There are many ways. I honestly don’t type enough in Linux on my Mac to need that but Kinto looks like it does what you want, is reversible, is per application configurable, and is aware of cursor/caret state.
I'm running Ubuntu on my custom build desktop PC but with a wired apple keyboard. I also use Macs quite a lot. If I could get consistency between the two with key bindings it would be so good.
Note that it is an identifier, the number indicates a generation, not a screen size. The answer is MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports):
I did a quick peek at the patches the OP is referring to, the code seems definitely experimental (no hard feelings towards the authors though!).
As far as I am aware of how the Linux kernel is structured, these patches would have to be submitted as BSP 'quirks'. Most of the ICs (such as the audio IC) that Apple used are standard components with Linux drivers available, but Apple often uses different pinouts or configurations requiring modified (patched) drivers to make them work.
In the current state I don't think the patches meet Linus's quality standards to be accepted into the kernel, but it shouldn't be too hard to polish that up.
Should be a fun project to work on of you are looking at contributing to the Linux kernel. You'll need basic knowledge of electronics and embedded systems, but it shouldn't be that hard. Judging from Louis Rossman's youtube channel the schematics for each Macbook board should be available.
Heck, now that I think of it: I would like to give it a try, if only I had a Macbook available to do this with.
I used MacBooks with Linux starting in 2006 till the end of last year. That's when I finally gave up. I really love the hardware Apple produces, but we're at a point where I believe it's not feasible anymore to use Linux on MacBooks.
For the MacBook Pros 2016 and up I put significant effort into trying to get mainline Linux running as smoothly as possible by documenting and coordinating the efforts to have drivers for all internal devices [1], but just have a look where we're at over three years later: Audio doesn't work properly, Wifi does neither (expect for the non-TouchBar models, like the one the OP uses), hibernation is still somewhat broken and let's not even start talking about the advanced abilities of the TouchBar or support for TouchId. I could go on.
Models with T2 chip (2018 and up) are even worse in some regards and I believe it won't get better anymore. Next year we might see MacBooks with custom ARM SoCs and that's where I expect the driver situation will get even more dire. As Apple continuous to use more and more custom designed components, the effort for proper Linux drivers for such hardware only increases.
Most of these problems could be easily solved if Apple would simply make documentation for their hardware available. There are lots of great people passionate about running Linux on Macs out there, but reverse-engineering the hardware is what makes it really complicated to produce robust drivers for it.
I sincerely hope my predictions are wrong and Linux will still go strong on Macs in future as well, but for the time being I'm done with Macs.
> Most of these problems could be easily solved if Apple would simply make documentation for their hardware available.
Not the wifi one. The problem there is that the firmware itself is broken in the paths that linux implements the wifi stack. (fullmac) Mac is not affected, but practically the firmware is still broken. It's also a known/won't-fix case, so the documentation itself won't help.
Do the latest Macs still support running Windows via Boot Camp?
What would you recommend if I need to run both Linux and Windows alongside MacOS? Virtualisation? Or would I be better off using more than one machine?
Just a warning: Virtualbox with hard drive files on an external USB hard disk has been broken for me on Catalina on my both of my Mac Minis (late 2012, 2018) and iMacs (late 2012, mid 2017).
That particular functionality worked fine on Mojave.
It works fine as long as I keep my VDI files on my system drive, but that can be a pain since they're so large.
This is, in my experience, a major pain point of VirtualBox that I don't see why Oracle apparently doesn't care about, despite being aware of the issue since at least 2017.
We're stuck in a situation where fixed-size disk images are too large to use if you care about your host's disk space (unless they're created with an "almost full" target usage), and dynamic sized images tend to grow to unwieldy sizes unless you regularly zero-out empty spaces from the guest (cat /dev/zero >somefile on Linux, sdelete -z C on Windows IIRC), then VBoxManage modifyhd --compact the image from the host once the VM is off.
But it shouldn't be this way. VirtualBox added support for TRIM years ago, and guest OSes could very well happily live inside dynamic images - if it worked at all.
In practice (AFAIK, for the few who ventured to use it) - it doesn't work:
I'm not sure, honestly; there used to be a really long forum thread with random hacks that helped some (but not all) people and there were apparently a lot of conflated bugs that confused the whole thing, so I stopped trying to follow it and gave up.
That gets you Windows and OSX, but it's really easy to break the Windows partition when you install Linux.
To triple-boot, you start with OSX, then install Windows via Boot Camp, then resize the Windows partition to make some empty space after it for your Linux install. Then you install refind, and follow up with installing Linux.
You need to do it that way because Boot Camp won't let you leave any empty space on the drive, and you can't put your Linux partition in front of the Windows partition, because the Hybrid MBR partition table that Windows needs can only count to 4 (or something like that).
On the bright side, I think triple-booting is more robust than it used to be. It's been a while since the last time I borked Windows.
I used to triple boot OSX, Windows and Haiku, but a windows update borked Win10 boot manager. The Win recovery tool doesn’t allow you to mount an EFI boot partition to bless the Win partition since heaven forbid a user may damage the boot manager (which is the entire point of running the recovery tool). The (re)install USB stick didnt like the partition table and refused to reinstall Win10. Now I triple boot with a Linux flavour of the month. Suprisingly, Haiku gets the most uptime on the MacBook Pro.
A hybrid MBR by definition is not GPT compliant. And failure to comply does in fact routinely result in the loss of user data. It was always appalling incompetency by Apple that Boot Camp ever used hybrid MBR for even one day. To still be doing this in 2020 I consider bordering on malicious.
It depends exactly what you want linux for, but if it is command line stuff, then Windows Subsystem for Linux is ok.
WSL is just a linux syscall wrapper around the Windows kernel, so it isn't a perfect replica, but WSL2 runs a customised linux kernel alongside windows, so it should very close.
I run VMWare fusion on my Mac for virtualization. Being able to bump the Linux desktop to what the full retina screen can handle is glorious (though I had to fiddle with sizes on the terminal to find something that my eyes could work with). Got a Windows VM for the occasional MSI things that head my way. Nice access to the hardware - disk, cpu, memory - with a lot of snapshot management. I've got both Oracle's VirtualBox and VMWare's product, and VMWare is superior on everything but the price.
The snapshot options are much better in fusion, for that solo workflow, then stock virtualbox. I suspect vagrant covers those gaps.
Long running (and pausing) VMs behave better on fusion. I see better stability when pushed hard. Better use of the hardware. Been a long time since I ran benchmarks, but the same VM was about 4-10 seconds faster on a 2 minute process. Not enough to matter for most. The native disk access helps with things that are IO sensitive.
The UI drivers are better... so if you open up and run a Linux desktop, it feels much more native, if that is a thing.
I don't think I've even opened virtualbox in the last couple years... so my comparisons may be dated. YMMV
I’ll add idle usage. VirtualBox shaves one-two hours off my MBP’s battery while Fusion leaves it untouched.
Vbox graphics performance also left much to be desired: e.g dragging a terminal window around was slow, produced insane tearing and huge performance impact, and no amount of tuning would help; I’m not even talking about 3D stuff, this is just some plain X lightweight WM without a compositor. No such issue on Fusion, where I just imported the same VM.
Yes, absolutely virtualization works so much better. In fact you can boot Mac and run VMWare Fusion, or boot into Windows 10 and use either Windows Subsystem for Linux or VMWare Workstation, and you will have a pretty great experience with Linux.
OTOH if you try to install Linux on any recent MacBook Pro, you are in for hours and hours of googling weird shit with like only 2 comments on forums you have never heard of, and you will still never get Wi-Fi, sound, and sleep/hibernation all working at the same time.
It's just not worth it. If you are so hardcore about software freedom that you demand to install Linux natively on the metal then you should absolutely not, now or ever, buy a Mac.
OTOH if you just need to like, build some shit that only builds and runs on Linux, and you have $200 — VMWare. I don't like VMWare in theory (the Monsanto of tech companies) but I sure like them a lot in practice.
I have needed a Mac/Windows/Linux laptop for my job for the past decade. In former times, I installed Windows and Mac OS X, and ran the latest Ubuttnu in either VMWare Workstation or VMWare Fusion.
But since 2016 I just use VMWare Fusion for both Windows and Linux. If you want to use a Mac, I am confident that's the "best" approach.
(For me, that means "runs all GUI and CLI programs reasonably well, with the minimum hours per year spend fucking with shit just to make it work. But if you actually need efficient GPU acceleration or real high performance (like not a web app or GUI app, but some kind of computationally expensive whatever) under Linux — well, then get something other than a Mac.)
The small investment in VMWare Fusion was worth it but I still need some dedicated machines.
