Are you a Linux user or Windows user? Or maybe a macOS user?

[Grench]

I think that major computer makers are overlooking a substantial audience. A lot of us older Linux users are in our primary money-making years - and we like good hardware. The few companies that target any hardware at Linux users -might- certify or provide drivers for a lesser/entry level model of one or two products.

If Lenovo had proper Linux support, I would purchase a top of the line Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 4. Proper support in my vision would be drivers for the fingerprint reader, WWAN module, 4K screen on a model with 16GB RAM (max on the soldered-on platform apparenlty) and I would swap the NVME drive out to 2TB on day one. As they clearly decided that Linux users would never want the best hardware, they put in components into this that may never see proper Linux support. The only hope for it is that it is mechanically/electronically similar to the X1 Carbon Gen 7 - and a few people are experimenting with that one - and encountering issues - that may or may not be solvable without Lenovo's or, in the case of the WWAN and fingerprint reader, the upstream component supplier - apparently parts chosen without bothering to find out if they could or would be supported under Linux.

Rant aside, I'm interested in and can afford top of the line hardware, but have zero interest in having to use Windows or MacOS as my OS. Surely I can't be alone in that. In the slim margin world of hardware sales, adding a half percent to the total sales counts is a big deal. That the manufacturers give so little thought to ensuring that the components support this segment seems like they're overlooking a profit opportunity.

 

[codenomad]

I think that major computer makers are overlooking a substantial audience. A lot of us older Linux users are in our primary money-making years - and we like good hardware. The few companies that target any hardware at Linux users -might- certify or provide drivers for a lesser/entry level model of one or two products.

I couldn't agree more with this. I've been fairly annoyed by manufacturers these days, if they would support Linux I'm ready to throw down Apple-prices (if the hardware warrants it of course). </rant>

Thread topic:

For work I use Mac (mostly due to needing mac emulation), for everything else Arch on my personal/side-project laptop, Open Media Vault for my storage and VM server.

I've switched to the Dell XPS models just because they ship Ubuntu on those versions and have excellent support with 4.11+ kernels.

 

[Grench]

I've switched to the Dell XPS models just because they ship Ubuntu on those versions and have excellent support with 4.11+ kernels.

Does Dell have a high quality 2 in 1 with modern specs (NVME) with solid Linux support?
I like the trackpoint nub and the keyboard quality on the Lenovos, but I've about given up on their recent stuff.

 

[codenomad]

Does Dell have a high quality 2 in 1 with modern specs (NVME) with solid Linux support?

If by 2 in 1 you mean supporting SATA AHCI and PCIe, yes. Validated by dell support at: dell.com/community/XPS/Dell-XPS-13-9370-SSD-Upgrade/td-p/7222009

The NVME my Dell XPS 13 - 9370 came with is a: PC401 NVMe SK hynix 1TB

As for Linux support, I was able to install Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch/Antergos/Manjaro with everything working out-of-the-box. I'm not thrilled about the Killer wireless card, but so far it hasn't caused me any problems and seems to give me decent speed consistently. Sabayon/Gentoo had some issues, but I didn't have time to debug and I preferred arch anyways.

I normally run this box at home with an eGPU (Razer Core 2 with a Radeon RX 570) via a single TB3 cable. This is probably the most buggy part of my setup as hotplugging doesn't work well, but if I boot up plugged in to the eGPU, everything works fine (this is mostly due to the dual graphics and I haven't appropriately setup configs to handle swapping better--ymmv as Fedora and Ubuntu are starting to have better native TB3 support). I typically have a crap load of things plugged in as well (Bluray Burner, DAC, card reader, headset, extra NIC, Wacom, webcam) and everything runs as expected. I push this thing to the limits and it handles things very well...

