Re:Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
by rtdp on Monday October 21, 2019 @12:51AM
(#21309431)
The better battery usage and wi-fi are some of the basic things that don't work out of the box even on a preinstalled ubuntu on XPS are real let down. These are the same problems I faced when I had used Linux laptops before, and so now happily settled with 15" mac pro since past 5 years - no issues whatsoever.
- Unless watching movies (not something I used it for) the wide screen aspect ratio was a big step down for productivity. IDEs, browsers, etc. all feel very cramped compared to on a more square 13" MBP.
- With Ubuntu pre-installed, out of the box, the sleep/hibernate mode used about 25% battery per 12 hours of sleep. I was able to configure a working sleep mode but this is the sort of basic functionality I expect to work on a high-end laptop.
- Multi-monitor - with mixed DPI - just never worked and I tried every suggestion I could find.
- Overall battery management was poorer - probably not Dell's fault as I expect this is an issue with the way Linux applications are written. A regular pattern was re-starting applications whenever the fan would start whirring up.
- This could be an issue with our set-up but I had to write a script that ran in the background to refresh the WiFi connection. There was some ARP issue that I wasn't able to (nor had time to) fully debug.
- This is pretty subjective, but I found the keyboard to be cramped an unergonomic.
I actually wanted to like this as I've primarily used Linux on my desktops for a couple of decades.