> There are a few minor quirks, but generally it works well
> As ever, support for Broadcom wifi and Nvidia graphics is nonexistent.
This is exactly the big issue with adoption of any *nix system on laptop or desktop. No user wants to have to live with quirks. Users just want their system to work.
This has nothing to do with operating systems, and everything to do with hardware makers. If you design hardware for a particular OS, it will work very well with that OS and poorly with anything else.
So for instance: Every Chromebook out there is running a Linux kernel, and they all have exemplary hardware support -- power management is great, trackpads are phenomenal, there are no issues with sound or wifi or GPU. BUT if you try to install Windows on them, it's super-awkward and hacky if you can get it to work at all.
For historical reasons, most people who try to install BSD or Linux are doing so on hardware that was designed for Windows, with components that were selected on the basis of how well they work with Windows, and driver work that is done for Windows. This does not lead to great outcomes, any more than buying a Chromebook and using it as a Windows machine would.
So in a sense "hardware makers aren't making hardware designed for Linux (other than Chromebooks) or BSD" is a problem for adoption of Linux/BSD, but it's a problem that can only be fixed by hardware makers.
There's a social component as well. If a hypothetical user buys a device with a proprietary OS (eg MS, Apple, or stock Android), the blame for any quirks falls squarely on the manufacturer. The user then copes by blaming themselves for buying that manufacturer, not spending enough money, etc. The solution is to simply deal with the quirks until purchasing a replacement thing can be justified. This phenomenon should be readily apparent to anybody who's ever inherited perfectly good hardware from someone who was sick of their computer and just wanted to get a new one.
But installing something that the manufacturer didn't supply is a deliberate choice. Any quirks get blamed directly on the changed software, even if there are actually fewer of them. The change becomes the issue.
> But installing something that the manufacturer didn't supply is a deliberate choice. Any quirks get blamed directly on the changed software, even if there are actually fewer of them. The change becomes the issue.
This rings true for me very much this week. Even more fun when there are multiple changes, but rather than examine the situation and determine objectively which change caused a problem, whichever change is the biggest magnet for FUD gets blamed by default.
This is so true. If you plan to run Linux or BSD, you should better cherry-pick hardware---especially laptops.
E.g., Linus himself was using a MacBook Air 11 late 2012 for some time. It works fantastically well on Linux. Newer MacBooks are sometimes not so well supported. Only thing lacking is no recognition of ACPI events to flag each time the battery discharges by 1% or below a threshold. But very few laptops have this.
- This mid-2013 Mac Pro wakes up every few hours at night, even though I have disabled every "wake from sleep" setting that exists in OS X
- My mid-2013 MBP has, several times this week, turned on while closed, and continued as if it was opened (playing YouTube videos or whatever else it be doing), only shutting back off after about 120 seconds or so
- Every time I turn this Mac Pro on, it doesn't recognize the wired Apple keyboard that's plugged into the Apple Cinema Display, and says it's looking for a bluetooth keyboard, until I unplug and replug the keyboard in at least 3 or 4 times
- My MBP once emitted a (very) loud buzzing sound from its speakers, for absolutely no reason, that lasted about 3 or 4 seconds, startling everyone nearby, when no sound-based programs were running
- My wife's Surface Pro 3 continually needs to be restarted because touch-screen controls simply stop being able to open programs on the home/grid page.
- If our family ASUS $800 computer is left on and falls asleep, it won't wake up, and will need to be manually shut down and restarted
These are just off the top of my head. Point is, Microsoft/Apple reliability is a complete myth. I'm tired of it and I'm tired of throwing extra money away for the sake of "higher reliability" and "fewer quirks".
Your anecdotal experience runs so completely contrary to mine that I don't even know what to say.
My MacBook works. It just works. No tinkering, compiling, fidgeting, anything -- and this is precisely why I like it and will continue to use it. I don't want my hardware getting in the way.
And reliability is certainly not a myth. In my days I've supported all three platforms and by far it was MPB that gave me the least grief. This is doubly true with hardware. Linux is close behind Mac but I think most engineers brave enough to venture it would competent to deal with problems on their own.
When a MPB has a problem: take it to a Mac store and get a replacement. When a Lenovo had a problem? Ship it to Virginia on your dime and wait 6 weeks.
I seriously suggest you take your MPB to a mac store and speak to them about your problem.
What you in effect just did: "Your experience is anecdotal, so now I tell you that Reliability is not a myth based on my anecdotal experience."
The point he wanted to make is most likely not that all Macs suck all the time, but that Mac does not automatically mean reliable or more reliable than any other OS/system. So while it might not be worse than other systems (I don't want to make a judgement based on the few Macs I had to fix for friends without ever having used them myself), it certainly is no super-reliable saint either.
And my limited first-hand experience agrees with him.
Additional interesting anecdote: my brother and I bought identical macbook pros at the same time. I generally didn't have much of a problem with it. Him? Well, let's say it was barely more reliable than the windows laptop he had before. Powering down wrong, failing to identify displays, color gamut screwups, power issues, boot problems. Mostly transient, but very real, failures in both hardware and software.
> When a Lenovo had a problem? Ship it to Virginia on your dime and wait 6 weeks.
When I've had problems with US purchased Dell's, I had someone there within 48 hours with a replacement piece, despite being in 1) Austria and 2) Italy.
Lenovo support has been great to me as well. With my second-hand machine, a year out of warranty, they paid to have my laptop shipped to them for a keyboard and possible motherboard replacement for free. This is after I'd damaged the keyboard by intentionally testing, "How well DOES the water drainage system work?" by pouring water into the keyboard. I was frank with them about what happened, and it did not matter.
