Tried installing Linux on MBP last month. Ran away screaming after 30+ hours of dealing with drivers issues. I do this every couple of years, hoping that finally THIS time I can get off Windows. Next attempt will be circa about 2021 probably.
Try this is an exercise instead pick a random dell. Attempt to install OSX on it. Post about how huge a hassle this was and how the end result was a non functioning brick and OSX still isn't ready.
If you google computer model linux. If the result is 17 pages of results about how it didn't work you may want to try a different model.
Generally how well your machine is supported is a function of how hostile your oem is towards openness, how different from existing hardware your machine is, how common it is, and how much time people have had to add support.
Current macs aren't well supported. Supporting all hardware under the sun is a Sisyphean task and ultimately an unimportant one. For Linux to be useful it doesn't have to support all possible machines just a good range of hardware.
I've installed Ubuntu 18.10 on an XPS 13, which everyone tells me is well supported by Linux, Dell even sell it with Ubuntu. It won't come out of sleep. Googling suggests other have this problem.
XPS is a range of models and 13 is a size it doens't uniquely identify the model. Does it have the problem under the lts version that dell presumably ships?
I don't know, I just tried installing the latest Ubuntu. I could go and track the version Dell ships for my laptop, and make sure I never upgrade it, but surely that proves the point that Linux is a pain to run?
Well there's your problem. The companies that make the custom hardware that Apple uses in their laptops refuse to release driver support for Linux for basically the same reasons as the writer of this Tweet. Whether the fault for this is on Apple or the manufacturers is up for debate, but driver compatibility with Apple's laptops and anything but macOS has always been a crapshoot and only became decent for Windows in the last few years.
Note: This is coming from an Apple fan who has been wanting to try out dual booting a Linux distro or one of the BSDs but has watched support tickets get answered with "testing MBP drivers on Linux isn't worth our time" from multiple OEMs.
Installing linux on a Mac is your problem. Macs are notoriously a huge pain when it comes to linux compatibility. Tbh even windows isn't that great on a Mac...I'd just stick to OSX on a mac.
When it came time to replace my old macbook air, I got a dell xps 13 and linux works great on that. All of the hardware works out of the box without having to do anything with drivers.
Macs have good hardware. Or you might also want to dual boot.
Sad to say, but some Macbook models work great, and others are fucking terrible. I have two models - my older model where the only thing that has ever consistently worked is bluetooth, and a slightly newer one where nothing has ever broken.
Running Linux on new hardware is usually a bad idea, due to the nature of the process you have to expect at least a year before divers for new hardware have settled into distributions.
Then things should be pretty sweet for quite a while.
Unless your hardware is really poplar, things will bitrot away eventually, but expect a 5-10 year sweet spot where everything should just work out of the box.
THIS is the problem. Windows drivers start working on day 1 and continue working. The breaks are when we went to 32-bit drivers in NT and when we disabled real-time hardware interrupts in Vista.
Linux needs a driver compatibility story this strong to even start.
On the flipside, while Windows has a greater quantity of drivers available for devices on day 1 of release, Linux tends to have a greater quantity of drivers available for devices at time of install. With Linux, there's no separate step of having to wait for Windows Update to pull the driver, since all the drivers are included alongside the kernel (the exceptions being printer drivers - which aren't developed alongside the kernel - and firmware for wireless NICs if you're going with a strictly-FOSS-only distro).
Meanwhile, I "fondly" remember having to have a USB stick on hand for Windows 7 installs because the default install didn't include wired (let alone wireless) NIC drivers for 90% of the laptops and desktops on which I installed it. Thankfully Windows 10 is better about this (at least on the wired front; wireless drivers are still hit or miss), but still.
> Meanwhile, I "fondly" remember having to have a USB stick on hand for Windows 7 installs because the default install didn't include wired (let alone wireless) NIC drivers for 90% of the laptops and desktops on which I installed it.
I worked in an IT support shop at the time windows 7 was released, and I imaged and installed hundreds of copies of windows 7 over the time I worked there. While you're right about wireless drivers being a crapshoot, I can not remember a single instance of missing wired NIC drivers on install. I'm not doubting that some were missing (there is lots of hardware, lots of manufacturers out there), but it was definitely not as huge a problem. The biggest issue was usually SD card readers and trackpads which required downloading from the manufacturer.
I've done a few linux desktop installs (same job) and the situation was definitely more painful. Issues with sleep/wake, webcams, network drivers (usually wireless), multiple displays were basically guaranteed, and the help process was usually "You're using the wrong hardware", which isn't really helpful.
"I can not remember a single instance of missing wired NIC drivers on install"
Were you pre-installing NIC drivers with your images? That'd be a good reason for the high success rate.
It might also have to do with specific manufacturers/vendors. Most of my installations were on Dells; it's possible HP or Lenovo stuck with chipsets that Windows properly supported out-of-the-box. Linux worked fine in all cases.
