At the risk of jinxing myself I just wanted to share how happy I am with my latest installation.
For over a year my Dell XPS has run Ubuntu. It’s been, by far, the worst experience I’ve ever had with any computer and my very first computer had only 256 MB of RAM! Among the long list of issues I’ve had we’re freezing, unresponsive keyboard and touchpad, glitchy video, multicolor flashing screens, piss poor battery life, piss poor Wi-Fi stability, failure to properly suspend or hibernate, and battery levels suddenly going from 40% to 5%. I figured either Dell put some kind of poison pill into there laptop so you’d spring for one of their Linux preinstalled laptops or I just got a lemon (I did have to get the mobo replaced within a month of buying it).
I’ve been in the process of getting all of my personal files off of it and getting ready to reinstall Windows and sell it, but I figured it was worth one last shot with a new installation. My desktop has been running Bazzite and I’ve been really happy with it so I thought I’d try another spin-off (Bluefin, because my laptop isn’t well suited for gaming). Installation took a few tries but it’s been about 72 hours and I haven’t noticed any major issues! Battery life and Wi-Fi still seem a bit sad but I suppose that’s the hardware.
So anyway, I just wanted to say that one Linux OS can be wildly different from another in user experience. If you have the patience, go ahead and try out something new if you’re just not feeling the OS that you’re on. It could make a world of difference!
On my xps 13 9370 I run endeavourOS without a hitch.
I don’t wanna be an ubuntu hater, but apart from lubuntu for quick recoveries. I never had good luck making hardware work right with ubuntu.
Debian, arch and fedora always worked way better out of the box on bare metal.
I never had good luck making hardware work right with ubuntu Debian, […] always worked way better out of the box on bare metal
Oh the irony!
I’ve been running Mint on my Dell XPS 9370 (methinks) for years and it’s always worked just fine. Only the fingerprint scanner just won’t work, not even with
fprintd; it can set up a finger but never to use that same finger afterwards.Haha, Indeed.
I do realize I only used debian for server type stuff where I didnt need a GUI so the stakes where a lot lower than for the others.
Ah I guess that makes more sense!
Now if it was Debian with the Gnome DE vs Ubuntu, that would’ve been ironic!
Despite my issues with Music production, I’m still glad I switched to Linux. I don’t have to worry about my PC shutting off randomly to do updates, I can install whatever software I want, no one spies on me, I’m loving it for all those reasons.
I am giving up on making music in Linux, but aside from that, everything else will be done on my main machine. I’m making an offline only Windows box specifically for music production and nothing else. No internet access. It will only access my local network for file transfer.
In short, totally agree, but I paid money for Windows only VSTs years ago before i switched and they sound too good man. Also Reaper keeps crashing with native linux VSTs so really not here for that.
If you can do everything on Linux, that’s great. Its just less stable and polished for creative work IMO.
For battery life, I’d recommend you install CoreCtrl so you can adjust your power settings. That, combined with a few other things (I think the Arch Wiki covers most of them) allows me to get quite a lot out of my Thinkpad in Debian.
So awesome to read a happy story!
The biggest thing about Linux, and the main hurdle for most users, is trial and error with different OSes.
It’s as personal as clothing taste; from size to material and color. What will fit on your body, what materials you can tolerate and what you like style wise are akin to what kernel you pick, your drivers and your desktop environment.
For some, a classic T-shirt and jeans work great out-of-box and some may need hypoallergenic materials and a different cut. And that’s all okay! It’s also the beauty of Unix/FOSS.
I ran Ubuntu 2204 on my thinkpad t14 for around 4 years, and it was just perfect. Everything worked perfectly the whole time.
Ive just switched to Fedora Silverblue and so far a similar experience.
However ive also run a hp cheap laptop with ubuntu server 2204 and it kept causing all sorts of weird problems, mostly poor performance because of shit cpu i guess. Moved that setup over to a thinkpad and just smooth sailing.
Forgot my point, guess its “i like thinkpads”?
But I agree, there can be all sorts of cryptic shit. This also applies to windows and i guess any os that supports such an INSANE RANGE of hardware…
If it’s any consolation, my Dell XPS 13 with Windows 11 and a healthy battery gets about 40 minutes’ battery life and throttles due to heat when plugged in. It’s quite useless. Dell cares more about them looking slick than being actually useful. I also have an older XPS 13 with Tumbleweed and it runs cooler and lasts a bit longer, though battery life is still nothing special.
Mine (XPS 15) might surpass an hour but I rarely work on it constantly while unplugged. I mostly say the battery is piss poor because even suspended the battery will die in a few hours. It probably didn’t suspend to RAM so it was effectively running with a blank screen. Hibernate also resulted in a hard reset half the time.
