Ultimately, any discussion on this would boil down to cost vs convenience. As OP hasn’t explicitly stated anything on this regard, it seems unproductive to delve into this further. However, strictly speaking, I have to agree with you that the Linux-first vendors are (in almost all cases) more expensive. Thank you for pointing that out for OP.
In case you're as bored as I am 😅.Let’s start with stating some facts from OP: - OP takes the effort to state six wishes/requirements without mentioning price. - OP implies to at least have considered the Framework laptop, for which the 16 inch variant -the one actually capable of video editing etc- is not a cheap device either. - OP states: “I don’t want to worry about” when talking about battery life. If anything, that sounds like one that would prefer convenience over cost. Therefore, I assumed that OP wasn’t cost-limited by any means (they didn’t state it anyways). Anyhow, allow me to illustrate how much OP might have to “pay more” for “inferior hardware”: - Found this one on old.reddit.com/r/LaptopDeals, a site which you mentioned elsewhere under OP. Seems like a cool laptop, not gonna lie. It’s just a random one I picked. Let’s see what we can find on the other side: - Well look at that? Better CPU and better battery, just all around a great package (it even has a mechanical keyboard?!). Furthermore. better warranty terms and possible to extend to 5 years (compared to a measly 1 year for the other laptop). Yes, it’s a significantly more expensive laptop. But, (for me) it’s clearly the superior deal especially when the Linux support is considered. You’re absolutely free to disagree though 😉.
The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule
Wow, that’s a bold claim if anything. First time seeing a Pop!_OS-denier, I assume you also deny the existence of COSMIC? And these are just some of the work done done by System76 only.
the hardware is “fine” at best
Another bold claim; one which only holds true if merely Apple’s finest go beyond “fine”.
I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Hmm…, very interesting! I’m totally oblivious of the existence of such a thing. If that is your benchmark, then I can actually understand what you meant with your earlier claim. Please feel free to enlighten me on how this works 😊.
Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn’t bleeding edge.
So what happens is that changing the keyboard language comes together with the CPU upgrade from Intel® Core® i3-1315U to Intel® Core® i7-1360P. That’s what you pay for*. I agree with you that they might have done a better job at conveying what’s happening. For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t immediately notice this myself. Therefore I tried to contact them in hopes of resolving the issue. They responded very quickly (like within a couple of minutes) and explained what was going on. Props to them for that!
Hmm…, I think with the level of literacy (or just plain text skimping) we find on the internet, anything that helps in conveying the message is a clear win; especially if merely the use of just two characters enables one to achieve this.
Could you elaborate on what you dislike about it? I’m just genuinely curious*.
To clarify, they do jack shit to add major hardware support (etc).
Thanks! That’s the clarification that I needed.
This seems like a disingenuous response.
My apologies if it seemed that way, that wasn’t my intention.
Pop isn’t adding anything much to Linux
In absolute sense, to the kernel; sure.
it’s yet another Debian derivative by way of Ubuntu.
That’s where we clearly differ. It offers (arguably) the easiest installation for Nvidia drivers (which is especially useful for new users). Furthermore, it has other neat functionality like a recovery partition; which is otherwise absent on any other Linux distro (at least that I’m aware off). I agree that these things mostly benefit the new user rather than the established one. Nonetheless, even if we’re not the target audience, we shouldn’t be dismissive of the work that others put into their platform.
Cosmic is cool and all, but it’s mostly just eye candy for GNOME at the end of the day.
How can it be for GNOME if it’s its own Desktop Environment? Sure, it relies on GTK (like most other DEs). But it’s a Rust-based DE, which is (AFAIK) unique and already commendable by itself. Again, I don’t understand if you’re just trying to be dismissive of other people’s work or just being ignorant/misinformed.
While this particular case is new to me, I can’t say I’m surprised. FWIW, even Linux Torvalds himself needed to put effort in self-improving themselves in this department. Therefore, I don’t quite understand why you felt the need to bring this up. FWIW, I never said or implied that System76 is some holy organization that can’t do anything wrong. You made a vague statement with “The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule” and I only intended to point out some of their continued contributions to ‘Linux’. I could have named any other Linux-first vendor, but System76 seemed to be the most renowned and that’s why I went with that one.
Tuxedo still haven’t as far as I’m aware released ITE829x Linux drivers (in an upstreamable form) for example; I had to reverse engineer the damned chip.
