My solution is to use macbook pro as a terminal and editor, and do most of developments on remotely accessed linux machines. I really tried to transition to Linux but UX is so inferior, and there's very little hope that it improves.
I use a Macbook and a Linux (Kubuntu 19.10) desktop, and I vastly prefer the Linux desktop for UX.
There are more knobs to fiddle with, naturally, but the desktop Linux experience has vastly improved over the last few years, and I'm happy enough with it that I don't see myself willingly going back to OS X or Windows as my primary anytime soon. My desktop feels like the synthesis of all the things I like from both Windows and OSX, with the added benefit of an actual package manager and first-class support for all my development toolchains. The amount of time my coworkers spend fighting oddities in their brew installs becomes really apparent when I'm not fighting those battles.
The hardware (particularly) touchpad is the single biggest advantage Macs have left. I use a mouse rather than touchpad, but if the touchpad is solved, I'd have nothing I'd say that OS X does better.
There was an issue with hibernate memory mapping that broke hibernate on my work Thinkpad for the first year or two that I had it.
Then at some point they fixed the issue, which if I remember correctly came down to "stop trying to be fancy and just do the straight-forward thing, which is correct". And since then I've had no issues.
I'm unclear why I had an issue with the Thinkpad but never had issues with any of the 5 or so Dell Inspirons I've had over the years.
As a counter point, I've had repeated issues with my several different laptops in the last few years with them not going to sleep (2015~2018?). I have a new laptop now that I primarily run windows on now...
my retina MBP 15" 2012 would wake up with the lid closed on macOS. prolly hardware related and still linux acpi should get to 100 but I think it's gotten good
Sleep and USB-C display work out-of-the-box on my Lenovo T470s running Ubuntu 18. I've even used a USB-C hub with Ethernet, HDMI, USB3, and power delivery. Just one wire for everything. Sleep has worked for years now. YMMV
what's missing to bring my private t470s on par with my work macbook is "hybrid sleep". the macbook seems uncannily smart of sleeping when i close the lid, then eventually hibernating, so that even after a whole weekend unplugged it has an almost full battery when i open it on monday.
meanwhile the sleeping t470s drains the battery by keeping the RAM alive and eventually runs out. the arch wiki has some content on this, but it did not make me hopeful to get it to work
And configure it as the lid close action trough logind conf (or your DE's).
It works differently, though (AFAIK). It saves the state to both RAM and disk, so when battery eventually runs out, you can resume from disk. The solution you offer seems interesting. It would just need a RTC wakeup event, so that the system goes all the way to S5 after a set time.
Touchpad - my work Dell touchpad is not as good as my old Macbook Pro, but my Xiaomi Air touchpad feels just as good to me. The only gestures are use are two finger scrolling so I don't make use of the touchpad as much as others do.
Sleep mode. It's failed on my a couple of times in the last year, but my Macbook Pro failed about as often. I'm not sure what the issue is here.
USB-C display. Using one right now. Got a USB-C hub plugged into my Xiaomi Air that is providing it with power, keyboard, mouse, HDD and display. What is the issue you're seeing with this?
My Dell is running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Xiaomi Air is running Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia.
> I use a Macbook and a Linux (Kubuntu 19.10) desktop, and I vastly prefer the Linux desktop for UX.
How's the battery life? I used to use Linux as my daily driver until about 2015, but grew tired of replacing batteries in laptops that weren't made to have their batteries replaced.
I find the UX on a Mac to be vastly inferior to Mate or Cinnamon on Linux. The first thing I do when an employer gives me a Macbook is to install Linux on it so I have an usable UI.
By UX I include the touchpad. I have a linux XPS13 and their touch pad isn't comparable to what MacBook Pro provides. Interface on Linux isn't that bad now, I agree, but I like Mac more due to better hardware support and lack of problems.
I agree. And the touchpad is what is stopping me from say, getting a System76 laptop or an XPS13.
I had done some investigation on this before. After all, if System76 is open software and hardware, I should be able to get an add on right?
Not so fast. It seems part of what makes the Mac touchpad so good is a combination of software and hardware.
Microsoft is taking a stab at this. What they had been doing was treating touchpads as a mouse device ... but the hardware gives hints on gestures, so they have been improving their drivers to allow for better experience with the touchpad. (Rather than emulating a mouse device using a touchpad).
The hardware is a bigger block. Apple holds key patents on their touchpad, including the use of textured glass. The glass gives the experience a different feel, but I bet it also smooths out the signals being sent to the software driver. I don't know for sure -- but even say, my Samsung Chromebook, which has a decent touchpad, still doesn't feel the same as my Mac's touchpad.
"More importantly, the patent calls for, in one embodiment, a capacitive track pad with an etched glass surface. Because of its unique properties, and its non-conductive nature, glass allows for high levels of control during the manufacturing process."
"For example, traditional glass has a surface with a high friction coefficient, meaning it resists slippage, making it a less than suitable candidate for trackpad use. However, glass can be made to have a low friction coefficient by etching, sand-blasting, honing, or other methods. This makes the surface smooth and easy to navigate with a finger."
