:34 am, Onno Benschop wrote:
> This thread is a month old and I've only just seen it, so forgive the
> late reply, but I'd like to share how I've dealt with it, by not dealing
> with it.
>
> My last "Linux" laptop was the last IBM Thinkpad. After years of banging
> my head against a wall needing to recompile kernels and kernel modules
> I'd had enough and embarked on an adventure.
>
> I purchased a Macbook Pro in 2009. It runs (still, after adding a new
> SSD and a new battery) standard MacOS and VMware. Inside VMware I run as
> many different flavours of Linux as I need. When I bought an iMac in
> 2015, I installed VMware, dragged the images across and continued
> working. I'm about to blow away the entire drive, install a virgin copy
> of the latest MacOS, the latest VMware and drag the images back and
> continue to work.
>
> I have made one concession to a vanilla MacOS, the installation of
> homebrew, for the specific purpose of automating the creation of a
> docker-machine as a VMware guest.
>
> From this process I've gained the ability to "try" a new distro,
> without needing to add drives or blow away my install. I've been able to
> test an upgrade by creating a VMware snapshot before doing the upgrade
> and seeing what happened before being stuck. I don't recall the last
> time I have recompiled a kernel, nor have I come across any
> incompatibilities. I run external USB devices, like RTL-SDR dongles,
> in-built hardware like the webcam and the like all within Linux without
> any issues.
>
> I can allocate as much or as little RAM or CPU cores to each virtual
> machine as is needed. Right now my iMac has 64 Gb of RAM, it's running
> my main desktop machine, my docker machine, a folding at home machine
> and in a moment when I start my day I'll fire up a machine that's been
> created specifically for a client project without any chance of
> information leaking in either direction. When I do my GST, I'll fire up
> my accounting machine. For hobby work I have several amateur radio
> machines, a cross-compiler, a logging machine and several other
> operating systems like Windows and Android.
>
> I've not ever come across a situation where I needed 100% of the CPU for
> 100% of the time, so I'm extremely satisfied with this implementation.
>
> I've been hearing interesting benchmark comments about Apple's new chips
> and it appears that even in emulated mode they run faster than native
> Intel. As a bonus I'll likely be able to run native ARM virtual machines
> at the same time. This will no doubt make my cross-compilation a whole
> lot easier ;-)
>
> In my 11 year experience in using this solution, you can use VMware as
> your main hosting platform within another operating system. I've not
> tried this under Windows and I'm not happy about how Microsoft manages
> updates, so I'm likely to stick with Apple for the foreseeable future.
>
> If you have questions, feel free to ask.
>
> Onno
>
> On Sun, 1 Nov 2020 at 18:43, Byron Hammond <byronester at gmail.com
> <mailto:byronester at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I also thought the Gen7 X1 Carbon was a gift price.
> Am happy with it so far.
> Fingerprint scanner works too which is a nice bonus
>
>
> from my mobile
>
> On Sun, 1 Nov 2020, 6:29 pm Gregory Orange, <home at oranges.id.au
> <mailto:home at oranges.id.au>> wrote:
>
> (got a bounce on 22/10, trying again)
>
> Thanks everyone for the input. I had a lot of options in the
> end, and Star Labs were close to the top. In the end I *just*
> missed a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 great price yesterday, but the
> price on a Gen 7 with almost identical specs was still great for
> me, so I've bought it.
>
> I'll (try not to) see if Black Friday deals make me regret my haste!
>
> Greg.
>
>
> On 20/10/20 4:34 pm, Gregory Orange wrote:
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> > I'm looking to buy a <2kg Linux laptop. This time around, I'd
> like 99% hardware support, particularly including lid open and
> close, suspend and resume, because that's the killer feature of
> my crusty MBP. What are the chances of that with LXDE, or
> perhaps LXQt now Lubuntu LTS ships with that?
> >
> > I don't mind using another distro. 1080p preferable. External
> monitor(s) required. I don't know much about docks, but I
> suppose that's a good idea.
> >
> > https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop looks useful - I
> could spend a bunch of time sifting through options to see
> what's available in AU. No surprises that Dell and Lenovo
> feature there.
> >
> > Any thoughts? Where to buy?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Greg.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
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> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au <mailto:plug at plug.org.au>
> http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
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>
>
> --
> Onno Benschop
>
> ()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno..
> |>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno..
> --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno..
>
> If you need to know: "What computer should I buy?" http://goo.gl/spsb66
>
> ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 -
> onno at itmaze.com.au <mailto:onno at itmaze.com.au>
--
Gregory Orange
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