I just have a few issues:
Problem #1: Disk space requirements. I have a late 2013 MBP and windows gobbles up a min 60GB for the image, which is 1/4th my SDD. This is why I ended up buying cheap beige boxes for every other OS (or AWS).
Problem #2: Clipboard on VMWare is a trainwreck. Same goes for VNC and Microsoft Remote Desktop which I also use. My workaround is to use a text file on my router's USB drive so that I cut and paste through that in each OS.
----> I would pay someone $1,000 to come to my house and fix my clipboard problems.
Problem #3a: The magic mouse blows chunks on anything but macOS. And even running Excel on macOS is impossible with a magic mouse. The left-right slop makes it difficult to scroll vertically without drifting diagonally... I don't know how macOS apps solve that.
Problem #3b: I would kill for a mouse with a real middle button, not a scroll+button. Unix/X middle click paste is a feature I sorely miss on macOS and Windows.
You phrased it in context like you thought using a Mac was preventing you from using a mouse with a middle button, especially when it was right after the section complaining about the Magic Mouse.
Middle-click paste is one of X's many usability fails, especially since it's a convention adopted by no other UI. All the rest assume a max of 2 essential buttons.
Command-C and Command-V are just so much better. Learn to love them.
I don't know the implementation details behind this, but it also seems to me that Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V has a separate clipboard while middle-click-to-paste pastes whatever is selected. Makes no sense to me but I've tried to Ctrl-C / middle click and had issues before. Just one more thing that makes it worse.
You can buy an Windows or Linux "computer" and run MacOS in a virtualmachine. VMWare Workstation is great for it. You can do it also with Virtualbox or KVM. But the latter doesn't have "hardware acceleration" support.
Wait a minute, I can run Windows, MacOS and Linux on the same machine with VMware Workstation. I run MacOS in a VM. The same goes for Linux and Windows.
So you don't need a MacBook or an iMac to run MacOS.
Totally possible, yes. But, in my experience the Mac's OS updates break things fairly often, and running macOS on non-Mac hardware isn't supported or well-tested by VMWare.
But it might be worth it, depending what you need to do.. I tend to do my actual work writing code and on the Mac side, even if the code is running on Linux, so for me it makes sense to keep the Mac experience the native one.
> What would you recommend if I need to run both Linux and Windows alongside MacOS? Virtualisation? Or would I be better off using more than one machine?
This really depends on whether you prefer Apple hardware or not. If you want Macbook hardware, use virtualization. If you want any kind of desktop or a laptop where everything isn't soldered and epoxied together, get whatever PC you want and then put the cheapest available Mac Mini in a corner and access it with remote desktop or similar as necessary. Another good solution is to buy a used Macbook which is old enough to have a rundown battery but not so old it won't run a recent macos, and then you get a better price and the battery doesn't matter because you're not actually using it as a laptop.
Yes, I have a 2015 MacBook Air that runs great apart from the bluetooth using headphones is not usable, super choppy. But it took ages to get here and I've still got weird scripts I don't really understand to allow me to close the lid and open reliably. As an aside, I'm finding battery and performance much better on Ubuntu 20.04 and kernel 5.4+
I just booted my 2015 MBA with Mint (Cinnamon) last week and everything worked automatically. It had to install one proprietary driver for WiFi, which the Mint installer prompted me to approve then installed.
I assumed it was because this machine didnt fall into the “newer Macs that have issues with Linux” bucket
I'm have issues with sleep and closing the lid as well, do you have a link to those scripts? I could never get it working so I gave up a while ago and leave it on all the time
I'm well aware of this kernel bug report, but even with all the reported workarounds I was never able to get stable 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wifi to work. As that's also the case for other users I believe it's not justified to mark wifi as working.
I envy your knowledge and ambition. What you've done is beyond my capabilities.
But I think the crux of the problem is that people are trying to run commodity software on custom hardware. That just won't work long-term.
Linux is commodity software, that runs great on white box commodity hardware. macOS is custom software that runs great on custom hardware. Each has its place and purpose.
It's like driving a car on train tracks. Yes, it will get you somewhere, but it's not the right match of tools and environment. And it's inevitably going to be a bumpy ride.
macOS runs horribly on custom hardware, it just runs better than other commodity software.
Any application that pushes frames/performance would do better on Linux/Windows on the equivalent amount of silicon. What's missing because the hardware and drivers is so closed is the feedback loop between application/game devs and the vendors. If I have an issue with what I'm building, I can hop into a chat and immediately talk to Nvidia/AMD/Intel folks/etc. In some cases, they share code, in some cases they release a driver update. In pretty much all cases, the code I'm working on gets better. Apple lacks this feedback loop, and their drivers are garbage.
Apple lacks this feedback loop, and their drivers are garbage.
There may be exceptions, but I never had anything like the graphics glitching that the Nouveau drivers had or known problems that would lock up Intel GPUs every one 1-2 days or consistently in some workloads [1], or broken Intel WiFi drivers. The recent Intel driver problems literally took months 4-5 months to fix, while they show-stopping errors were in an LTS kernel release that was rolled out in various distributions.
If I have an issue with what I'm building, I can hop into a chat and immediately talk to Nvidia/AMD/Intel folks/etc. In some cases, they share code, in some cases they release a driver update.
You mean like asking NVIDIA for Wayland support following the same standards as everyone else? That worked well.
Everyone's drivers are bad, but I don't believe for a second that Apple's are measurably worse than Linux or Windows drivers.
It goes without saying that OSX has the worst driver support out of Windows/Linux/OSX simply because OSX supports the smallest range of devices it will run on. Windows runs on hardware from a wide range of OEM's, whereas OSX only supports hardware produced by Apple. Try running a hackintosh and you'll very quickly see what I mean. Linux driver support used to be garbage but it has gotten quite good lately. User friendly distributions like Ubuntu typically work out of the box now.
Now we have gone from macOS drivers are garbage to macOS has the worst driver support. Which is a completely different statement. Also it's one that is hard to disagree with -- macOS is only made to run on Macs.
I'm absolutely NOT including open source drivers in my assessment. I'm specifically talking about drivers written by vendors who unsurprisingly do a better job targeting their own hardware.
All hardware begins as custom hardware. Commoditization happens when a standard is published and other people start making it. But there's nothing intrinsically more special about Apple hardware than anybody else's. The problem here isn't a mismatch between the specialness of hardware and the openness of the OS. It's that Apple is hostile to people writing an OS for their hardware, so they don't share the kind of information that's available for both commodity hardware and custom but well-documented hardware.
GNU started with a printer that couldn't be modified.
Mac's are not as custom as you think, and it wouldn't be that hard for them to give out enough information to get Linux running on MBPs. In fact I hope we have a large community of folks making sure we can reverse engineer everything.
LLVM and the likes are great compilers, but Apple is leading exactly where Stallman warned about - a computer you can't write software for.
> I envy your knowledge and ambition. What you've done is beyond my capabilities.
I mostly did just coordination and verification. The only code I contributed are very small workarounds for the NVMe controller and webcam. Nothing noteworthy. The serious work of reverse engineering and implementing custom drivers was done by others which are to be applauded much more!
There is one person I want to point out in particular and that's roadrunner2 [1] who took the existing input driver for the 12" Retina MacBook and not just made it work with the MacBook Pro's, but also implemented support for the TouchBar and ambient light sensor. As this driver is based solely on reverse-engineered workings of the input system and Apple does very unique stuff there this was so much effort. Including very subtle, but surprising bugs (e.g. [2]) which could've easily avoided if documentation would've been available.
roadrunner2 is also the one to applaud for bringing the support for keyboard and touchpad to mainline Linux. As that not just required an input driver, but also touched other subsystems and required serious refactorings that was quite an achievement as well and is the reason keyboard and touchpad even work out of the box after booting a Linux distribution nowadays (although it's still not perfect as some distributions don't enable the applespi driver yet).
The days of globalised custom hardware are numbered. Most of the hardware that are used to be customised as we know then, are actually now a commodity. For example, networking vendors always custom made (i.e. ASIC) their networking hardware especially their high end flagship products but not anymore [1]. Most of them now are just targeting commodity hardware since in the long run customization is not technically and economically feasible at the global scale.
My worry is that while Apple is continually making their machines less and less useful for development (meaning macOS as an environment), that the Linux laptop story remains bad even on the Dell “Ubuntu Certified” machines or the Lenovo line of newer Thinkpads.
I think this means I’m resigned to “No, I would rather ssh to a Linux workstation” because I want to spend ~0 hours per year fighting with “WiFi doesn’t work, Audio doesn’t work, or Suspend sucks”. A recent set of threads here suggested buying a sufficiently old Thinkpad that the Linux community has worked out the bugs. Thoughts?
Edit: Thanks for the responses! (Sounds like a year or so back is plenty for solid support).
