Phoronix Announces '2017 Linux Laptop Survey' (google.com)

Phoronix is hosting a 2017 Linux Laptop Survey. From their site: While Linux laptop compatibility is much better than where it was years ago, it's still not too uncommon to run into display/hybrid issues, shorter battery life under Linux than Windows or macOS, touchpad problems, and other occasional compatibility/performance shortcomings. So we've established this Linux Laptop Survey in conjunction with Linux stakeholders to hopefully gather more feedback that will be useful to many different parties...
The survey will be online until July 6th, after which the results will be publicly available, and will determine the most popular brands, distros, screen sizes, and GPUs, as well as common pain points and popular price points. And one particularly interestng question asks respondents what they'd like to see in a "dream Linux laptop."

Comments

what they'd like to see in a "dream Linux laptop."

[Hognoxious]

The complete absence of anything by Lennart Poettering.

no laptop

[tomxor]

We all like to bitch about crappy hardware and software, but If you kept adding all the things that anyone ever hated about linux or hardware to your "no" list you will end up with a transistor... even some people will hate a particular type of transistor. so you will end up with nothing.

Point being, if you knew all the details of what went into making your computer you would find a lot of it pretty fucking awful... Once you take the red pill you have to be more accepting of the prevalence of poor design and buggy hardware and software or get out of computing. Just focus on the good stuff, the bad stuff is inevitable for so many reasons. On a semi-related note, another way of looking at things is like Minix3: failure is inevitable, so make it fail right.

Re:no laptop

[iggymanz]

Minix is extremely useful for education though.

To anyone interested, minix3 runs on two architectures: i586 or later processors, or beagle arm7v boards. It uses NETBSD's packages

Re: what they'd like to see in a "dream Linux lapt

[buchanmilne]

These days, audio on linux just works (including things like auto-switching an audio stream to a bluetooth headset whrn connected).

I haven't had to fix buggy init scripts in years (only to have them overwritten on upgrade), and unit files provide all customisation options I need (e.g. increasing file limits).

If you have real problems, post links to the bug reports so there can be more eyeballs looking at the problem.

With the old keyboards!

[Kludge]

Would someone please tell these laptop companies that the Apple-type keyboards are SHIT!?!! Please bring back the old Thinkpad keyboards.

Too bad I can't take the survey

[Kludge]

None of the radio buttons in the survey does anything when I click on it.
This is probably because I am running a script blocker. Why can they just not use the regular old html radio buttons that just work? Why does everything have to be overloaded with javascript bullshit today?

Re:what they'd like to see in a "dream Linux lapto

[KGIII]

Fine... I'll do it.

I have been using a distro with systemd for years, now. It hasn't failed me - ever. I learned a few new commands, and have grown to accept it. I'm not willing to say I like it - but it is easier for me to deal with.

To be clear, I have a small network and nothing of great importance on it. I am also meticulous about backups. It has never stopped me from booting, it has never prevented me from finding problems, it hasn't even gotten in the way.

Are there improvements that would help? Probably. It should probably spit out more accurate information when shit fails to start. That'd help.

Meh... I really don't mind it. At the same time, I understand why other people aren't that fond of it - and it can be a bitch to work with. I have read the stories.