That’s unfortunate. And I think that this short paragraph is the summary of your grievances with these Linux-first vendors. And if that’s the case, then it’s at least worth mentioning that I’m absolutely oblivious of the challenges that you might have faced in this regard.
This sentiment made me very curious into how much laptop vendors contribute to the Linux kernel in general^[1]^. Unfortunately, there was not a lot that I could find. Perhaps I’m just very bad at looking into that kinda thing. Therefore, if you’re aware of a (half-)decent way to somehow see how much effort is done by different laptop vendors in order to support hardware on Linux, then please feel free to notify me of that 😊.
Clevo hardware lacks a lot of the polish that you just quietly get from a major manufacturer.
I’d have to take your word on it as you’re clearly more experienced in this regard. But would you be so kind to give an example of two comparable laptops at comparable price-points; one from Clevo and another from a major manufacturer, in which the lack of polish is clearly visible? Like, if I as an average consumer look at the review on the Schenker XMG Focus 16 found on Notebookcheck.net and compare that to the reviews of the laptops it’s compared to in its verdict, then I don’t notice anything significant. Note that I’ve mostly just skimped the reviews*.
Sorry, the 3060ti was conflating my desktop; it’s literally a 2060 which is far worse in terms of termals and power.
No problem. Thank you for clarifying!
I have this laptop. I look at the Linux offerings from these manufacturers. I contribute to them.
Thank you for your continued contributions 😊!
I’m not saying that it’s all bad
This wasn’t clear in your first reply.
and you seem to be taking this as something of a personal attack.
My apologies if it came across like that, I certainly didn’t intend that*. To perhaps better illustrate how I read your first reply, allow me to paste it down below:
My inner thoughts while reading your first reply> Please don’t Alright, they’re not in favor of it, which is totally fine. Let’s see what they bring up. > tuxedo/system76/metabox/etc are all rebadged Clevo ODM designs. False. (I pointed this out in my earlier reply.) > The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule Vague statement at best. But if support isn’t specified as hardware support, then it’s another false statement. > and the hardware is “fine” at best. Another vague statement; but at least their alternative should be better, right? > I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. First time hearing this. Internet search didn’t give me any pointers. All of their statements so far haven’t been written with care, perhaps they’ve been smoking something. But I’ll give them the benefit of doubt and ask them how this works. > No compromises were made on this hardware. Alright, so they’ve somehow managed something incredible (if at all). I’m sure they’ll tell us what this is and how this is not Clevo. (In retrospect, what did you actually mean with this statement?) > Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn’t bleeding edge. Okay, I guess that’s to be expected. But I don’t recall a great experience looking into their catalogue the last time. checks; yup, still lackluster at best (pointed to this in my earlier reply). (Back to normal mode) So, to sum it up: I didn’t like your alternatives and stated why. As to your criticism towards Linux-first vendors; 1 false statement, 1 vague statement, 1 false/vague statement. Furthermore, there was a vague description of a device which initially seemed custom at best, but in retrospect seems to be a Clevo after all 😅.
It’s fine to like these companies. I want them to succeed, but Clevo as an ODM tend to produce products that lack the polish of a comparable (say) Dell, and don’t achieve the same volume of sales as a major manufacturer to achieve lower costs through increased volume (etc) - the cost savings have to come from somewhere and often that’s the firmware, material design, and design quality.
Agreed. I probably couldn’t have said it better. But, this doesn’t mean that Dell or Lenovo (or any other major manufacturer for that matter) themselves actually accomplish in making good products. Theoretically, they should be able to produce either better (and/)or cheaper devices. However, the fact of the matter is that this simply isn’t the case (or at least not substantially/significantly). The Thinkpads sold today are just an excuse compared to the Thinkpads that were sold in the past. Similarly, Dell’s XPS series shook the market in the past, but now they’ve stuck on a bad implementation of what Apple^[2]^ deemed unworthy (talking about touch instead real keys for function keys (etc)).
Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure pretty soon (probs with Meteor Lake already) Dell’s and Lenovo’s Linux offerings (so talking strictly about a subset of their offerings, refer to my earlier reply for the links) will at least be considerable CPU-wise. But until then, if anyone is serious about using their laptop as a proper workstation with somewhat decent battery life^[3]^, then it’s simply not worth to bother with Dell (like at all) or Lenovo (unless they’re willing to pay a hefty price for it).