If you want a laptop that runs Linux great out of the box, buy a Linux laptop. There are plenty of known dealers that sell them. System 76 getting the most press recently.
If you want to stick with a specific brand (eg. I usually buy Lenovo) the trick has always been to buy one gen back. Laptops are all custom hardware by nature and if the manufacturer isn't spending the time to make sure Linux works on it then it is up to the community, and they can't do it until it is available. Once available it seems to take a year or so to get everything ironed out (assuming it is a major brand popular among Linux users). This really applies equally well to small, token lines, like Dell's, as they are really only a few steps ahead of the community due to limited resources.
I use a ThinkPad now and I can't complain about missing hardware support. Something which feels almost magical to me is that Lenovo supports Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVDS) [1] which means you can issue a simple "fwupdmgr get-updates && fwupdmgr update" and reboot and you got the latest firmware updates for your machine. That's completely unthinkable with MacBooks as firmware updates come bundled with macOS updates and therefore the only good mechanism to update the firmwares is to run macOS as well.
Regarding the need to fix occasional problems when using Linux: There is no silver bullet. While Linux has some advantages over the other operating systems, it also has its disadvantages. One disadvantage is that it's still quite niche, which I believe is the main reason for such problems. However from my experience it has already gotten _a lot_ better over the past two decades. More people are using Linux nowadays which results in companies putting more effort and resources into Linux development which then results in a better overall experience for everybody.
If your goal is to spend no time at all fixing or tweaking your system, I'd say Linux isn't the right choice for now.
I can see it's been a long and slow painful journey of getting it to work on modern MBPs, and I want to thank you for the consistent work you've put into this quest which many of us are following and benefiting from.
I've seen that github go from quite a hopeless situation, to a surprisingly complete amount of things working, under your watch.
I do agree with your assessment that the ARM future isn't looking good, but I'm still hopeful, and we really won't know until people try it out. Many of us, like me don't need all features working e.g. I can do without WiFi if need be, so I don't feel as defeated as you, due to having not as complete a goal set.
I urge you to put a clear message at the top of the github about your current status of involvement. It may encourage others to step up and take the reins for a while? You've done an amazing job, maybe a break is in order!
> I urge you to put a clear message at the top of the github about your current status of involvement. It may encourage others to step up and take the reins for a while? You've done an amazing job, maybe a break is in order!
No worries, I'm still accepting PRs and occasionally moderate discussions when they are in need of moderation.
Honest question: Having Linux on a Mac a decade ago had sense has Mac hardwares were special enough to provide value, but now you have XPS-like hardware, why would people buy a Mac to install a Linux on it? Dual boot? What does Mac hardware have that others don't?
This idea that anyone who buys Apple products is a sheep buying it purely for the brand needs to die. It doesn’t lend itself to a conversation about why people might choose differently to you.
What really needs to die are attempts of attributing your own ideas to other people. No one but you was saying anything about sheep buying and that brand is the sole reason for buying Apple products.
Disclosure: I own a lot of Apple products, though I still prefer Ubuntu to MacOS.
I was just answering the question "What does Mac hardware have that others don't?" in the most direct way possible. Do you disagree that everything else in Mac hardware is matched by other manufacturers?
And your beliefs about what you presume other people imply should probably stay out of this discussion.
>You directly implied that people are buying Apple products for the logo.
Apple makes kick-ass machines, but I see Macbook Pros everywhere. How many people in the real world need a $2000+ computer? If these people aren't buying it for the logo, what are they buying it for?
Apple has positioned themselves as a lifestyle brand. How can you deny that?
I'm looking at buying a laptop right now and I can either buy an apple MBP ... OR a MONSTER laptop with much better specs for the same-or-less price. I'm hand-wringing over it.
With past laptops I've only been disappointed by the non-Apple laptops I've had. Bad ram, bad battery, bad battery again, bad battery AGAIN, slow-for-hardware-misfiring issues... or the Apple that has been a truly reliable machine for going on nine years.
You'll get more "SCSI" when you buy macs, if you're a poser, at least, or a signaller, is probably more polite. 'You' is general of course, but, I think this is how it works. You'll be rolling in the SCSI with a mac, or if you plan to hang out with lots of bald men with the Steve Jobs kind of spiel, or something. I'd guess this is how it works. If any of those things are your thing, you should go for the mac, man.
But all that is a shitty landscape, opinions are mine. I meant no offense. But you see how things work out there.
I too used to be a anti-snob snob, sneering at Apple-buyers buying into a clique.
Then work gave me a Mac. Suddenly I had a Linux machine without the headaches. It took me about 6 months to get used to the OS, but by then I loved it and bought one for the house.
I now have a Linux machine at work and am spending my weekend upgrading the operating system because my video card goes insane and it takes me 3 days of fiddling to finally get it working again.
YES, SPEND MY WEEKEND WORKING SO MY VIDEO CARD WILL WORK.
But my Mac has VIM, grep, awk, cron, sed, and find. A real Linux shell, in other words. It also runs most of the Linux apps I want to run.
Also, I know they didn't stealthily give me a cheap-ass battery that's going to need replacing right outside of warranty. I know it'll be fine.
My laptop isn't a status symbol for you to see and adore.
Honestly?
I wish I could hide the fact that I had a Mac so that I wouldn't worry that it'd be stolen at conferences!
...
Anyway. I humbly suggest that you may be the thing you despise: An Apple snob. Just not the kind most people know. Maybe you're the "Granny Smith" type of Apple snobs. ;-)
We are stepping on each others toes; the initial OP or Grand-poster or whatever was about installing Ubuntu on a Mac, and that was the context I was replying into. So whatever. The OSX thing is great, for whoever it fits to, it is surely better than windows, W10.x and, etc, but, whatever, gp, grand parent, was talking about ubuntuin'g a mac, so what's his point. I get your point, about being all about the macs, but, this is an Ubuntu insertion. From his side. (((Arch by the way.))) Yeah enjoy your OSX. You've deserved it. And let's go on our ways. Or Rust on our ways, since the Go language is a piece of shit anyways. I use Rust. Since Go is a piece of shit, I mean.
I've upvoted your comment since we've clearly misunderstood each other. I don't think we're at disparity, the bloke tried to install Ubuntu on a mac after all. It's all good.
For what it's worth, I recently switched from a 2015 MBP to a Thinkpad. I was on OSX for ~9 years, and dual boot Linux/Windows for the ~7 before that.
The quality on this laptop is amazing. The keyboard works (have a friend who took his new MBP to Apple 3x in the first month due to keyboard issues). The trackpad is amazing (they used to not be so). I'll be on these machines for the coming years (probably ~6-10 based on my history, then back to OSX).
Edit: it was also ~$1000 cheaper for equivalent specs as the MBP.
Now that we are friends again, I don't know how that happened, get a PC ________________PC____________________- don't pay for the mac shit, especially now, "enjoy your tardboard," etc, cant you get girls or boys without the apple symbol? I guess the answer is clear get a GOOOD lappie, Thinkcrust whatever, who care, I only use shit lappies, since I earn like hell, whatever I type on, but MAcs, I only used them around when Vista came out.
I love you man. If you ask about the price you can't afford it. Rest of us just pick a $400 lappie and earn.
No matter how much we are worth. And you're worth everything. So consider. <3 I use pc's cheap ones, and earn like hell, so, yeah. OK. Save some money. #PCmastertastes
EDIT: downvoted as hell as people are apparently paying-down their mac-"pc's", or why would they. Learn to use a computer to get paid and then the mac pc debates goes to hell
I have one pc laptop from 2006 2007 I earn tons of money on it, even thoug most work is remote SSH etc Hetzner, etc, server-sales, but, and I have another one from 2014 I believe, both money earners. But it's all remote. I make money
Tons of money. No debts no downpayments. Tons of money.
I guess they both cost about hummmm $400 since the oldest one was free. All running Arch Linux. Enjoy your MAc, it will take you 11-12 years to pay it down. The end.
For me, it's mostly the screen and trackpad. Non-apple screens come in two varieties -
1. Shitty 1080p TN or barely IPS panels with laughable color accuracy, horribly bad color reproduction, viewing angles that just plain suck, 300 or 250 nits brightness and no 100% coverage of even sRGB.
2. Completely overkill and expensive 4K panels with HDR, touch, OLED, all the bell and whistles that somehow forgot that they are in laptops and drain battery at ridiculous levels.
Apple, on the other hand, have displays that have the perfect pixel density for laptops so their battery drain is manageable, have excellent color space coverage (even the 999$ Air has 100% sRGB) and perfect color accuracy and viewing angles.
Then comes the trackpad and it's not even a contest. On a macbook, I really don't need a mouse unless I am doing something high precision like Illustrator or video editing. Even there the trackpad is workable.
