I really, really want to go to a full Linux desktop.

What keeps holding me back are dumb things like video driver support, peripheral support for things I use, and general awkwardness with the whole plug/unplug state of affairs that is de rigueur in the laptop space.

Has any of this changed?

I'd be happy with GNOME in the 3.x incarnation, but the whole "turn your 7-hour Macbook Air into a 4-hour Linux machine" is just not okay. I need parity in battery life.

EXACTLY. We're constantly a step or two behind in terms of platform support.

Why isn't there a top-tier platform company (or nimble upstart) out there taking the lead and making a machine that has 100% driver support under Linux?

I am holding out hope that the Piston might get us there, but I'm not holding my breath.

My Dell XPS 13 (Developer Edition) came preinstalled with Ubuntu 12.04: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd (aka "project sputnik")

I haven't used it or other laptops enough to say how good it really is (but hibernate etc. works, the screen and keyboard are nice compared to other ultrabooks I tried; it's light and clean). The trackpad is annoying though but I think I'll always prefer a mouse.

> Why isn't there a top-tier platform company (or nimble upstart) out there taking the lead and making a machine that has 100% driver support under Linux?

How about a Chromebook? They run Linux, and pointedly don't run Windows, so you know the hardware will work under Linux.

Do they get good battery life in Linux? I hear the Pixel gets shitty battery life, but I'm not sure whether it's Linux or a small battery at fault.

I really want the Pixel to get some traction. UNfortunately, the tiny SSD and no USB3.0 kill it for me.

> Why isn't there a top-tier platform company (or nimble upstart) out there taking the lead and making a machine that has 100% driver support under Linux?

Providing you stick to Intel (eg no Nvidia graphics) then the Thinkpad T series (and probably most others) work very well under Linux. Occasionally there are issues but Lenovo do fix them (eg BIOS updates). Of course Lenovo won't sell you one without Windows!

The only thing that hasn't been supported in my last two Thinkpads (T430s and T61) has been the fingerprint reader. More accurately it is supported in dumb mode, but not in smart mode as it is under Windows. That is largely the fault of the company that makes the reader, although they have been bought by Apple so who knows what happens next.

https://www.system76.com/ ?

They just take OEM laptops and sell them. They aren't doing any actual system design or driver writing to make sure that everything works correctly.

I have never owned one, but I assume they pick hardware that actually has working drivers?

System76 does this, my last few laptops have all been bought from them. They don't design their own hardware, but they only sell hardware that is well supported.

Battery life is good, the price is great, and the support has always been amazing.

1" thick and 4.5 lbs for the 14.1"? What is this, 2006?

ZaReason (http://zareason.com/) is another company that does. I haven't used them personally, but have heard good things about them.

Get ready, I have been trying to get things together for a startup to accomplish this.

Is the poor power management on Linux a Macbook specific thing? Linux turns my 3-hour Thinkpad into a 6-hour Thinkpad, which kills Windows for me.

Possibly. Since Apple designs and tailors OS X to each laptop, they're able to squeeze the most battery life out of them.

Not much has changed: there are still a bunch of hurdles holding back the average user. Those issues are still around today, and especially for newer hardware.

The biggest problem IMO is the graphics. On my laptop (a Dell XPS I purchased in 2011) the OSs I installed (Fedora and Ubuntu) couldn't render anything serious. If I wanted to watch a TV-HD release, the screen would flicker; if I wanted to make a 3D plot in Mathematica, it wouldn't show; if I wanted to play a simple, lightweight game like Teeworlds, it wouldn't run. I had to use Bumblebee to get around it, but graphics still lagged.

Some of these problems are common enough that you can just google up a solution, but you shouldn't have to do that in the first place. I really like the idea of a Linux desktop, but it's just not going to happen anytime in the near future.

I'm another XPS user. I have to use linux (for work). Bumblebee is PITA on ubuntu and fedora, but works surprisingly well on opensuse 12.3

check: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/h...

( after installing bumblebee and primus, please remember to add your user to 'bumblebee' and 'video' groups, before reboot)

KDE is still a messy shit but doesn't crash much any more ;). It can display a wicked Mandelbrot as background but can't auto add wallpapers in ~/Pictures. Reports about v4.10 desktop indexing being 'sane' and 'reasonable' are wholly untrue.

sound works over HDMI cable but occasionally goes quiet (relogin). flicker is an xorg feature which is not going away :( Sound is still subpar compared to maxx drivers under windows. So much for 'Open-source Desktop'

Somewhat improved, but especially in the notebook space it's still far from optimal. This is not necessarily fault of the commnunity - laptops often have custom hardware (e.g. NVIDIA Optimus) that simply doesn't have driver support because vendor doesn't care.

You may be happy to know that Optimus video is supported on Linux by Bumblebee, http://bumblebee-project.org/

Yes and no. My system hard-shutdowns if I try and run Bumblebee. It works for some people but it's very much alpha quality at this point.