The lack of a "this is a serious machine" setting in Windows is baffling. I have Windows 10 Enterprise installed in a 20 core/128 GB RAM workstation that is used for lengthy numerical simulations. And yet it happily reboots randomly <i>and</i> it keeps filling the start menu with silly game icons (candy crush, etc.). Super fun for your boss to point out and say "so this is why you use this machine, for candy crush?"
I know I'm preaching to the choir here at HN, but I feel like there is a very important point that the author has skipped over:<p>Part of why the install process and general use experience went so well is all the time and effort Dell put into explicitly developing Linux support for this exact model. They likely made hardware choices (e.g. Intel wifi chipset instead of Qualcomm/Atheros) based on existing Linux driver availability. And in cases where a driver wasn't available, or didn't work perfectly off the shelf, Dell probably put coders to work customizing that driver to suit the configuration of the XPS.<p>In a way, this is a bit like buying a Microsoft Surface and then being thrilled at how Windows installs and runs on it. For the sake of people who read this article and try installing Ubuntu 18.04 on an arbitrary laptop, I think the author should mention that there was already a ton of bigco effort to make this configuration of HW/SW work smoothly.<p>In my experience, Ubuntu gets more polished and newbie-friendly with every release, but I do think some readers might try to follow in the author's footsteps with their own miscellaneous laptop, get discouraged, and then be soured on Linux again for a while. I don't want that to happen. I want to see Linux gobble up more of Windows 10's market share. If that means the population needs to homogenize a bit on the hardware front, so be it.
'Linux' tends to have a reputation as being complicated to use or it's just for developers, etc. But nothing could be further from the truth. If you install one of the more modern distributions like Ubuntu, the OS runs faster, easier to use and much more friendly for just getting stuff done.<p>I've now realised that I will never buy another Microsoft OS after using Windows 10. I had to download a separate program to switch off all the spyware and to disable crippling updates. This isn't even a problem with Ubuntu.
I had a similar experience a few months ago. I run Windows 10 Professional on my iMac using Boot Camp for Windows specific stuff — hard to believe, but such things do still exist in 2018. I was facing some slowness while working on something urgent, so I decided to go with the old standby — a reboot. To my dismay, I was greeed with a “Windows is updating — don’t power off” message which stuck around for more than an hour. The work I was doing was on the local drive and quite urgent. I ended up having to pull out my laptop and do the whole work from scratch while Windows was “updating”.<p>I am sure there is a setting which could have prevented the machine from updating my machine in the background, but that is not the point. Why can I not be allowed to update/reboot on my own schedule by default instead of being forced into it unless I opt out? Why is it opt out instead of opt in? The fact that it is an opt out tells me that Microsoft actually knows that no one will actually opt into this madness by choice. And why was I not at least warned that my machine is going into a self induced coma which would leave it unusable for more than an hour when I tried to reboot?<p>And let us not even forget about the adware that gets installed with every major upgrade. I bought the Windows license for the full price — surely I deserve a break from this nonsense?<p>Behaviour like this is the reason I prefer macOS for serious work — despite its problems. Linux, while good on server side, is just not polished enough to be my daily driver on the client. A few (~4-5) years ago, I used to run Linux on my main work a laptop - a Lenovo. But I ended up having to act the sysadmin way too frequently for my liking. Touchpad going dead randomly (won’t come back without reboots), battery life going from decent to horrible after certain updates, overheating at times for no obvious reason, not so great media playback, trouble with sound and Bluetooth etc were some of the common problems. I fixed many of them, but every update brought its own share of headaches until I decided it just wasn’t worth my time. And I am saying this as someone who makes a living working on Linux on the server side. I can’t imagine an average Joe going to the lengths I did to fix the boatload of issues that come bundled with Linux.<p>Eventually, I ended up buying a Mac for my daily driver. While I can’t say everything has been completely smooth, it has been relatively headache free. I still run Linux on EC2 for my Linux needs, but I don’t see myself going back to it on the client side in the near future. With macOS, I get the UNIX like interface with a decent GUI and hardware support.
I had one of those stupid expensive macs for years before changing jobs and getting an XPS 15. I love the machine with Ubuntu except for one critical flaw: the stupid thing goes into this thermal safety mode so damn easily. I'll be compiling code for five minutes and suddenly my browser that I'm developing in becomes a choppy unusuable mess. No matter how long I wait nothing recovers until I reboot.<p>Also gaming is nearly impossible because of the same issue. I suspect the xps15 is more powerful than its cooling can handle. I'm not sure how normal that is for laptops.<p>Also: when installing Ubuntu on my XPS I had to toggle some bios option about drives. Maybe that's the issue he had with Mint and didn't report fixing Ubuntu.
I can’t ditch windows, Mac OS, iOS, or Linux. I have a separate device for each as I need something that one of those OS’s offer that another one won’t. “You need the right tool for the job” and there is no “one” tool.