And then something that is more on a personal level, but no one apart from Apple has their high end devices available in India quickly. The new dell XPS might come very close to the macbook, but getting it in India is not possible, even after 4 months after launch. Even if it arrives, it will be one or two base models with limited availability or the completely overkill models. Not so with Apple.
For various reasons my main OS is Windows, however due to my past life as Linux fanboy during the university, when I decided to buy a travel netbook, Asus were the ones getting my money for a 1215B with Ubuntu pre-installed.
Sure it had a couple of issues later, more due to the way that Canonical managed the transition of the wlan and Brazos drivers, but it served the message to which vendors I wanted to support.
Don't want to use either Windows or hate Apple's behaviours? Then support the OEMs trying to ship Linux on their hardware.
The screen and the track pad are the best out there. From a coding perspective, the Mac is one of the few 16:10 ratio screens still out there, which means you get a bit more vertical height than 99% of the other 16:9 ratio resolutions. While 16:9 makes for better movie watching, coding/surfing/etc is far better on the taller screen. As a bonus, it is a really quality screen too.
I'm less enamored with the rest. My daily driver laptop is a 32G i9 from 2018(?). While I have enough RAM to run a couple docker containers, most of the folks I work with are stuck with the 16G version, which are constantly out of resources and have no upgrade plan. For being a 'pro' spec machine, it does not have the cooling it needs to be pushed like I do.
The screens aren’t matte, but they have a pretty decent anti-glare coating.
There’s also no way around using the trackpad sometimes. Using i3 and Vim keybindings wherever possible, I still need my trackpad enough that its relatively poor quality is annoying.
The earlier glossy MBPs were pretty reflective, and I stuck with a matte MBP for years too because of it, but for a while now using the current "glossy" MBP screens I do not see reflections in them if the screen is on. It's to the point I forgot the screen is glossy. Thankfully it just works the way you want it to.
This is why I can't understand the appeal of a MacBook. You have the Apple burden, the Apple costs, what benefits? The touchpad? The showoff luxury of a lighted logo?
I can’t either and besides the Mac, I’m fully onboard with the Apple ecosystem - iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, and an AppleTV 4K.
I bought Macs way back in the day - my last one was a 2006 Mac Mini to use as an HTPC. But every time I get ready to buy a computer, Macs don’t seem to have any advantage. I would be installing the same software I use for Windows - Chrome, Visual Studio Code and various language runtimes, Visual Studio (or Rider), a bit torrent client, Plex, etc.
I can buy a Dell a lot cheaper - of course from the MS store to avoid all of the crapware - and have more options.
I still recommend Macs for other people though who have the budget. They are still slightly less of a hassle than Windows and they can go to an Apple Store if they have any issues.
I can buy a Dell a lot cheaper - of course from the MS store to avoid all of the crapware - and have more options.
A while ago I installed a pristine Windows 10 (retail) copy on my NUC, just to see where Windows is at. I'll skip the Candy Crash Saga criticism. But I was really surprised that besides the drivers, it also auto-installed some crappy RealTek application and some crappy Intel application (for tweaking GPU settings or whatever). No vendor driver CDs or whatnot. Just letting Windows idle for some time and these applications were installed.
Is it really possible to get a pristine Windows install these days?
Many drivers come with crap bundle apps with stupid behaviour.
My previous Windows laptop had a super annoying constant display flickering, even on a fresh installation.
After months, I learned that I had to disable "auto-resfresh display" (or something similar) that in an Intel app because it was enabled by default (and re-enabled after every major update).
Compared to macOS/Gnome, I think that Windows shows poor taste in many aspects
Well, it's very good hardware, very stable software (in my experience), and you can drop to a terminal.
It's excessively expensive though. It's a business expense for me, but otherwise I would've bought one of those laptops that come with Linux pre-installed.
What really good Linux laptop can you get below the price of a MacBook Air that is not a second-hand Lenovo or a rebranded Clevo? And must have a HiDPI screen.
Most likes Linux laptops are in the same pricing ballpark as a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. And they don't have macOS.
Good hardware with the exception of the keyboards. Never had a laptop keyboard fail this bad before and then to find out it is glued in and can't really be replaced without leaving my machine in the hands of the company is not an option.
If I like macOS more than Windows why shouldn't I pick a MacBook?
Why shouldn't I pay 300/400 extra euros on a 2000 euros machine that I'll use everyday for 4/5 years if the software makes me happier/faster?
For me, the MacBooks still have the best build quality, trackpad, speakers, display resolution (instead of the FHD vs overkill 4K choice) and, more importantly, I just prefer macOS and its approach on laptops.
Furthermore, you can still sell a used macbook after years for quite high prices compared to the Windows alternatives.
Granted, I'd never buy some of Apple's products/configurations (like an iMac, the Mac Pro or the 16 MBP with 64 GB of RAM), but a base MBP with 16GB of RAM is more than adequate for me nowadays and it's not much more expensive than the alternatives.
If you don't care about the OS (or prefer Windows/linux), then obviously a macbook doesn't make any sense these days
Macbooks are mostly bought by companies in the tech industry, which is how Apple can get away with charging high prices for them. Companies don't barter. They'll pay whatever the price. This too is why upgrades home users do not need cost an arm and a leg.
Why are MBs and MBPs used in the tech industry? Many types of dev roles can only be done well on Linux or OSX (or BSD), because they're writing software for servers or their software runs on servers. The company has to choose. Some companies go exclusively Linux for their desktops and OSX for their laptops. Some go exclusively laptop. Linux does have mature enough laptops for consumers, but for business use on the laptop side Linux hasn't gone far enough. I have yet to run into a company that doesn't offer laptops because of remote and partial remote work being so common, along with needing to take your work computer into meeting rooms from time to time.
In short, it depends on the industry you're in, and if you're not in those industries you probably haven't seen it, but what fuels most Macbook sales is businesses.
My previous company used to offer both options (Dell laptop with Linux or MacBook) and eventually stopped offering the MacBook because of the RAM limitations at the time (16GB Max) and horrible docker performance.
RAM and docker were very important for our product and whoever chose the MacBook ended up regretting it (devs only, I mean).
The companies I've worked at have a "docker team" that does all of that, so everyone else can just write code. Continuous integration is enough to identify if there is a bug on Linux that isn't on OSX, but sometimes you just gotta SSH into a Linux box and build there to figure it out.
Requiring docker from the get go sounds painful, but maybe that just comes from my inexperience never having to use it. Like, does CLion, PyCharm, and similar even support building into docker from the get go? Wouldn't that increase build times instead of just building it natively on your machine? Any extra level of complexity is painful until you automate it in a bug free and efficient way, I suppose.
I think Apple's target audience has the money to spare, so to understand, first just compare the machines and forget about the price. People also don't buy Apple as a gaming platform,and Apple buyers don't care much about performance/$ comparatively speaking, so they don't care much about performance, either. You probably care about price and performance and find that hard to grasp, but I land in the camp that (to some degree) does not care about price or performance.
So, setting aside the price and performance, compare the machines setting those aside. Most other machines feel clunky by comparison. I bought an XPS 15 and had audio driver issues. The fans blow out of the bottom, which seems pretty lame for having a laptop, say, on your lap. It has a lame plastic flexy feel compared to a MacBook. A lot of people mention the XPS line as an alternative to the Macs, but I bought one to leave the Mac ecosystem, and it felt so clunky that I still just went ahead and bought another Mac after that.
So, I really think it makes perfect sense if the price and performance don't much concern you.
Interesting, my sentiment is the opposite. I would buy a Mac only because of a good design, portability and good battery. The software is my biggest pet peeve of this product.
On the other hand, even if Kubuntu (my preference) run perfectly on a Macbook, I'd still go for a Thinkpad, because of the keyboard and the touchpad.
I have a 2011 MBA whose battery still lasts an hour and it can do all the "daily driver" tasks except gaming.
(Meanwhile I replaced my other laptop's battery 3 times in that time!)
THe MBA's mobo finally went out so I'm in the market for a new laptop NOW and want to justify buying an EIGHTH GEN i5 MBP for over $1000 when there are laptops with TENTH gen i7's and >1tb hdd's for similar money.......
Was trying to make an, uh, apples-to-Apples comparison, so yes, I'm also in the market for an AMD but that understanding long-term-quality of components isn't ... well, I guess I have no idea how to measure the "quality" of a laptop if it's not simply "go trust Apple".
I mainly go back to the batteries I had to buy for one laptop.
I've been trying since the Pentium III to use Linux on a laptop and have finally given up completely. I've tried on a variety of hardware, even with official support. Driver problems and battery life have always been an issue.