So just to be absolutely clear. I don’t categorically dismiss Dell, Lenovo or any other major manufacturer for that matter. But for OP’s requirements; currently, they seem to be (at best) very expensive.
These products are fine, don’t pretend that they’re perfect though, you’re doing them a disservice.
Alright, so I suppose this is a reaction to the following statements of mine:
“Another bold claim; one which only holds true if merely Apple’s finest go beyond “fine”.”
“At which point, the “fine” hardware from the Linux-first vendor not only starts to be attractive but highly desirable by comparison.”
I’m sure earlier paragraphs should have been sufficient to explain my thoughts on this. But just in case; they’re not perfect. But -IMO- for OP’s requirements, they’re at the very least worth considering.
I, perhaps naively, think that contributions to the Linux kernel are most representative for hardware support. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Suffice to say, Apple actually had put thought into their design. Contrary to Dell’s excuse of an implementation.
Hmm…, so if I understand you correctly; using /s is lazy, so I should either not try to convey sarcasm in written text or make it more clear that it’s sarcasm without saying that it’s sarcasm? Perhaps a better question would be: how would you formulate that one sentence? Once again, I’m genuinely curious and I’m thankful that you took the effort to type that down.
I’m aware that that’s a concern. Thankfully, there are workarounds. And if all else fails, there’s always the possibility to make use of eGPUs; which I’ve actually explicitly mentioned in my earlier reply for this exact reason (without mentioning explicitly for which reason it was mentioned*).
OP might not even need it for professional use, but I assumed they did*.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences! I’m afraid it might not be very relevant as it’s a device that’s at least 6 years old by now 😅 (at least according to this source. Regardless, user experiences are valuable. And I’m glad to hear that the device has been working flawlessly for you so far 😊.
Love the down vote, also. Makes me feel like this is reddit all over again. Lmao. Down vote for sharing an opinion of what’s been the best Linux on laptop experience I’ve ever had.
Haters gonna hate, I guess. Don’t worry too much about it. The thread you’re in (so the one starting with my first reply under this post) also is the most controversial under this post. So I wouldn’t be surprised if some folks just down voted indiscriminately for… some reason…
I think I got you now. I won’t change my ways; /s is just way too convenient for me to give up on 😅. I guess I’m weak… Regardless, I think you’ve at least given me some food for thought. So thank you for that!
Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated in any way to any of the parties involved in this review. I just enjoy reading Solène’s writings in general and found myself to be especially in fond of this specific article. I share this in the hopes that others might somehow benefit from this as well!...
Personally, I’ve been enjoying uBlue over vanilla Fedora Atomic for what they offer in terms of system management.
To give you a better idea on what I mean; just a month ago an update to Podman caused breakage and people weren’t able to use their containers created with Distrobox/Toolbx^[1]^. Sure; a rollback is accomplished relatively easy and I’m sure some would even be able to fix it themselves. Regardless, every Fedora Atomic user that relied on Podman would have been interrupted to some capacity.
Which, of course, begs the following questions… Isn’t it very inefficient for everyone to fix this issue themselves? Wouldn’t it be easier if somehow Fedora forced some fix upon all of us so that just one entity is burdened instead of all of us? Heck, wouldn’t it be better if Fedora just withhold the update until it’s fixed? Is this perhaps some pipe dream that will never see the light of day? etc…
The interesting part, though, would be how I (a ‘uBlue-user’) didn’t even notice Podman was causing issues in the first place. “How?” you might ask, well… The uBlue devs noticed the issue, applied some magic so that I and many other uBlue users like me just went on with their day like they would otherwise; without being interrupted because Podman just had a bad update. (Did the supposed pipe dream actually already exist in some form or fashion?)
This is just the most recent example of this. But in the last year or so, out of the top of my head, there have been a few more times in which uBlue users didn’t even notice a thing while the others either had to rollback or fix their issues themselves. If you enjoy this interruption and/or are willing to deal with it for the sake of whatever, then please feel to continue to do so. However, I prefer to have a system I can rely on at all times and uBlue offers me just that while remaining very close to vanilla Fedora Atomic.
You won’t have fedoras signatures anymore.
It depends if you have the luxury to rely on them in the first place.
If setting up your workflow (or whatever) requires you to get to the nitty gritty of things and change those parts of the system that strictly speaking isn’t well supported by just rpm-ostree, then -for almost a year now- your best bet would have been to (instead) experiment with (what’s been referred in Fedora’s Wiki as) Ostree Native Containers.
