I'd agree with that, I run stock ubuntu on a thinkpad t460p. I have only one issue which is that display scaling is not fractional, its in set values which doesn't play well with resolutions above 1080p. Thats a gnome issue though and doesn't stop the screen working perfectly when the resolution is set to 1080p instead of 2550x1440 or whatever it is.

This is trivial to fix actually. Ubuntu 16.04 had "fractional" scaling by default but in reality all it did was between 1x and 2x use 1x with larger fonts. 18.04 lost that with the gnome transition but you can just change the font scaling manually. Less convenient and polished but still there in the tweak tool. Firefox also includes a scaling option in the configs. With those two settings my T460s with the 2560x1440 screen looks great. It does suck that the Gnome transition in the new LTS has been so bad. For all its quirks the Unity on Xorg experience was actually very stable and polished for years now.

This, right here, is an excellent case-in-point illustration of the reason Linux isn't widely used on laptops: even on expensive, high end hardware with excellent Linux support, and the most popular distribution, very basic functionality like screen resolution not only doesn't "just work" out of the box -- getting it to work properly at all requires serendipitously stumbling across a random forum post somewhere that directs you to the needle-in-the-haystack magic config file tweak that makes it work properly.

Can I please just get a Carbon X1 running MacOS?

I'm running linux (manjaro - kde) on my thinkpad T470. It works marvelous, scaling works without issue, adding screens, updating, hibernate/sleep. It all just works.

Currently haven't rebooted my laptop for 45 days, updated in the middle (while still being able to work) and still works wihout issue.

Meanwhile my windows desktop keeps forcing updates/reboots every week interrupting my work. Also interesting to mention: windows always has the fans on of my laptop, on linux only under heavy load.

Bought the laptop especially for the linux support on the thinkpad series, very happy with it.

Googling for the issue would get you the source where I got it from, so it's not as bad as you claim. And up to 16.04 the last few years of Ubuntu LTS releases have been smooth sailing in my experience. In 18.04 they did a transition into GNOME3 as the default and that's still showing the issues that showed up. Unity was actually quite polished and functional.

But let's not blow this out of proportion. It's not like Apple has not had plenty of QA issues with OSX lately. But I agree Linux desktop QA could use some more resources. Unfortunately it seems the Ubuntu desktop/mobile push is mostly over and they're now focusing on server/container where Linux has been great for a long time already. And since volunteers always prefer writing new shiny stuff than spending time doing QA the Linux desktop will probably never be extremely polished. I do find it much better than Windows and comparable or better than OSX in actual functionality for us technical types but your mileage may vary.

Thats interesting to know, thanks for the tip!

FWIW I do the same as suggested and it's great, font scaling set to 1.4 on a 14"@2560x1440 T470P running @2560x1440 looks nice, the only very slight snag is that font scaling doesn't scale the window decorations but a few themes do work (Numix window decorations).

What happens when you plug in a second monitor?

I believe it applies to all screens. I've only been using external screens to project stuff fullscreen so I haven't checked what happens if I use my 1920x1200 screen as a work screen. If it's like in Unity you get the larger fonts but it's still quite usable. Having the font scaling be per-screen would be ideal though.

What’s the battery life like compared to windows? I have the t460p running w10 with the extended battery and I’ve never run out of power in the middle of a workday. It would be painful to give that up, but at the same time I’m interested in running linux as main OS.

This. I've had linux on the desktop since 2002, and unstable, insecure, hot and noisy are the polar opposite of what I've experienced on the whole. Sure, from time to time a tool would experience issues and cause heat from pegging the CPU, or they're would be some vulnerability cause it to be insecure. I'd doubt it's anymore insecure than windows or osx, and I certainly feel like it's more secure.

Unstable? I really only run LTS, though prior to ubuntu I ran debian stable, and I rarely run into anything unstable except for certain glitches which are often graphics related and worked around with different approaches, sometimes resorting to using a different window manager.

How did I do it? I ran business level laptops. Not high-end consumer laptops - those are junk, I mean 3 generations of the Dell D series, 3 generations of the Dell E series, HP Z Books, etc.

I should also point out that mostly kept with distro packages. If I broke down and installed another, I kept it out of /usr and in my homedir or /usr/local to isolate it, or I used a PPA from a trustyworthy source (Just because it's a PPA doesn't mean it's written by a competent person). When things did break, upgrades, etc. I did not blame Linux, I blamed the package that caused it.

This is exactly why Linux isn't more widely used: most business and professional users regard "switching to a different window manager in order to work around repeated graphics glitches" as a dealbreaker-level problem in a tool they use for their work.

It's supposed to be an appliance that gets out of the way and enables higher level work, not a fascinating engineering project. The tool should _just work_, all the time. You shouldn't have to know or care what a window manager even is. That's what MacOS got right.

Now, if only Apple could go back to having the best hardware, too.. :/

I like how you take one particular anecdote and use it as representative; I have had pretty bad graphics glitches on a 2017 MBP at work, unless I disable graphics switching, which kills the battery.

Conclusion: macOS suffers from severe graphics glitches and has terrible battery life. /s

I have personally used Linux on the desktop and the server for many years. I know many other engineers who have also done this, and we've compared notes extensively on the topic. Sadly, this anecdote is not an anomaly, but a fully typical example of the broad experience.

It is, if anything, a rather too mild example of the general class.

FWIW, my Macbook (not my primary machine) cost me 400€ second hand and I spent another 100€ upgrading to 8GB Ram and an SSD drive. It's a ten year old machine which runs like a dream.

I challenge anyone to find a better computing solution for 500€.

You could install Linux on a 500€ laptop but you wouldn't have the keyboard or screen quality of the Macbook, nor would have access to the Apple ecosystem. A lot of programs for Mac are just really well made and nice to use.