But... are we talking about the same XPS laptop? My wife's 13" XPS purchased ~2016 has had horrible reliability. The charging port died a long time ago, fortunately, it charges over USB-C. But now it no longer keeps a charge, won't sleep/hibernate properly (will cook with the lid closed), and more. A friend of mine bought the same one at the same time and his is also breaking down (keyboard problems).
I've tried to get her to switch to Mac, but she prefers Windows, so next time I'm buying her a Surface Laptop. HTH anyone considering the XPS.
For what it's worth, I've been running Linux on Lenovo laptops for years and years, and lately it has been fine. No weird tweaks, no special kernel builds. It just works.
Is the battery life any good? That has always been the Achilles heel for me. The battery life is like half or 3/4 of what windows gets on the same hardware.
Could get close to a full day of work on the X1 Carbon Yoga Gen2. T480s not so much, but also packs a lot more punch. x1s seem to have best portability
Windows runs on a Mac, but I hesitate to say it runs well. The trackpad is pretty mediocre and I have lots of issues with Bluetooth. Additionally, the laptop only exposes the GPU so it never switches to integrated graphics and my battery life sucks.
I'm on the hunt for my next laptop and I'd really like to have a rock solid portable that runs Linux, but my past experience with Dell indicates inferior hardware and construction to Mac.
I looked at the 2020 Macbook Air (the $~1300 model), and it seems to offer the same or better specs (depending how much you value the display) for the price. Are we at the point where we must pay a premium NOT to run OSX, or am I missing something? I don't love the direction OSX has headed, but I'm still content enough running it and using Linux remotely where needed.
are the system76s better? I heard the hw was kinda iffy (crap) in the past. One of the reason I decided against it about 2 years abgo when I bought my Lenovo X1 carbon (for Linux).
The Lemur looks interesting (nice you can get it with more than 16GB RAM in 14")... wonder how the quality is on it though
I tried the 13' laptop but after getting used to the extra space around arrow keys on Macbook's for a decade, the tight configuration of keys on the 13 which have PGUP/PGDOWN adjacent to the up/left/right keys ended up annoying the shit out of me.
I ended up going with a 15' XPS and installing Ubuntu. The annoying part was the wifi card which sometimes Ubuntu would stop finding, so I'd have to re-install the drivers. For simplicity sake, I didn't bother having hybrid graphics since the only time I really needed the video card was simulations or computer gaming (which I did with booting in Windows).
>The annoying part was the wifi card which sometimes Ubuntu would stop finding, so I'd have to re-install the drivers.
I had a 15 XPS (Skylake version?) a few years ago with Ubuntu - I just ended up buying an Intel Wifi card for $25 and replacing the oem one. The nice thing about that XPS was it was user serviceable.
That's where I ended up (though it was XPS 7590 - for the larger battery, larger screen, and people not looking up my nose on video calls).
I used a 2015 Macbook Pro to experiment with making the leap to Linux desktop (though Macbook was essentially just a Linux terminal already).
I think everything worked (this was a year ago) - what pushed me to an XPS was when I realized (pretty quickly) that I have 0 interest in figuring out which arcane key sequence on the Mac keyboard was equivalent to a certain special key on a "PC" keyboard.
I was a 10+-year MacOS power user, and I'd felt it would be impossible to be "happy" (more like "unannoyed") with anything else - I'd re-evaluate that question every year.
I've been happily using Linux Mint on an XPS 15 since Sept last year. Cannot believe what a non-issue the change has been. I have hardly thought about my Macbook - been on it maybe 2 or 3 times to test something Mac-specific. Had I known, I would have switched a few years earlier, rather than "powering through" the unpleasant last few years.
For people who want to install Ubuntu on MBP14,2 or 14,3 (the new MBPs with four thunderbolt 3 ports) — this[0] might help. (It'll be probably trivial to update the article for Ubuntu 20.04 - just ignore the upgrading the kernel parts.)
It mentions adding the touchbar, keyboard drivers[1] and fixes for the non-working wifi[2], all without an external keyboard or anything. You can just boot up your Ubuntu virtual machine, execute some commands in the chroot environment & make an bootable ISO.
This gist[3] and this GitHub repo[4] might also be worth to check out - although it looks like a bit lagging in information (the wifi fix, added last November isn't reflected yet).
This is my command checklist (tweaked from this[0] to match my prefs), might be helpful for someone?
Somewhat unrelated but do we still need Docker Desktop for Mac to run Docker containers on macOS? Why is that, is it because Linux is needed? Couldn't Docker run containers natively using just macOS?
WSL2 makes this super easy. Once you have a distro installed, you just go into Docker Desktop's settings, click "use WSL2 backend" and it does it. Then you don't have to have Docker's slow boot2docker VM eating RAM all the time in the background. It's great!
The reason it doesn't work on WSL1 is because of the whole Linux kernel not being there, the features required for Docker to work don't exist. But since WSL2 is a (rather performant for certain tasks) VM, it works fine.
I'm almost certain you already read this guide [1], so I ask: where did it fail you? It definitely wasn't straightforward, but I managed to get it working fine in a couple of hours (Windows 10 1903, WSL 1, Ubuntu 16.04).
Docker uses namespaces, cgroups and other facilities that are Linux-specific. (Other OSes implement similar things, but of course they're different implementations.)
I'm sure you could make a native containers ecosystem for MacOS, but Docker containers contain software which is written for and compiled on Linux, and they need a Linux kernel to run. Docker containers do not provide a kernel - it uses the host. It is literally no different than taking any binary compiled on Linux or Windows and asking why it won't run on MacOS.
So even if Docker supported a native container system on MacOS, it would be useless because no Linux Docker images could run on it.
For such a technical post, I’m surprised this is the recommendation. There are a million ways to copy the iso to the usb drive and make it bootable. The easiest in my opinion is:
And then overwrite your operating system.
The main feature of etcher is that you can burn an operating system without worrying that you could brick your machine.
Just an FYI...
You might want to add “balena.io” to your hosts file. I do like the simplicity of BalenaEtcher but it seems to still try to call home over tcp port 443 even when I disable usage statistics and auto-updates in settings. This may have been fixed in newer versions. (I’m using 1.5.45)
This might be great "because we can" or to recycle old MacBooks, but to me the whole point of having a Macbook is the tight, native integration with its hardware.
I pay the premium for Apple precisely because everything just works, and works well. (Barring the occasional bugs...)
What you need is Microsoft like linux VM environment, with direct support by Apple. But even boot camp ... but competition might help. When developer moves to windows for its linux Env., it may trigger then to rethink about mac. But probably not. Sadly.
Lenovo Carbon X1 - besides maybe Dell XPS line - this is the best small 14" laptop for Linux. I consider it a 13" macbook replacement. it is good quality. I have had zero issues with my 6th gen running Fedora. However, you will never get the trackpad exp of a Mac, but you get a GREAT keyboard on X1s to make up for it (and the trackpad is actually pretty good).
I wouldnt want to fight with Apple hw with Linux. Apple doesnt want to make it doable any longer...
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 215 ms ] threadhttps://github.com/rbreaves/kinto
But FWIW: on Linux key bindings are always completely customizable.
I'll have a dig for customising them
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201300
This is a model without Apple T2, which probably simplifies Linux support.
As far as I am aware of how the Linux kernel is structured, these patches would have to be submitted as BSP 'quirks'. Most of the ICs (such as the audio IC) that Apple used are standard components with Linux drivers available, but Apple often uses different pinouts or configurations requiring modified (patched) drivers to make them work.
In the current state I don't think the patches meet Linus's quality standards to be accepted into the kernel, but it shouldn't be too hard to polish that up.
Should be a fun project to work on of you are looking at contributing to the Linux kernel. You'll need basic knowledge of electronics and embedded systems, but it shouldn't be that hard. Judging from Louis Rossman's youtube channel the schematics for each Macbook board should be available.
Heck, now that I think of it: I would like to give it a try, if only I had a Macbook available to do this with.
For the MacBook Pros 2016 and up I put significant effort into trying to get mainline Linux running as smoothly as possible by documenting and coordinating the efforts to have drivers for all internal devices [1], but just have a look where we're at over three years later: Audio doesn't work properly, Wifi does neither (expect for the non-TouchBar models, like the one the OP uses), hibernation is still somewhat broken and let's not even start talking about the advanced abilities of the TouchBar or support for TouchId. I could go on.
Models with T2 chip (2018 and up) are even worse in some regards and I believe it won't get better anymore. Next year we might see MacBooks with custom ARM SoCs and that's where I expect the driver situation will get even more dire. As Apple continuous to use more and more custom designed components, the effort for proper Linux drivers for such hardware only increases.
Most of these problems could be easily solved if Apple would simply make documentation for their hardware available. There are lots of great people passionate about running Linux on Macs out there, but reverse-engineering the hardware is what makes it really complicated to produce robust drivers for it.
