Apple's Late-2016 MacBook Pro Is Still A Wreck With Linux

[Luke_Wolf]

Absolute myth created by Jobs and his buddies in the media and Hollywood. There was never a time when Macs had a corner on any form of software for more than a few months before Linux or Windows or both caught up and surpassed it in raw numbers.

Well so actually the real story is this:

In the early era of Personal Computing media companies used Amigas which ran high end Motorola 68000 chips, and a variety of coprocessors that specifically helped with audio, graphics, etc. Then the proprietary computer wars (because the Commodore CEO got kicked out and he decided to take over Atari and kill his former company) happened which Apple abstained from participating in which resulted in Commodore and a variety of other companies (the maker of Amigas) going bankrupt. This left Apple as the only company still building computers on top of the Motorola 68000 though a very cut down version of what the Amiga was using, with none of the additional side stuff.

This left Apple to compete against Wintel (there were Unix workstation computers but they were vastly more expensive), and x86 had a severe floating point performance deficit vs Motorola 68000 which then became PPC, so the media companies went with Apple because they needed floating point performance. Eventually x86 computers wiped the floor with PPC but that's the real history and reason behind the "Apple is better for media" myth, and hasn't been true for a very very long time.

[Veerappan]

hey Michael, do a similar post for the yoga 920. Nobody buys a damn macbook to run linux, the yoga 910/920 are strong contenders alongside dell's xps and there's no information on them

No one buys them specifically to run Linux, but while I was in grad school I ended up with a Macbook because for various classes and my thesis work I ended up needing to triple-boot MacOS, Windows, and Linux. The 2009-era 13" Macbook Pro (Core 2 Duo, GeForce 9400M) worked fairly well at that. But there's no way I'm replacing it with another Macbook. I'll just be hoping that I can find the right spec of Raven Ridge laptop.

For any manufacturers listening:
13-14" 1080p
Ryzen R7 2700U
SSD Only, 256-512GB preferred
Dual-Channel RAM, capable of 16GB+, don't mind if it ships with 8GB and I can upgrade it later
4+ hours real-world battery life minimum
Decent touchpad
HDMI output
SD slot, DVD, 3.5mm audio are all nice perks
More than just a single USB-C port on the side... I don't care if the thing is only 3mm thick, just make it functional and practical without a pile of adapters.

[bridgman]

My recollection was that Macbooks used to be "the laptop to have" for Linux developers, with a surprising number of Apple laptops appearing at X conferences.

It would be interesting to have a discussion with Apple about at least informally supporting Linux on Boot Camp.

[andyprough]

Well so actually the real story is this:

In the early era of Personal Computing media companies used Amigas which ran high end Motorola 68000 chips, and a variety of coprocessors that specifically helped with audio, graphics, etc. Then the proprietary computer wars (because the Commodore CEO got kicked out and he decided to take over Atari and kill his former company) happened which Apple abstained from participating in which resulted in Commodore and a variety of other companies (the maker of Amigas) going bankrupt. This left Apple as the only company still building computers on top of the Motorola 68000 though a very cut down version of what the Amiga was using, with none of the additional side stuff.

This left Apple to compete against Wintel (there were Unix workstation computers but they were vastly more expensive), and x86 had a severe floating point performance deficit vs Motorola 68000 which then became PPC, so the media companies went with Apple because they needed floating point performance. Eventually x86 computers wiped the floor with PPC but that's the real history and reason behind the "Apple is better for media" myth, and hasn't been true for a very very long time.

Not to mention the fact that the "floating point advantage" was mostly just a tremendous bit of Jobs-ian marketing mythology.

[calc]

Yeah , Macbook is the worst option if you want to use Linux on it. So he is right on that aspect.

Lenovo laptop i was talking about was a brick actually. Lenovo Thinkpad T430 , great solid case but zero tear down ease.

ThinkPads may be the easiest laptops to repair.

They have a detailed manual for every system they make that shows how to do every repair/replacement, including every screw to remove and the detailed specs of them. Apple's on the other hand have everything soldered to the mainboard, so in a way they might be simpler... if you don't mind replacing the whole board if the ssd or memory goes bad, lol.

https://thinkpads.com/support/hmm/hmm_pdf/t430_t430i_hmm_en_0b48304_03.pdf

[garegin]

Can anyone conform this for me. Lenovo doesn’t do out of warranty repairs for their systems. Is this a joke or something? I’m assuming they don’t do this for business line (Thinkpad, ThinkCentre)

[Luke_Wolf]

Not to mention the fact that the "floating point advantage" was mostly just a tremendous bit of Jobs-ian marketing mythology.

kinda, basically the window of truth here is 1994-1997 at which point you had the AMD K6 with 3DNow!, and 3D accelerator cards end it as an advantage.

Of course there was this whole problem with Macs during the pre OS X era:

[Raven3x7]

Can we have laptops that use 19:10 screens back pls. Or maybe some manufacturers put out some Surface Book clones with the same aspect ratio for the screen?

[M@GOid]

My recollection was that Macbooks used to be "the laptop to have" for Linux developers, with a surprising number of Apple laptops appearing at X conferences.

It would be interesting to have a discussion with Apple about at least informally supporting Linux on Boot Camp.

Well. any favoritism a Macbook enjoyed might have been lost after that wonderful new model without physical F-keys and USB Type-C only ports.

Lenovo tried remove the F-Keys one year on the T-series, only to have them back on the next year. 10 bucks says they received death treats for that.

[M@GOid]

Can we have laptops that use 19:10 screens back pls. Or maybe some manufacturers put out some Surface Book clones with the same aspect ratio for the screen?

No. :-)

Stop using full screen windows on a high res 16:9 screen. We are on the 21 century now, you can have more than one window opened at the same time, with much more vertical screen lines than any ancient 4:3 or 16:10 screen you used in the past. Unless of course, you are stuck with a crappy 1366x768 screen, like me and all the other poor that cannot afford a better spec machine.