> You could install Linux on a 500€ laptop but you wouldn't have the keyboard or screen quality of the Macbook

You're literally posting in a story about terrible Apple keyboards... The whole point to this subthread is about alternatives with better keyboards!

> You could install Linux on a 500€ laptop but you wouldn't have the keyboard or screen quality of the Macbook, nor would have access to the Apple ecosystem.

I used a 2009 MacBook pro for close to 3 years.

The following are my opinions, they are not valid for everyone but for some of us they are very valid:

Keyboard had ctrl in a different spot than every other keyboard I ever spent significant time with. (Disclaimer: some other laptops come configured this way but I remap it in bios if it is my machine.)

Keyboard lacked home, end, page up and page down keys. Instead it had extra arrow keys that non of the two resident apple fans in my office could tell me the idea behind.

Basic things like selecting a word using the keyboard would take one of three key combos depending on which app. I think sometimes it was ctrl-shift-arrow, sometimes alt-shift-arrow and sometimes fn-shift-arrow. Resident mac fan explained it was because of an ongoing transition between quartz and cocoa or something.

The application menus would appear on one screen only, often far away from the application it belonged to.

So, while I wish more people would use Macs (because 1. Lots of people like it. 2. it forces application developers to think cross platform which benefits me as a Linux user, and 3. It also increases competition) I also wish people would understand that Macs are not the best choice for everyone.

>Basic things like selecting a word using the keyboard would take one of three key combos depending on which app. I think sometimes it was ctrl-shift-arrow, sometimes alt-shift-arrow and sometimes fn-shift-arrow.

Whereas all Linux GUI applications follow a completely consistent set of keyboard bindings...

Yes! Exactly! It's the only environment where I can rely on all text entry working with emacs keybindings, though to be fair I have to poke a setting to get that.

Oh wait, you were being sarcastic. Well, at least you were wrong and learned something I guess.

(No seriously, you're wrong here. Linux desktops solved the uniform keybinding problem in a cross-desktop way like a decade ago. You just don't like it because they're different, not because they're inconsistent.)

All text entry works with emacs keybindings on OS X without having to poke at a setting. Or rather, one setting per toolkit:

https://superuser.com/questions/171925/enable-emacs-like-key...

>You just don't like it because they're different, not because they're inconsistent.

I didn't say anything about not liking Linux keybindings. It's a minor issue for me personally.

Sorry, I took your sarcasm to imply that linux desktop keybindings were inconsistent. If that's not what you mean (I mean, reading it again, I'm really pretty sure that's what you meant), then I apologize.

They are inconsistent between applications/toolkits. I was saying that this is not a big issue for me personally.

You still forget that I mentioned text selection shortcuts. They've been fairly consistent across 20 years of Windows and every major Linux Desktop environment.

Both linux and Windows seems to get basic text selection right, yes.

Of modern desktop os-es, Mac OS X was the only one who has ever consistently surprised me on this.

It might not be a big deal to everyone but for me who

- deal with text day out and day

- and prefer to keep my hands at the keyboard (even when I have a nice trackpad)

small thing like this matters.

Just like details like a good trackpad matters to other people I guess.

The text selection shortcuts are completely consistent on modern OS X, in my experience. At least, I can't find an app where shift+alt+right_arrow doesn't select a word.

I've moved on but between 2009 and 2012 this changed from application to application.

I've also yet to find an instance in macOS where Emacs-style text navigation shortcuts didn't Just Work™ automatically. One of the few things about macOS that I actually like relative to the average Unix/Linux desktop.

they have been for 30 years, NeXTstep and non-NeXTstep MacOS. I think Larry Teslar of Apple (long ago now) was part of that. Also, TextFields in the NeXT and now Apple codebase know various Emacs key bindings by default.

Home, page up and page down is just CMD + left, up or down arrow isn't it?

Selecting a word: double click / tap on it.

> Home, page up and page down is just CMD + left, up or down arrow isn't it?

Back then I think that too depended on the application. I tried everything and googled it.

> Selecting a word: double click / tap on it.

I prefer the keyboard.

>I also wish people would understand that Macs are not the best choice for everyone.

I agree totally. Equally I wish that every Linux user (especially here) stopped hailing the system as a panacea. This whole debate is trite.

I guess you already read that part but for everyone else: yes, lets embrace os diversity.

I'm not against Macs. On fact I say: if possible give Macs to everyone at work who prefers them.

Linux is not perfect. My current Ubuntu has been particularly bad. (But that might be my fault as I got to the current state through unofficial states.)

I even grew an appreciation for Microsoft, partly because they changed a lot and partly because I learned a lot (about ABI stability, large scale software engineering, importance of documentation etc etc)

So lets advertise our OS-es but lets not pretend Mac or Linux is best. Not mentioning Windows here since they haven't annoyed me for a while : )

>Keyboard lacked home, end, page up and page down keys.

Thank you! At my desk at work I plug in an old HP keyboard and map those keys so that they do roughly the equivalent.

> Keyboard lacked home, end

^A, ^E, just like on a terminal or Emacs. ^K deletes to the end of the line.

Learned that.

But it doesn't compose with shift for selection.

I also learned and still use the official workaround for that which is pretty nice often: shift + arrow up/down while on start/end of a line

>But it doesn't compose with shift for selection.

Yes it does. Ctrl+Shift+E selects the text up to the end of the line.

As an interesting note, it doesn't work with MS Office.

Well, that's one problem you wouldn't have on Linux I guess.

On Linux ^A on a terminal (and on Emacs) behaves as God intended it to, but on a GUI it's usually "select all". It's really awful (albeit it kind of compensate for that with the select+middle-click dance).

Did you try converting Windows users? Did you face these problems with them? If not, what did you face?