I had a run-in with Lenovo support last year. Three-year warranty, two and a half years old, fried motherboard caused by the plastic in the power socket coming apart. Not sure how, don't care - it's wear-and-tear. On initial calls they refused to honour the warranty. I went through the complaints procedure and eventually they relented. It took six weeks but they covered all costs and completely fixed it.
In the meanwhile I'd got a macbook so I could continue working. The mac was driving me crazy. The keyboard feel, the trackpad feel, the lack of nipple mouse, the every-changing UI that never does quite what I want it to.
When the Lenovo came back I tried it out, fell in love again, and moved back to it. At some point the SSD will die and I'll get another one. There's nothing close to a Thinkpad. To me, they feel like they built as tools in a way that other devices lack.
I'm tired of the cult of perfection surrounding frankly middling proprietary operating systems.
- Every mac I've ever used has had Launchpad UI bugs requiring me to try several times to launch things.
- OS X has woeful graphics drivers, to the point where Mesa is doing better.
- My Air got erratically unusably laggy until I finally gave up on it.
- My MBP will occasionally forget that it has any integrated input devices, requiring me to either find a USB keyboard or reboot.
- Microsoft still hasn't resolved their graphics driver stability situation; blue screens are far from a relic of the past in my experience.
These are anecdotes, yes. Sure, some (rare) people might have a perfect experience with OS X or Windows. But the point is, free operating systems don't have a monopoly on driver and spitshine issues.
Windows 10's UI is pretty half-baked, as well. I mean, the UI concepts aren't bad, but they're only applied to half of the OS, with everything just below the surface still using the old-fashioned dialogs that've been around since Windows 98.
On the other hand, my desktop that's been dirty-upgraded from Win 7 to Win 8 to Win 10, and is hand-assembled from components I didn't necessarily check too closely for compatibility has uptimes regularly measured in weeks, despite running multiple instances of Visual Studio, a full SQL Server instance, piles of long-lived Chrome tabs, and whatever crazy stuff Steam and my Steam Link are doing.
I'm not sure I'll ever buy another OEM PC. So much crapware comes pre-installed, and it's so difficult to get rid of it, that I usually wipe the disks and install Windows from an MSDN iso. Of course, there's still the drivers... And more importantly, the tens and hundreds of MB of shitware that comes bundled with a tiny device driver. No, I do not want the ASUS Smart Keyboard Whoop-dee-doo application launching at startup. I just want my keyboard to work like every other keyboard has worked for the last 30 years.
Did you disable just wake-from-sleep or standby mode using pmset utility? In my case only after I disabled standby completely both MacBook Air 2014 and MacBook Retina 2015 stopped waking up under the last 3 versions of OSX. I suspect the bug depends on the software one uses that is why only some users are affected.
Is your apple display an actual Cinema display or one of the newer Thunderbolt displays?
I've noticed some issues with the USB hub that is built into the Thunderbolt display whereby for some reason it doesn't enumerate correctly every 40 - 50 plug/unplug cycles while using my MBPr at work. It only happens when the Apple keyboard is plugged into the display, with alternate keyboards it doesn't happen.
So I personally feel like it is an issue with the Apple keyboard.
I once had a 1st gen Chromebook wake up in its bag near my bed and resume playing a YouTube video at 2am. I forget what the video was but it was rather creepy at first.
> No user wants to have to live with quirks. Users just want their system to work.
I agree. Which is why I'm so frustrated at the moment, as I've had issues with my 1 year old rMBP, my girlfriend had issues with her Windows laptop, and my Ubuntu install on my HP 11" runs into the weirdest bugs.
It's 2016, and nothing works. I don't understand it.
Don't tar all \*nix with the same brush. Broadcom wifi and Nvidia graphics work fine on FreeBSD. OpenBSD makes particular tradeoffs; if you like them use it, if you don't, don't.
Unfortunately FreeBSD doesn't even have working sleep support, and hardly even a nod to power saving, whereas OpenBSD supports this automatically on all the laptops I've tested it with.
Makes no sense that the more niche, security focussed OpenBSD has the much better laptop support, until you consider that OpenBSD devs actually dogfood it on their laptops.
Many FreeBSD devs seem to run Macbooks for development, using FreeBSD only in a VM or via SSH.
WiFi not working at all is a different matter, but not working with a specific wireless card is a quirk.
Mini PCI Express is a standard (as was Mini PCI before it). Swapping out a laptop wireless card you don't like isn't that hard. I've done it several times (to get dual band support, for better Linux drivers, etc).
Spending around $100 (including installation if you don't want to do it yourself) may be annoying, but it shouldn't be a deal breaker.
Some laptops check wifi minipci cards against a PCI ID device whitelist in the BIOS. For instance, all Thinkpads do this. It's seriously annoying and means that the OS must support a very specific set of devices or wifi won't work.
For some machines a hacked BIOS can be flashed to disable this check but that's not always available.
Apart from reverse-engineering yet more hardware and writing more drivers, there is not much the OpenBSD project can do about this.
Fixing the root cause would be best. Vendors who do such things must be convinced to stop doing them.
If vendors also released freely available documentation for the hardware (read: freely accessible manuals for driver developers, no NDA required to read) then end users of free software could live in a world where wireless not working would be the exception.
> As ever, support for Broadcom wifi and Nvidia graphics is nonexistent.
This is exactly the big issue with adoption of any *nix system on laptop or desktop. No user wants to have to live with quirks. Users just want their system to work.