Finally, let’s not forget that uBlue is even endorsed by Fedora (or at least by whoever maintains its documentation). Heck, even the inception of uBlue was due to an interaction between Jorge Castro (one of uBlue’s maintainers) and Colin Walters (one of the masterminds behind the whole rpm-ostree-ecosystem).
P.S. If I hadn’t made it clear, it’s totally fine to continue to rely on Fedora Atomic directly without any interventions from third parties for system management or whatsoever. I just wanted to elaborate why I, personally, prefer to use images provided by uBlue.
FWIW, I’ve put some effort into explaining how a dual boot of Windows 10 and Fedora Atomic (read Silverblue/Kinoite/Sericea etc) can be achieved. While it’s far from exhaustive, it should be fine as long as your specific installation of Fedora Atomic doesn’t require special attention (which happens sometimes with owners of an Nvidia GPU*). After Fedora Atomic is successfully installed, proceed with following the instructions found on the following parts of uBlue’s documentation: here, here and finally pick whichever uBlue image you’d like to install from this list; specific instructions are found directly underneath the text boxes for each individual image, but ensure you’re installing the one with the correct Fedora version (37/38/39/stable/latest etc (which are accessed via tabs)). If you can’t decide on which version you’d like to install, then just go for 39.
“ABRoot is utility which provides full immutability and atomicity to a Linux system, by transacting between two root filesystems. Updates are performed using OCI images, to ensure that the system is always in a consistent state. It also allows for local atomic changes thanks to the integrated ABRoot package manager, which generates local OCI images with the user’s changes, and then applies them on top of the system’s default image.”
Are there any technical differences between the two? Besides, of course, relying on tools with different names etc*. FWIW, it doesn’t seem as if ABRoot (v2) allows one to pin multiple deployments, while this can be done relatively easily through the sudo ostree admin pin [-u] <index> command on Fedora Atomic.
(Perhaps) unrelated background informationxD , I started writing a reply yesterday and it got unwieldy real quick. So, I got discouraged and not long after I fell asleep. In the morning, I was surprised to see that a lot of your questions still weren’t answered, so I mustered some motivation and here it is. Don’t expect a very thorough response, but you should find enough pointers to make this work.
Preface:
Last summer I tried dualbooting Windows 10 and Fedora Silverblue and succeeded. So I will be sharing my experiences based on that. I don’t know if doing this with Windows 11 will be different and/or more challenging (or not).
It’s also got an Nvidia GTX 4060 in it, which will probably not be optimal from what I hear (so any tips on that are much appreciated as well!).
Yup, the gist of it would be that Nvidia’s proprietary drivers are not found in the native repos of most distros. This also applies to Fedora. However, you should be able to acquire the proprietary drivers by following the instructions found on RPM Fusion. But, Nvidia’s proprietary drivers are known to not play nice and might require you to get into the nitty gritty later down the line to save your system. Don’t get me wrong; some people never have issues, but unfortunately this doesn’t apply to everybody. Therefore, it’s very good to approach this cautiously. If, instead, you’d prefer a managed solution; so one in which your input is left to a bare minimum but somehow Nvidia’s proprietary drivers are installed and (at times) fixed by some black magic shenanigans (or just good engineering) going on in the background, then look no further than uBlue’s Nvidia images. Delving further into what uBlue is and why IMO you should consume Fedora Silverblue through it would be out of scope for this comment.
How would I go about actually shrinking Windows 11 down to make space for Fedora? Is “partitioning” the right word to use here?
So, unfortunately I don’t quite remember what I did exactly. But I can’t imagine I would do anything beyond the following two scenarios:
I just did what I always do and used GParted to shrink the size of the Windows 10 installation.
I used Windows’ own tool to do the shrinking (assuming they even offer something to that effect).
After I shrink the partition, is it then just a matter of running the installer and using automatic partitioning with the unused space left over after shrinking Windows?
If memory serves me right, automatic partitioning by Fedora’s Anaconda installer was for some reason undesirable. I don’t remember the specifics, but it’s likely either one of the following:
It straight up took hold of the entire disk and thus wanted to remove Windows.
Issues related to the bootloader; either it just forgot about it or tried to coexist with Windows’ bootloader or tried to hijack Windows’ bootloader. Nonetheless, all of these might result into some issues later down the line. Therefore, ideally, it should have its own separate bootloader (or at least one it shares with other non-Fedora(-based) distros).
