Any downside to Linux on a laptop?

>>56910878
All depends on the hardware. Most laptops are ok, expect a hassle with gpu's and power management though.

>>56910919
Should one stick to Thinkpads for that reason?

No downside whatsoever, but that is STRONGLY dependent on your hardware

using a thinkpad t420/t430 is an excellent choice as there is perfect compatibility, and even the hardware buttons and FN buttons work

be prepared to give up your video games though. its actually not as hard as it seems though when you get older, and plus, assuming you're an adult, your games will be older so they will run perfectly on wine

>>56910878
cant read my anime powerpoints

>>56910878
None. Get a good chromebook and unlock with a custom bios/uefi

linux is the downside

>>56910878
Wi-fi has been a pain on 80% of laptops i have used.

Please read reviews before getting a laptop to make sure there are mainline drivers for all the hardware, other than that, enjoy.

>>56911057
this guy is right

>>56911037
>>56911048
ignore these

and make sure you get a thinkpad OP. if you don't like lelnovo, then get a dell or hp business laptop. this isn't even about pushing the business laptop trend here, its about making sure your shit works.

you can count on everything working 100 percent out of box though if you have a thinkpad

>>56911055
/thread

>>56910958
yes

>>56910878
If you don't get some gimped laptop (lenovo?) there is no downside.

You only have issues if the vendor fucked with things. Like Apple does in the MacBook Airs. The franken-firmware they use on those kills performance, and only helps with battery life in osx.

>>56910878
My battery life went to shit after installing ubuntu. Verified my battery was still sound hardware wise & ensured I had power profiles.

>>56910878
I have an ASUS F302LA running gentoo, It's taken a while to get everything working because gentoo.
Downsides were figuring out how to enable 2 finger scroll, forgetting to enable usb 3.0 in my kernel, learning about UEFI boot, and setting the speakers to take priority over HDMI audio.
Everything works well though, and I daresay all these problems would have been avoided if using Ubuntu or Mint.
I have read that some new Lenovo hybrid tablet/netbooks, connect SSD's in a way that is not (easily) supported by linux. Not too sure how this works.

>>56910878
all good except for power problems
if you dont need a laptop with windows install cloudready
that shit makes any laptop to a shitposting machine
turned my t42 pentium m into a nice little 4chan machine

>>56910878
Yeah battery life and some drivers depending on your distro can be a bitch.

MBP 2013, Any Thinkpad, or a dell XPS play pretty friendly if you're a normal human who uses normal human distros

>>56911074
Why? A Chromebook is one of the best laptops to install Linux on since all drivers work and your battery life doesn't decrease.

The amount of dangerous global variables and the tightness of its common coupling means you'll be using an unsafe OS that will inevitably reach a point where it'll either need rearchitecture or simply be abandoned.

>>56911449
This, OP, Windows is a bad OS
Definitely go for GNU/Linux

After using Powertop, you won't have any battery life issues, and therefore very little issues at all.

If your laptop is very new, you might have to wait a few months for drivers for some specific things.

>>56911465
I was talking about Linux.

>>56910878
You would be using linux on a laptop.

>>56910987
desu I have a desktop loaded with Windows for any other games, but my linux laptop I use for most things otherwise.

>>56911466
this + TLP

>>56911466
>>56911857
absolutely this
ubuntu, especially with the new kernel, obliterates windows in battery life. TLP is god

>>56911951
can also confirm, pretty nuts when i hate it on dim it can sit there for hours now (c2d)

>>56910878
Battery life is reduced
If you get a freedom-focused distribution like debian then you will have to download drivers for your wifi card
Other than that it is waaay better. There is so much software available at the click of a button.

Developing on Linux is second to none

>>56911432
Any decent resources on running linux on Chromebooks?

>inb4 google it

>>56910878
get deepin linux if you want a os that just works

>>56911985
install tlp or whatever it's called.

>>56912007
yes mr bond

>>56910919
/thread
The only downsides are shitty or no drivers, which can affect battery life too
>>56911373
How much ram do you have senpai? Didn't Cloudready need 2 gb of RAM?

>>56911057
Never had issues with this. I think it must be a certain brand of NIC that has issues.

>>56910878

Like many have mentioned already, hardware compatibility is important to check out before purchasing.

Thinkpads are known to have great Linux support, other laptops not so much. Be ready to spend time getting things to work correctly.

>>56912037
got 2GB exactly

>>56912059
Yup, it's Broadcom
But Broadcom is pretty common on a lot of cheap laptops

>>56911980
which thinkpad? i have an x220. which distort you use?

>>56912140
its a little laggy when you boot up but after that it is smooooth

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>>56911479
And he tried to convert your post into something that makes sense.

>>56911985
>Battery life is reduced
not from what I've found. Its more or less the same as windows, more often than not better.

>>56910878
no

>>56911857
Wait, are you advocating using Powertop and TLP? Do they not serve the same porpoise?

>>56911055
>>56911095
/samefag

>>56912515
no, power top actually isn't even helpful at curbing power drainage; just monitoring it.