I sincerely hope my predictions are wrong and Linux will still go strong on Macs in future as well, but for the time being I'm done with Macs.
[1]: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux
Not the wifi one. The problem there is that the firmware itself is broken in the paths that linux implements the wifi stack. (fullmac) Mac is not affected, but practically the firmware is still broken. It's also a known/won't-fix case, so the documentation itself won't help.
What would you recommend if I need to run both Linux and Windows alongside MacOS? Virtualisation? Or would I be better off using more than one machine?
That particular functionality worked fine on Mojave.
It works fine as long as I keep my VDI files on my system drive, but that can be a pain since they're so large.
We're stuck in a situation where fixed-size disk images are too large to use if you care about your host's disk space (unless they're created with an "almost full" target usage), and dynamic sized images tend to grow to unwieldy sizes unless you regularly zero-out empty spaces from the guest (cat /dev/zero >somefile on Linux, sdelete -z C on Windows IIRC), then VBoxManage modifyhd --compact the image from the host once the VM is off.
But it shouldn't be this way. VirtualBox added support for TRIM years ago, and guest OSes could very well happily live inside dynamic images - if it worked at all.
In practice (AFAIK, for the few who ventured to use it) - it doesn't work:
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/16795
https://support.apple.com/boot-camp
To triple-boot, you start with OSX, then install Windows via Boot Camp, then resize the Windows partition to make some empty space after it for your Linux install. Then you install refind, and follow up with installing Linux.
You need to do it that way because Boot Camp won't let you leave any empty space on the drive, and you can't put your Linux partition in front of the Windows partition, because the Hybrid MBR partition table that Windows needs can only count to 4 (or something like that).
On the bright side, I think triple-booting is more robust than it used to be. It's been a while since the last time I borked Windows.
A hybrid MBR by definition is not GPT compliant. And failure to comply does in fact routinely result in the loss of user data. It was always appalling incompetency by Apple that Boot Camp ever used hybrid MBR for even one day. To still be doing this in 2020 I consider bordering on malicious.
There's no legitimate technical reason for this.
WSL is just a linux syscall wrapper around the Windows kernel, so it isn't a perfect replica, but WSL2 runs a customised linux kernel alongside windows, so it should very close.
Long running (and pausing) VMs behave better on fusion. I see better stability when pushed hard. Better use of the hardware. Been a long time since I ran benchmarks, but the same VM was about 4-10 seconds faster on a 2 minute process. Not enough to matter for most. The native disk access helps with things that are IO sensitive.
The UI drivers are better... so if you open up and run a Linux desktop, it feels much more native, if that is a thing.
I don't think I've even opened virtualbox in the last couple years... so my comparisons may be dated. YMMV
Vbox graphics performance also left much to be desired: e.g dragging a terminal window around was slow, produced insane tearing and huge performance impact, and no amount of tuning would help; I’m not even talking about 3D stuff, this is just some plain X lightweight WM without a compositor. No such issue on Fusion, where I just imported the same VM.
But it also depends if you using VMware Fusion on MacOS or VMWare Workstation on Windows and Linux.
But if you use Linux I would suggest using KVM/QEMU and on Windows, Hyper-V.
You can use Vagrant with both KVM and Hyper-V.
I can't use Windows boxes with Vagrant on Linux. It doesn't seem to work that great.
OTOH if you try to install Linux on any recent MacBook Pro, you are in for hours and hours of googling weird shit with like only 2 comments on forums you have never heard of, and you will still never get Wi-Fi, sound, and sleep/hibernation all working at the same time.
It's just not worth it. If you are so hardcore about software freedom that you demand to install Linux natively on the metal then you should absolutely not, now or ever, buy a Mac.
OTOH if you just need to like, build some shit that only builds and runs on Linux, and you have $200 — VMWare. I don't like VMWare in theory (the Monsanto of tech companies) but I sure like them a lot in practice.
I have needed a Mac/Windows/Linux laptop for my job for the past decade. In former times, I installed Windows and Mac OS X, and ran the latest Ubuttnu in either VMWare Workstation or VMWare Fusion.
But since 2016 I just use VMWare Fusion for both Windows and Linux. If you want to use a Mac, I am confident that's the "best" approach.
(For me, that means "runs all GUI and CLI programs reasonably well, with the minimum hours per year spend fucking with shit just to make it work. But if you actually need efficient GPU acceleration or real high performance (like not a web app or GUI app, but some kind of computationally expensive whatever) under Linux — well, then get something other than a Mac.)
The small investment in VMWare Fusion was worth it but I still need some dedicated machines.
I just have a few issues:
Problem #1: Disk space requirements. I have a late 2013 MBP and windows gobbles up a min 60GB for the image, which is 1/4th my SDD. This is why I ended up buying cheap beige boxes for every other OS (or AWS).
Problem #2: Clipboard on VMWare is a trainwreck. Same goes for VNC and Microsoft Remote Desktop which I also use. My workaround is to use a text file on my router's USB drive so that I cut and paste through that in each OS.
----> I would pay someone $1,000 to come to my house and fix my clipboard problems.
Problem #3a: The magic mouse blows chunks on anything but macOS. And even running Excel on macOS is impossible with a magic mouse. The left-right slop makes it difficult to scroll vertically without drifting diagonally... I don't know how macOS apps solve that.
Problem #3b: I would kill for a mouse with a real middle button, not a scroll+button. Unix/X middle click paste is a feature I sorely miss on macOS and Windows.
> ... not a scroll+button. Unix/X middle click paste is a feature I sorely miss on macOS and Windows.
You phrased it in context like you thought using a Mac was preventing you from using a mouse with a middle button, especially when it was right after the section complaining about the Magic Mouse.
Command-C and Command-V are just so much better. Learn to love them.
So you don't need a MacBook or an iMac to run MacOS.
But it might be worth it, depending what you need to do.. I tend to do my actual work writing code and on the Mac side, even if the code is running on Linux, so for me it makes sense to keep the Mac experience the native one.
This really depends on whether you prefer Apple hardware or not. If you want Macbook hardware, use virtualization. If you want any kind of desktop or a laptop where everything isn't soldered and epoxied together, get whatever PC you want and then put the cheapest available Mac Mini in a corner and access it with remote desktop or similar as necessary. Another good solution is to buy a used Macbook which is old enough to have a rundown battery but not so old it won't run a recent macos, and then you get a better price and the battery doesn't matter because you're not actually using it as a laptop.
That's what I would do.
I assumed it was because this machine didnt fall into the “newer Macs that have issues with Linux” bucket
> Audio doesn't work properly, Wifi does neither (expect for the non-TouchBar models, like the one the OP uses)
Wifi has a (pretty stable) proper workaround now, you might want to see this[0].
[0]: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=193121#c52
But I think the crux of the problem is that people are trying to run commodity software on custom hardware. That just won't work long-term.
Linux is commodity software, that runs great on white box commodity hardware. macOS is custom software that runs great on custom hardware. Each has its place and purpose.
It's like driving a car on train tracks. Yes, it will get you somewhere, but it's not the right match of tools and environment. And it's inevitably going to be a bumpy ride.
Any application that pushes frames/performance would do better on Linux/Windows on the equivalent amount of silicon. What's missing because the hardware and drivers is so closed is the feedback loop between application/game devs and the vendors. If I have an issue with what I'm building, I can hop into a chat and immediately talk to Nvidia/AMD/Intel folks/etc. In some cases, they share code, in some cases they release a driver update. In pretty much all cases, the code I'm working on gets better. Apple lacks this feedback loop, and their drivers are garbage.
There may be exceptions, but I never had anything like the graphics glitching that the Nouveau drivers had or known problems that would lock up Intel GPUs every one 1-2 days or consistently in some workloads [1], or broken Intel WiFi drivers. The recent Intel driver problems literally took months 4-5 months to fix, while they show-stopping errors were in an LTS kernel release that was rolled out in various distributions.
If I have an issue with what I'm building, I can hop into a chat and immediately talk to Nvidia/AMD/Intel folks/etc. In some cases, they share code, in some cases they release a driver update.
You mean like asking NVIDIA for Wayland support following the same standards as everyone else? That worked well.
Everyone's drivers are bad, but I don't believe for a second that Apple's are measurably worse than Linux or Windows drivers.
[1] https://linuxreviews.org/Linux_Kernel_5.5_Will_Not_Fix_The_F...
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5....
Mac's are not as custom as you think, and it wouldn't be that hard for them to give out enough information to get Linux running on MBPs. In fact I hope we have a large community of folks making sure we can reverse engineer everything.
LLVM and the likes are great compilers, but Apple is leading exactly where Stallman warned about - a computer you can't write software for.