Therefore, I did something slightly different. If I recall correctly, one should adhere to the following instructions:
After you’ve shrunk the Windows partition, make a new partition (preferably using GParted) with the following specifics:
512MB (in size)
Set as file system "fat32"
Give the partition the “boot” and “esp” flags
Reboot into Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite’s installer and when you get to the screen found below:
First select the disk you’d like to perform the installation on and then select Custom (optional: you’re free to choose the “Encrypt my data” option as well). After you’ve done this, press “Done” in the upper-left corner.
A new screen should appear, in here I selected “Click here to create them automatically.”. This should apply the default partitioning on the empty disk space. However there are a couple of things to keep track off:
Ensure that nothing from your Windows partitions is touched.
This includes the EFI partition of your Windows; if Fedora wants to do anything with it, then ensure it remains untouched.
By default, at least in my case, a new EFI partition specifically for Fedora Silverblue wasn’t made. This is where the earlier created partition using GParted will play an important role;
Select the earlier created 512MB partition
Mount Point: change it from blank/empty to /boot/efi
File System: Set it to EFI System Partition
Ensure the checkbox with “Reformat” that’s found to the right of the selection box for “File System:” is enabled/blue/checked
I don’t recall what I did exactly with the selection box under “Device Type:”, but it likely was Standard Partition. I didn’t encrypt it.
(Optional) You should have noticed that this screen also enables one to create partitions. There’s a chance I created mine using this instead of GParted, but that would mean I would have departed from my ways. If the method in which the partition is created with GParted didn’t work and you don’t know why, then it’s at least worth trying to create the partition here instead.
After you’re done with the previous screen, select “Done” in the upper-left corner. This should prompt a popup screen that summarizes the changes. Ensure that this doesn’t do something strange to your Windows partitions and make sure that it looks otherwise as you’d expect. If you’re done, then select “Accept Changes”.
The rest of the installation should progress like how you’d expect from there.
(Post-install) Depending on how you’d like to have GRUB (read: default bootloader on Fedora) configured, you might have to do a thing or two to ensure you can access both Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite and Windows however suits you best.
I’d also love to know what kind of issues the docs are actually warning about as far as dual-booting. Will Windows wipe the bootloader on update or will Silverblue / Kinoite wipe Windows out somehow? If it’s Silverblue wiping Windows out, that may cause me to go with a different distro - but if Windows wipes Silverblue, it’ll be annoying but not a deal breaker
As long as the EFI partitions are separated, there’s nothing to worry about. And if anything, it’s Windows that might wipe out whatever Linux distro you’re dualbooting.
I plan to use Silverblue / Kinoite for development exclusively, so everything will be on GitHub.
Grab a USB with enough capacity (8 GB at the bare minimum), and use Ventoy to create a bootable USB drive out of it. Then, put the .iso files for both GParted and Fedora Silverblue (or uBlue) into the designated location (read: partition called “Ventoy”).
Regarding Ventoy, ensure to set it up specifically for your needs (GPT vs MBR, SecureBoot or not etc).
Thank you so much for your insights! Much appreciated!
Some packages haven’t been changed in 10 years, some are changed daily. It’s bleeding edge everything, and things don’t actually break that much. Lisp makes for (obviously IMO) beautiful, simple code, so most packages are a pleasure to fix, extend, or automate.
I want to have a better idea for much time is spend on ‘management’; fix, extend and/or automate etc.
I’m going to start this article off by saying that you don’t have to be born in the boomer generation to be a boomer. You can be a boomer by acting like one. Hate new stuff? boomer. Run a desktop from the naughties? Boomer.
New laptop
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Solene'% : NovaCustom NV41 laptop review (dataswamp.org)
Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated in any way to any of the parties involved in this review. I just enjoy reading Solène’s writings in general and found myself to be especially in fond of this specific article. I share this in the hopes that others might somehow benefit from this as well!...
How to make your own custom ublue image.
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Looking for input regarding finding an IDE (spoilers: involves Emacs and Vim)
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Linux Boomers (janethemotherfucker.wordpress.com)
I’m going to start this article off by saying that you don’t have to be born in the boomer generation to be a boomer. You can be a boomer by acting like one. Hate new stuff? boomer. Run a desktop from the naughties? Boomer.