1+ Year Running Arch Linux On a Lenovo Yoga 2 Chronicled

New submitter KeithCu writes with a lengthy explanation of the joys (and just a handful of glitches) he's had in running Arch Linux on his ultraportable, a Lenovo Yoga 2. Other than the hardware-specific issues, I've been amazed by how well Arch Linux works, given that it doesn't have release cycles, or a big team with a lot of money supporting and marketing it. I've heard only 30 developers maintain the core Arch packages, with most of them having a full-time job doing something else! At the same time, it shouldn't be a total surprise things work so well, because free software doesn't just fall off a turnip truck. Not many reviews feature pictures of a laptop charred from building LibreOffice.

Comments

Impressive... and improbable.

[snarfies]

I can't read the story - it is already Slashdotted.

But Arch is notorious for breakage. Lots of it.

I tried Arch myself on my own laptop for about a year. There were at least a dozen times where running what should have been a simple system update rendered things unusable. Sometimes it was just a few simple programs that ceased to function. Sometimes it was X itself failing to launch, leaving me at a command prompt. All of it took a fair amount of fiddling to fix, and eventually I got tired of it.

I switched over to Manjaro. The same laptop has been running that for at least two years now and hasn't had a single instance of breakage.

Re:Impressive... and improbable.

[boondaburrah]

While I've had almost the exact opposite experience (my Arch laptop has been running a few years now without issues) I kindof appreciate that it breaks for people so often. It's lead to the Arch wiki being the most complete wiki for solving linux problems I've seen. Hell, I usually go there to fix problems on any linux. It's saved my ass on ubuntu quite a few times!

Re:Impressive... and improbable.

[Endloser]

I don't have many problems with it. When I do I just fix it. Arch isn't really is distro for people who simply follow direction. Sometimes there are puzzles for us to solve. Usually though, "problems" that pop up just regular Linux system administration tasks other distros "fix" for you. I'm happy you found a distro you're happy with. That's one of the beauties of the Linux community. As of late there are distros for all skill and interest levels.

Re:Impressive... and improbable.

[Ivan the Terrible]

I've been using Arch now for over 5 years now and Linux (Unix) for decades, and I recall only one instance of Arch breakage after an update. I run (or ran) Arch on an ancient i686 dual PIII file server, a Gateway netbook, a Lenovo T420i laptop, and now a (wonderful!) ASUS UX305F ultrabook. Your experience does not match mine, and certainly doesn't match the experience of the Window 10 user who comments later.

Linux is not for everyone. Just like (La)TeX or Emacs are not for everyone. I've forgotten who said it, but Unix gives you many "words" and a "grammar" with which you can build sentences, and from these sentences, paragraphs. Windows and OS X give you many sentences that you can re-arrange to form paragraphs, but the sentences have been chosen for you beforehand. Carefully chosen to be useful, but nonetheless chosen for you.

It takes more effort to learn the vocabulary and the grammar, and the sentences you first come up with are near nonsense. But patience, a certain tolerance for error, grit, a desire to be your own master, and a willingness to experiment allow you to have a computer system (editor, publishing system) that does what you want it to do.

But, as I said, Linux is not for everyone.

Expensive brick

[digitalPhant0m]

Other than the hardware-specific issues

So basically: other than the fact that it can't connect to wifi, has no ethernet, 3d acceleration, and keeps my fans don't cool correctly which resulted in leg burns and a melted case, it's perfect.

 

Way too many problems

[PRMan]

Yeah, yeah, we know. Windows and Mac are terrible and Linux is so much more "stable".

Scanning for networks failed No networks found

the de-facto wireless GUI on Linux...was broken for my machine because it thought my wireless card was disabled

Meanwhile, my mouse is the most frustrating issue

Resume has been flakey...I never closed my screen because I didn’t trust it would come back. Sometimes, it would come back, but Gnome wouldn’t let me login!

For a while, the laptop speakers never worked after a reboot until I plugged something into the headphone jack, and then removed it

One time I was building LibreOffice while it was on a blanket and it overheated and charred the bottom. When doing CPU-intensive work, I now place this laptop on a metal plate

There are 4K videos on Youtube, but they are extremely jittery and suck all the CPU as the GPU is not being used

It took hours to render these 3200×1800 Arch wallpapers

[The mouse] use[d] to jump violently all over the screen while typing, but now it just hovers in small circles

In spite of my problems, I’m very glad I don’t need to mess with the Windows or Mac world.

Unfortunately, such advanced battery features are not yet enabled in Linux

OK, so let's see. Other than the network card, mouse, 2D graphics, sound, CPU, 3D graphics, battery and the fact that normal usage melted it, it works awesome. I think I'll stick with Windows 10 TP on my laptop, where I've only had minor network issues requiring a reboot to get it back sometimes.

Re:Way too many problems

[conoviator]

Maybe Arch isn't the right distro for that particular notebook. I've been using MintOS on my Yoga for several months. Works great!