I mostly did just coordination and verification. The only code I contributed are very small workarounds for the NVMe controller and webcam. Nothing noteworthy. The serious work of reverse engineering and implementing custom drivers was done by others which are to be applauded much more!
There is one person I want to point out in particular and that's roadrunner2 [1] who took the existing input driver for the 12" Retina MacBook and not just made it work with the MacBook Pro's, but also implemented support for the TouchBar and ambient light sensor. As this driver is based solely on reverse-engineered workings of the input system and Apple does very unique stuff there this was so much effort. Including very subtle, but surprising bugs (e.g. [2]) which could've easily avoided if documentation would've been available.
roadrunner2 is also the one to applaud for bringing the support for keyboard and touchpad to mainline Linux. As that not just required an input driver, but also touched other subsystems and required serious refactorings that was quite an achievement as well and is the reason keyboard and touchpad even work out of the box after booting a Linux distribution nowadays (although it's still not perfect as some distributions don't enable the applespi driver yet).
[1]: https://github.com/roadrunner2/macbook12-spi-driver [2]: https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/issues/53
[1] https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/06/20/a-deep-dive-into-cis...
My worry is that while Apple is continually making their machines less and less useful for development (meaning macOS as an environment), that the Linux laptop story remains bad even on the Dell “Ubuntu Certified” machines or the Lenovo line of newer Thinkpads.
I think this means I’m resigned to “No, I would rather ssh to a Linux workstation” because I want to spend ~0 hours per year fighting with “WiFi doesn’t work, Audio doesn’t work, or Suspend sucks”. A recent set of threads here suggested buying a sufficiently old Thinkpad that the Linux community has worked out the bugs. Thoughts?
Edit: Thanks for the responses! (Sounds like a year or so back is plenty for solid support).
If you want to stick with a specific brand (eg. I usually buy Lenovo) the trick has always been to buy one gen back. Laptops are all custom hardware by nature and if the manufacturer isn't spending the time to make sure Linux works on it then it is up to the community, and they can't do it until it is available. Once available it seems to take a year or so to get everything ironed out (assuming it is a major brand popular among Linux users). This really applies equally well to small, token lines, like Dell's, as they are really only a few steps ahead of the community due to limited resources.
Regarding the need to fix occasional problems when using Linux: There is no silver bullet. While Linux has some advantages over the other operating systems, it also has its disadvantages. One disadvantage is that it's still quite niche, which I believe is the main reason for such problems. However from my experience it has already gotten _a lot_ better over the past two decades. More people are using Linux nowadays which results in companies putting more effort and resources into Linux development which then results in a better overall experience for everybody.
If your goal is to spend no time at all fixing or tweaking your system, I'd say Linux isn't the right choice for now.
[1]: https://fwupd.org/
I've seen that github go from quite a hopeless situation, to a surprisingly complete amount of things working, under your watch.
I do agree with your assessment that the ARM future isn't looking good, but I'm still hopeful, and we really won't know until people try it out. Many of us, like me don't need all features working e.g. I can do without WiFi if need be, so I don't feel as defeated as you, due to having not as complete a goal set.
I urge you to put a clear message at the top of the github about your current status of involvement. It may encourage others to step up and take the reins for a while? You've done an amazing job, maybe a break is in order!
No worries, I'm still accepting PRs and occasionally moderate discussions when they are in need of moderation.
Ignorance is not helping either side.
Disclosure: I own a lot of Apple products, though I still prefer Ubuntu to MacOS.
And your beliefs about what you presume other people imply should probably stay out of this discussion.
Apple makes kick-ass machines, but I see Macbook Pros everywhere. How many people in the real world need a $2000+ computer? If these people aren't buying it for the logo, what are they buying it for?
Apple has positioned themselves as a lifestyle brand. How can you deny that?
I'm looking at buying a laptop right now and I can either buy an apple MBP ... OR a MONSTER laptop with much better specs for the same-or-less price. I'm hand-wringing over it.
With past laptops I've only been disappointed by the non-Apple laptops I've had. Bad ram, bad battery, bad battery again, bad battery AGAIN, slow-for-hardware-misfiring issues... or the Apple that has been a truly reliable machine for going on nine years.
Trust in Quality.
That's my "denial".
But all that is a shitty landscape, opinions are mine. I meant no offense. But you see how things work out there.
Then work gave me a Mac. Suddenly I had a Linux machine without the headaches. It took me about 6 months to get used to the OS, but by then I loved it and bought one for the house.
I now have a Linux machine at work and am spending my weekend upgrading the operating system because my video card goes insane and it takes me 3 days of fiddling to finally get it working again.
YES, SPEND MY WEEKEND WORKING SO MY VIDEO CARD WILL WORK.
But my Mac has VIM, grep, awk, cron, sed, and find. A real Linux shell, in other words. It also runs most of the Linux apps I want to run.
Also, I know they didn't stealthily give me a cheap-ass battery that's going to need replacing right outside of warranty. I know it'll be fine.
My laptop isn't a status symbol for you to see and adore.
Honestly?
I wish I could hide the fact that I had a Mac so that I wouldn't worry that it'd be stolen at conferences!
...
Anyway. I humbly suggest that you may be the thing you despise: An Apple snob. Just not the kind most people know. Maybe you're the "Granny Smith" type of Apple snobs. ;-)
I've upvoted your comment since we've clearly misunderstood each other. I don't think we're at disparity, the bloke tried to install Ubuntu on a mac after all. It's all good.
The quality on this laptop is amazing. The keyboard works (have a friend who took his new MBP to Apple 3x in the first month due to keyboard issues). The trackpad is amazing (they used to not be so). I'll be on these machines for the coming years (probably ~6-10 based on my history, then back to OSX).
Edit: it was also ~$1000 cheaper for equivalent specs as the MBP.
I love you man. If you ask about the price you can't afford it. Rest of us just pick a $400 lappie and earn.
No matter how much we are worth. And you're worth everything. So consider. <3 I use pc's cheap ones, and earn like hell, so, yeah. OK. Save some money. #PCmastertastes
EDIT: downvoted as hell as people are apparently paying-down their mac-"pc's", or why would they. Learn to use a computer to get paid and then the mac pc debates goes to hell
I have one pc laptop from 2006 2007 I earn tons of money on it, even thoug most work is remote SSH etc Hetzner, etc, server-sales, but, and I have another one from 2014 I believe, both money earners. But it's all remote. I make money
Tons of money. No debts no downpayments. Tons of money.
I guess they both cost about hummmm $400 since the oldest one was free. All running Arch Linux. Enjoy your MAc, it will take you 11-12 years to pay it down. The end.
1. Shitty 1080p TN or barely IPS panels with laughable color accuracy, horribly bad color reproduction, viewing angles that just plain suck, 300 or 250 nits brightness and no 100% coverage of even sRGB.
2. Completely overkill and expensive 4K panels with HDR, touch, OLED, all the bell and whistles that somehow forgot that they are in laptops and drain battery at ridiculous levels.
Apple, on the other hand, have displays that have the perfect pixel density for laptops so their battery drain is manageable, have excellent color space coverage (even the 999$ Air has 100% sRGB) and perfect color accuracy and viewing angles.
Then comes the trackpad and it's not even a contest. On a macbook, I really don't need a mouse unless I am doing something high precision like Illustrator or video editing. Even there the trackpad is workable.
And then something that is more on a personal level, but no one apart from Apple has their high end devices available in India quickly. The new dell XPS might come very close to the macbook, but getting it in India is not possible, even after 4 months after launch. Even if it arrives, it will be one or two base models with limited availability or the completely overkill models. Not so with Apple.
I still think than MacBooks's resolution is the best compromise though
For various reasons my main OS is Windows, however due to my past life as Linux fanboy during the university, when I decided to buy a travel netbook, Asus were the ones getting my money for a 1215B with Ubuntu pre-installed.
Sure it had a couple of issues later, more due to the way that Canonical managed the transition of the wlan and Brazos drivers, but it served the message to which vendors I wanted to support.
Don't want to use either Windows or hate Apple's behaviours? Then support the OEMs trying to ship Linux on their hardware.
Another thing is Thunderbolt, but IDK if that’s supported under Linux? So that might be a moot point anyhow.
All my years of StarCraft have me a wiz at mouse and keyboard. Plus I doc to 3 screens.
Onthego, I have touch screen which I use surprisingly often.
I'm less enamored with the rest. My daily driver laptop is a 32G i9 from 2018(?). While I have enough RAM to run a couple docker containers, most of the folks I work with are stuck with the 16G version, which are constantly out of resources and have no upgrade plan. For being a 'pro' spec machine, it does not have the cooling it needs to be pushed like I do.
