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Comment by DetectDefect

1 day ago

On the desktop. Laptop/mobile devices still significantly suffer under Linux compared to proprietary operating systems. The author even admits: "Tried getting Linux on my laptop over Christmas. Didn’t work." We have a lot more work remaining to claim any sort of victory.

Been running Linux Mint on this ThinkPad A485 for 1.5 yrs, problem-free. There is no feature that doesn't work. Even the media keys and stuff like the wifi-toggle function key work. Still, yeah, there are some things that are perennial problems for open source OSes, particularly wifi. Nice presentation on the topic: "All types of wireless in Linux are terrible and why the vendors should feel bad" @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwIFz9na2lE

  • May I ask how long the battery lasts under lid suspension? And how quickly does wifi connect after wake? These two issues alone drove me begrudgingly to macOS.

    • Ooh, actually it's almost always plugged in so I couldn't tell you how long it will last asleep with the lid closed :\ Wifi reconnecting after wake is indiscernible to me because by the time I type in my password to unlock the machine, I'm online. I'm totally guessing but I imagine a big factor is simply the wifi card itself and its respective level of support in Linux. I would also say that wifi management has improved a lot in the past handful of years. I often forget I'm even using Linux because it's so easy to use and problem-free for me -- but again there's always that caveat that some machines have better-supported components than others lol