"Traditionally, Windows PC touchpads were implemented in a more one-off way. When you moved your finger across the touchpad, the touchpad driver has to look at the input and convert it to mouse input. The touchpad appears as a normal external mouse—either a USB or PS/2 mouse—to Windows itself. PC manufacturers have to tune the touchpad for their hardware, and the driver is responsible for handling the input. If the touchpad uses multi-finger gestures or has palm rejection support so you don’t accidentally move the cursor while you’re typing, this all has to be implemented by the touchpad driver."
"Microsoft decided to move towards a more standard approach starting with Windows 8.1. It created the “precision touchpad” specification along with touchpad company Synaptics. A PC with a “precision touchpad” doesn’t do all the hard work in its own hardware drivers. Instead, it sends the raw touchpad data to Windows itself. Windows is responsible for reading the input and processing the gestures. Windows understands your PC has a touchpad and approaches it intelligently. The touchpad doesn’t just pretend to be a normal mouse."
Another problem which I include in UX is sleep mode. On Mac it works flawlessly. On XPS13 + Ubuntu/Fedora (I tried both) which I used, there's non zero probability that when I open laptop again, the battery is almost empty.
Check the logs, is it waking, sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking, sleeping? Power management bugs are super annoying because they are tedious to dig into.
In my very obscure case, I got lucky in that suspend was working, then stopped working after a kernel update. Since it was a regression, kernel developers were more interested in tracking down the problem and I was able to find a work around: write PWRB to /proc/acpi/wakeup
The gory details are here, which I expect is so obscure it's not your problem, but shows as tedious as it is, filing bugs with a decently good bug report and willingness to do the work devs need you to do can be worth it.
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185521
I honestly tried my best to debug it. I installed different tools, and at some point it seemed to work, but after some time, due to some updates, it broke down. Some time after this, I just stopped using sleep mode. It was easier to turn on/off the whole machine.
XPS13 which I have is one of the most widely used linux laptops, and it a symptomatic that it doesn't work well.
my xps 13 has no problem going to sleep. It just wakes up slow and drunk sometimes. My "workaround" is to put it into 'performance mode' which kills the battery.
I have not had an issue with sleep mode in Linux since ~2007 or so. (In the early days, it basically didn't work at all)
I've had an XPS 13 9360 for two and a half years now, and an x230 for roughly four years before that. Before then it was a range of cheapo laptops, and while the touchpads and keyboards sucked, sleep mode was fine starting in the late aughts.
I can attest that it took a little while for sleep mode to function at all though. It was a non starter (not intended) in the mid 2000s, but the problems you describe has never been a problem I've had.
At the risk of sounding uncharitable, what is the purpose of your comment? It is hard fact that sleep mode is not a consistently solved problem on Linux. Hardware variations abound, and "works for me on my hardware" isn't very helpful to people with different hardware where it's not as reliable.
As you mentioned, Linux runs on hardware made by hundreds/thousands of different uncoordinated manufacturers. Mac OS runs on a very narrow range of hardware built by the same manufacturer that makes the software. Linux is a very different project to Mac OS.
So take the best examples of Linux machines and compare those with Macbooks. So if eg. Dell XPSes or modern ThinkPad X series have solved the sleep problem consistently then it's fair to compare those with Macbooks.
Of course this doesn't help those people who have trouble with sleep on Linux and hopefully it will get better... but comparing a broad elastic OS running on a vast mess of thousands of different devices with an OS designed specifically for a small range of tightly controlled hardware isn't reasonable. It would make more sense if there were no good examples of decent Linux machines, but this isn't the case.
I'm not making that comparison (I never mention macOS at all); not sure where your reading that. I'm merely pointing out that a response of "it works for me and has for 10+ years" when someone says "it doesn't work on my laptop" is entirely unhelpful.
In fact it shows that they don't at all get the point you've made that Linux runs on orders of magnitude more hardware variants than macOS does and thus it should be obvious that all hardware can't be equally well supported.
I guess it's to demonstrate that it does work on some hardware. I've not experienced any sleep issues worse than what I had on a Macbook. ie, it works 99% of the time.
Right, but I think that demonstration is unnecessary (because, duh, of course it works on some hardware), and entirely unhelpful (because, duh, the person being replied to does have issues with it, and describing an unrelated experience doesn't add anything to the discussion).
I must say that in general sleep mode has been working pretty well for me over the past 10 years in Linux. I had issues on my destop, but tracked it down to a USB headset sometimes not correctly honoring sleep states. I also had a slight problem with one of my laptops when Bluetooth was paired, Bluetooth tended to be broken after coming back from sleep. though I have had more issues my current 2017 MacBook. often when I take it out of my bag after a weekend it will be on 1% battery. it stopped happening around Autumn last year so I think they fixed it.
I have an XPS13, I've changed a kernel command line parameter to change from a soft sleep to a hard sleep and battery life has greatly improved.
The first comment in this reddit thread helped me out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/8b6eci/xp_13_9370_bat...
I used to strongly feel this way, but the 2016 MacBook was such an unmitigated input disaster that I switched to a ThinkPad. The function key Touch Bar died on mine twice in a year, and was never a desirable feature. And the keyboard was sticking and broken literally brand new out of the box. I had it all replaced by Apple, and within days the same problems came back. I simply can't use a new MacBook.
For non-physical features, I don't really notice any difference, since a full-screen terminal SSH client and Chrome window are the only things I ever run.
