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2016-01-21
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agile_geek10:01:01

Ay up! 'ow are thee this bright 'n' crisp winter morn?

thomas10:01:25

almost having fun...

thomas11:01:25

yes…. my boss gave me a Macbook pro yesterday….. and having never used a mac before it is quite a challenge.

thomas11:01:34

but also a lovely new toy simple_smile

thomas11:01:38

so that is good.

agile_geek11:01:19

@thomas I like my MBP but I really want a high spec ultrabook that I can run linux on without having to fight driver issues. I've asked 100 people for recommendations and got 110 recommendations so really confused.

thomas11:01:29

I think I preferLinux as well… but that might change once I get a bit more used to Mac OS.

thomas11:01:38

time will tell...

agile_geek11:01:03

The nice thing about MBP is it pretty much always works!

mamapitufo11:01:22

I was tempted to go back to Linux after 10 or so years using mac laptops... a friend that spends a considerable time tweaking his machine was showing me how you can now close the lid and open it again and everything keeps working... and then a kernel panic simple_smile

minimal11:01:26

Yeah I moved from linux a few years ago because I was sick of endlessly messing with graphics drivers and xconfig.

mamapitufo11:01:54

so, even though his dell xps looked really nice, I don't want to deal with that particular kind of pain again

minimal11:01:59

Still miss xmonad and the speed of window management

thomas11:01:06

never had too much trouble with thinkpads...

thomas11:01:21

the only thing mine doesn’t do is go to sleep when closing the lid.

thomas11:01:27

have to do that manually.

glenjamin11:01:38

xmonad is available on OS X afaik

minimal11:01:11

i use amethyst, It’s does the job but is way way slower than xmonad

mamapitufo11:01:11

hehe, that was another problem... 9 out of 10 times the laptop would go to sleep, but that one time, you were walking and all of a sudden you feel that your backpack is burning... because the damn thing didn't go to sleep

minimal11:01:07

Just not possible to have a fast xmonad clone when it has to use the accessibility api

thomas11:01:24

@mamapitufo: yes… that sometimes does happen 😞

mamapitufo11:01:47

For a while I ran linux on vmware and used the mac host to deal with power management and sound cards and choosing a wifi network simple_smile but I ended up abandoning that too because if I plugged in an external monitor that had a different resolution my terminals would like like crap

xlevus11:01:43

I bought the new Dell XPS15. It mostly works under Linux

agile_geek11:01:02

Can't fit 15" laptop on train tables so has to be smaller. I'm considering the XPS 13 with 16GB RAM but the developer edition is not out yet and I'd rather Dell knocked the bugs out of the drivers instead of me.

xlevus11:01:23

@agile_geek: most of it will work fine with the 4.4 kernel. Only bugs I've got at the moment are: USB-C ethernet jack only works when it's plugged in from boot. i2c-HID stuff doesn't work well, but one line in modprobe.conf fixes that

xlevus11:01:27

with laptop-mode, 20% brightness, and the dedicated GPU turned off, it even draws <10W

agile_geek11:01:18

@xlevus: that doesn't sound too painful. I've seen ppl posting that they had problems with the WiFi / Bluetooth and had to swap the Broadcom card for an Intel?

xlevus11:01:35

Oh, yeah. I paid extra for the intel card.

agile_geek11:01:11

Which model did you get? Not sure how much cross over there is in components between 15 and 13

xlevus11:01:30

(I didn't actually buy the XPS 15, I got the Precision 5510 model, which is the same thing as the XPS, but w/ more cpu choices)

xlevus11:01:37

I suspect the similarities between the XPS 13, 15, and Precision variants are minimal. It's just about picking the right parts in the configurator

xlevus11:01:33

ah, yeah, the XPS-13 doesn't have an intel card option :(

agile_geek12:01:12

was looking at the Precision M2800 but it's too big. I have a simple shopping list but it seems almost impossible to find a machine that fits spec that's 'tried and tested' with Linux (preferably Ubuntu). 13" (max) i7 16GB RAM 512GB SSD (although could live with 256GB at a pinch).

thomas12:01:30

@agile_geek: that kind of box sounds very attractive I have to say.

agile_geek12:01:10

I love the look of this but can't get it till May (may be late May after shipping from US) https://puri.sm/librem-13/

benedek13:01:33

Just to further confuse @agile_geek I run linux on my old macbook air (2011 model) no idea how feasible is this with the current macs

agile_geek13:01:08

I've been told it's do-able. I could try it on my 2012 model but I need to upgrade as it's creaking at seams!

agile_geek13:01:34

@benedek: do you dual boot it so you can still get firmware upgrades via OS X?

benedek14:01:13

yup, dualboot