Aren't most Mac laptops screens glossy though? I don't really care how good the screen is if it acts like a huge mirror all the time.
As for the trackpad, if you are proficient with the keyboard (or use a tiling wm) it does not really matter anymore.
There’s also no way around using the trackpad sometimes. Using i3 and Vim keybindings wherever possible, I still need my trackpad enough that its relatively poor quality is annoying.
I guess it must be subjective, because I find they are horribly glossy. I'm still using an old matte Macbook for this reason.
I bought Macs way back in the day - my last one was a 2006 Mac Mini to use as an HTPC. But every time I get ready to buy a computer, Macs don’t seem to have any advantage. I would be installing the same software I use for Windows - Chrome, Visual Studio Code and various language runtimes, Visual Studio (or Rider), a bit torrent client, Plex, etc.
I can buy a Dell a lot cheaper - of course from the MS store to avoid all of the crapware - and have more options.
I still recommend Macs for other people though who have the budget. They are still slightly less of a hassle than Windows and they can go to an Apple Store if they have any issues.
A while ago I installed a pristine Windows 10 (retail) copy on my NUC, just to see where Windows is at. I'll skip the Candy Crash Saga criticism. But I was really surprised that besides the drivers, it also auto-installed some crappy RealTek application and some crappy Intel application (for tweaking GPU settings or whatever). No vendor driver CDs or whatnot. Just letting Windows idle for some time and these applications were installed.
Is it really possible to get a pristine Windows install these days?
My previous Windows laptop had a super annoying constant display flickering, even on a fresh installation.
After months, I learned that I had to disable "auto-resfresh display" (or something similar) that in an Intel app because it was enabled by default (and re-enabled after every major update). Compared to macOS/Gnome, I think that Windows shows poor taste in many aspects
It's excessively expensive though. It's a business expense for me, but otherwise I would've bought one of those laptops that come with Linux pre-installed.
Most likes Linux laptops are in the same pricing ballpark as a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. And they don't have macOS.
For me, the MacBooks still have the best build quality, trackpad, speakers, display resolution (instead of the FHD vs overkill 4K choice) and, more importantly, I just prefer macOS and its approach on laptops. Furthermore, you can still sell a used macbook after years for quite high prices compared to the Windows alternatives. Granted, I'd never buy some of Apple's products/configurations (like an iMac, the Mac Pro or the 16 MBP with 64 GB of RAM), but a base MBP with 16GB of RAM is more than adequate for me nowadays and it's not much more expensive than the alternatives.
If you don't care about the OS (or prefer Windows/linux), then obviously a macbook doesn't make any sense these days
Why are MBs and MBPs used in the tech industry? Many types of dev roles can only be done well on Linux or OSX (or BSD), because they're writing software for servers or their software runs on servers. The company has to choose. Some companies go exclusively Linux for their desktops and OSX for their laptops. Some go exclusively laptop. Linux does have mature enough laptops for consumers, but for business use on the laptop side Linux hasn't gone far enough. I have yet to run into a company that doesn't offer laptops because of remote and partial remote work being so common, along with needing to take your work computer into meeting rooms from time to time.
In short, it depends on the industry you're in, and if you're not in those industries you probably haven't seen it, but what fuels most Macbook sales is businesses.
RAM and docker were very important for our product and whoever chose the MacBook ended up regretting it (devs only, I mean).
Requiring docker from the get go sounds painful, but maybe that just comes from my inexperience never having to use it. Like, does CLion, PyCharm, and similar even support building into docker from the get go? Wouldn't that increase build times instead of just building it natively on your machine? Any extra level of complexity is painful until you automate it in a bug free and efficient way, I suppose.
So, setting aside the price and performance, compare the machines setting those aside. Most other machines feel clunky by comparison. I bought an XPS 15 and had audio driver issues. The fans blow out of the bottom, which seems pretty lame for having a laptop, say, on your lap. It has a lame plastic flexy feel compared to a MacBook. A lot of people mention the XPS line as an alternative to the Macs, but I bought one to leave the Mac ecosystem, and it felt so clunky that I still just went ahead and bought another Mac after that.
So, I really think it makes perfect sense if the price and performance don't much concern you.
On the other hand, even if Kubuntu (my preference) run perfectly on a Macbook, I'd still go for a Thinkpad, because of the keyboard and the touchpad.
I have a 2011 MBA whose battery still lasts an hour and it can do all the "daily driver" tasks except gaming.
(Meanwhile I replaced my other laptop's battery 3 times in that time!)
THe MBA's mobo finally went out so I'm in the market for a new laptop NOW and want to justify buying an EIGHTH GEN i5 MBP for over $1000 when there are laptops with TENTH gen i7's and >1tb hdd's for similar money.......
I mainly go back to the batteries I had to buy for one laptop.
But... are we talking about the same XPS laptop? My wife's 13" XPS purchased ~2016 has had horrible reliability. The charging port died a long time ago, fortunately, it charges over USB-C. But now it no longer keeps a charge, won't sleep/hibernate properly (will cook with the lid closed), and more. A friend of mine bought the same one at the same time and his is also breaking down (keyboard problems).
I've tried to get her to switch to Mac, but she prefers Windows, so next time I'm buying her a Surface Laptop. HTH anyone considering the XPS.
Last I tried this was on a 2016 X1 Carbon.
I have a macbook 15 for work and am extremely disappointed in its battery life, so I think the Lenovo matches up well.
I do have tlp running on it.
You might check out your old model here, just to see if there are important tweaks: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
If HW reliability is a concern and you want to choose Apple, couldn't you BootCamp it or run Windows in a full screen VM?
I looked at the 2020 Macbook Air (the $~1300 model), and it seems to offer the same or better specs (depending how much you value the display) for the price. Are we at the point where we must pay a premium NOT to run OSX, or am I missing something? I don't love the direction OSX has headed, but I'm still content enough running it and using Linux remotely where needed.
The Lemur looks interesting (nice you can get it with more than 16GB RAM in 14")... wonder how the quality is on it though
I ended up going with a 15' XPS and installing Ubuntu. The annoying part was the wifi card which sometimes Ubuntu would stop finding, so I'd have to re-install the drivers. For simplicity sake, I didn't bother having hybrid graphics since the only time I really needed the video card was simulations or computer gaming (which I did with booting in Windows).
I had a 15 XPS (Skylake version?) a few years ago with Ubuntu - I just ended up buying an Intel Wifi card for $25 and replacing the oem one. The nice thing about that XPS was it was user serviceable.
I used a 2015 Macbook Pro to experiment with making the leap to Linux desktop (though Macbook was essentially just a Linux terminal already).
I think everything worked (this was a year ago) - what pushed me to an XPS was when I realized (pretty quickly) that I have 0 interest in figuring out which arcane key sequence on the Mac keyboard was equivalent to a certain special key on a "PC" keyboard.
I was a 10+-year MacOS power user, and I'd felt it would be impossible to be "happy" (more like "unannoyed") with anything else - I'd re-evaluate that question every year.
I've been happily using Linux Mint on an XPS 15 since Sept last year. Cannot believe what a non-issue the change has been. I have hardly thought about my Macbook - been on it maybe 2 or 3 times to test something Mac-specific. Had I known, I would have switched a few years earlier, rather than "powering through" the unpleasant last few years.
(Ok, expanding the memory to a decent size is a little more work)
It mentions adding the touchbar, keyboard drivers[1] and fixes for the non-working wifi[2], all without an external keyboard or anything. You can just boot up your Ubuntu virtual machine, execute some commands in the chroot environment & make an bootable ISO.
This gist[3] and this GitHub repo[4] might also be worth to check out - although it looks like a bit lagging in information (the wifi fix, added last November isn't reflected yet).
This is my command checklist (tweaked from this[0] to match my prefs), might be helpful for someone?
I'd suggest you virtualize a normal Linux host on your machine (under VMware for example) and run Docker there.
The reason it doesn't work on WSL1 is because of the whole Linux kernel not being there, the features required for Docker to work don't exist. But since WSL2 is a (rather performant for certain tasks) VM, it works fine.
[1] https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows...
The problems started when I docker-compose up'd a pretty basic nginx-php-mariadb stack.
A short description, a bit old, but still useful:
https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/10/10/what-even-is-a-container/
So even if Docker supported a native container system on MacOS, it would be useless because no Linux Docker images could run on it.
You can follow the instructions to create a patched Ubuntu installer, or you can just download the image.
For such a technical post, I’m surprised this is the recommendation. There are a million ways to copy the iso to the usb drive and make it bootable. The easiest in my opinion is:
I pay the premium for Apple precisely because everything just works, and works well. (Barring the occasional bugs...)
I wouldnt want to fight with Apple hw with Linux. Apple doesnt want to make it doable any longer...