>sudo apt install tlp powertop
>sudo tlp start
>sudo power top

and see how godly tlp is at fixing your battery

>>56911328
Not baiting, but why gentoo? Is it that much better on laptops or is it just personal preference?

>>56910878
>>56911055

/thread

>>56912007
>>56912021
>installing chink botnet
Don't listen to him, he's a double agent!

>>56910878


Shit battery life
Shit wifi
Shit touchpad
Shit video drivers


Basically it turns your laptop into a shit desktop.

You guys saying "Get a ThinkPad or else" are seriously behind on the state of Linux drivers. It's worked flawlessly (as in better than Windows) on every laptop I've tried (namely an HP Elitebook 8740w and a Toshiba Satellite C655)

>>56912811
Can't really say shit battery life. I was in Europe last year and I was running Fedora and I was playing Shovel Knight + Diablo 2 (with wine) and I managed nearly 5 hours before the battery died.

>>56910878
Well in my case there's no driver for the network card, it connects to wifi, stays connected like fifteen minutes then disconnects and to have it reconnect I'd have to restart.

If this issue didn't exist I'd move to Linux now.

>>56910878
if you're going to use ubuntu then first check if its listed in the ubuntu certified hardware list. Save yourself a lot of butthurt.

>>56910878
Make sure that it
>has an Intel CPU, Sandy or newer
>has no dedicated GPU
>uses Intel wireless and wired chips
>is not Acer, HP or other consumer garbage
>is not some fancy Ultrabook™ with garbage custom hardware

tl;dr: get a ThinkPad

>>56911998
They come with linux preinstalled.

>>56914000
Does ChromeOS use GNU?

>>56911857
>>56911951
i would like to confirm that TLP is fucking nuts

>>56914013
it's gentoo

>>56914013
I do think so, but I'm not 100% sure.
Btw it's based on Gentoo.

>>56914035
>>56914038
Not anymore.
It used to be because of Portage though.
Now they have their own thing.

>>56910878
Not really.
As others have mentioned you potentially run into power-management issues but personally I have never seen this the or so laptops I have owned.
Sometimes missing or bad drivers for obscure/rare hardware. Eg. the drivers for the stick on my Elitebook seem to be non-existant/missing features. It works, but tap-to-click functionality isn't working.
Only once did I have problems with wifi. Some old Acer eeeMachine where wii dropped constantly. Could probably have fixed it but the machine was so bad I didn't bother.

How do I increase my battery life? Installed Ubuntu MATE on an X220, but I only get about 3 hours battery life on it. What the fuck?

>>56914239
TLP.
It won't magically turn your 10% capacity, 3hr battery into 50hrs of battery time though.

>>56910878
shitty battery life
no suspend/resume

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>>56910878
Try it and find out you lazy cheap bastard.

>>56910878
If you have a broadcom wifi card, check beforehand if the kernel has the drivers for it.
Mine only works with broadcom-wl driver, dkms makes it easy to maintain but the performance are awful.

considering i just switched from windows to opensuse then debian on my cheap broadcom NIC laptop:
>broadcom NICs are hit or miss and ease of installation depends on distribution
>dependence/reliance on windows program is more annoying than i thought it would be
other than that there are no downsides. it's much faster and easier to use than windows.

>>56912562
just like that? no configuring?

>>56910987

On the subject of laptops with perfect compatibility, are there any currently available laptops that have perfect compatibility with Linux?

I use Ubuntu and Slackware, if it matters.

Seems to work out of the box on dell latitudes, running fedora
Inb4 >dell

>>56915689
VAIO Pro 11/13
Dell XPS 13

Those two are what Linus uses

>>56915837

I don't think he's a reliable endorsement of a product. He also uses a Mac, I believe.

-unstable, unintuitive and/or feature lacking desktop environments
-drivers/acpi meddling causes lower duration, can be somewhat fixed with laptop-mode-tools, tlp and powertop
-linux drivers might not wifi, video and suspending/hibernate

>>56910958
no. i use dell inspiron and it works much better with linux than with windows.my fucking windows machine even with the official driver still dont recognize 3 fingers on the touchpad while i use 4 finger gestures on linux every day.

>>56910878
NO
BATTERY

>>56910878
You're taking a gamble on whether there are proper drivers for the myriad of hardware components on your laptop.

Biggest issues are potentially battery life and WiFi, but you never know what else just isn't going to quite work right (touchpad, keyboard backlights and function keys, etc.).

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>>56916132
for you.mine lives much longer with linux.
maybe you should try not being a pleb :^)

>dumb frogposter

>>56910987
This. Older games can still be fun and most often are objectively bettet than modern games released these days. Anon is roght when he says that video games become less relevant when you get older. Its hard to be excited for shit like Mafia III and Battlefield 1 when you can occasionally go back to something like the Original Xcom, OpenRCT2, Quake, Deadlock, and my personal favorite Startopia.

>>56912318
I'm sorry, but my post does make sense, scientifically speaking.
>>56906584

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>>56916327
noice

here is a screencap I took of CoD2 running on my thinkpad with ubuntu

I also got jagged alliance v1.13 running perfectly