Of course, now that I look for the latest version, I don't see one with Ubuntu pre-installed -_- The specs are similar though, and the webcam is actually in the right place (finally):

 

[Grench]

If by 2 in 1 you mean supporting SATA AHCI and PCIe, yes. Validated by dell support at: dell.com/community/XPS/Dell-XPS-13-9370-SSD-Upgrade/td-p/7222009

The NVME my Dell XPS 13 - 9370 came with is a: PC401 NVMe SK hynix 1TB

As for Linux support, I was able to install Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch/Antergos/Manjaro with everything working out-of-the-box. I'm not thrilled about the Killer wireless card, but so far it hasn't caused me any problems and seems to give me decent speed consistently. Sabayon/Gentoo had some issues, but I didn't have time to debug and I preferred arch anyways.

I normally run this box at home with an eGPU (Razer Core 2 with a Radeon RX 570) via a single TB3 cable. This is probably the most buggy part of my setup as hotplugging doesn't work well, but if I boot up plugged in to the eGPU, everything works fine (this is mostly due to the dual graphics and I haven't appropriately setup configs to handle swapping better--ymmv as Fedora and Ubuntu are starting to have better native TB3 support). I typically have a crap load of things plugged in as well (Bluray Burner, DAC, card reader, headset, extra NIC, Wacom, webcam) and everything runs as expected. I push this thing to the limits and it handles things very well...

Of course, now that I look for the latest version, I don't see one with Ubuntu pre-installed -_- The specs are similar though, and the webcam is actually in the right place (finally):

2 in 1 as in the lid flips over to tablet.

 

[codenomad]

Derp!

No, unfortunately, it does not convert to a tablet form.

 

[RZR]

On my notebook: Dual boot Linux Mint/W10
There's no support for my sounds card DAC in Linux, and Optimus/dual GPU support in Linux is almost zero. Also thermal management/performance of recent nvidia GPUs (10xx on) is usually better on Windows.

On my workplace: Dual boot Linux Mint/W7
W7 as a fallback for some software that is not supported on Linux.
Mint because privacy/security/usability and of course performance: GPU rendering on Linux rocks (WDDM here to blame I guess among other things) or even hybrid rendering (CPU + GPU).

So I guess I get best things from both sides no need to add macOS to the equation here...

 

[T.T.]

What VM software did you use? I was tempted to try this with VirtualBox, but didn't know if you could do it on that

I haven't logged in for a while, so hopefully this reply isn't too out of context.

It's certainly doable on Virtualbox, it's just an absolute pain. Right now I'm just using KVM with virt-manager as a convenient way to manage KVM. I wrote myself some basic instructions if you want them

 

[pmprog]

It's certainly doable on Virtualbox, it's just an absolute pain. Right now I'm just using KVM with virt-manager as a convenient way to manage KVM. I wrote myself some basic instructions if you want them

Yes, if you wouldn't mind. Sounds like a great way to balance two systems without excessive rebooting. Thanks

 

[directive0]

Im a nerd, so I use whatever I can get my hands on.

 

[T.T.]

Yes, if you wouldn't mind. Sounds like a great way to balance two systems without excessive rebooting. Thanks

So, these instructions assume that your system was installed as UEFI rather than MBR. It should work with an MBR system though. On my system, I make sure that windows has it's own drive for ease of use. Not sure if this will work if linux and windows share. When I setup up a vm using a real windows install, I just point it directly to the proper device, eg /dev/sdX.

It also assumes you already have kvm and virt-manager properly installed. (also, I'm running arch, some commands may end up being arch specific)

Spoiler

In order for KVM to boot a UEFI OS, it needs the Tianocore UEFI firmware. In arch this is just the ovmf package
KVM also needs to know where to find the OVMF firmware.

In:

/etc/libvirt/qemu.conf

add:

nvram = [
   "/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd:/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_VARS.fd"
]

When booting a real Windows partition in a VM, the UUID of the host and guest must match. Otherwise Windows will deactivate itself.
It's also a good idea to hide the fact windows is in a VM

First we'll list the Host UUID

# dmidecode -s system-uuid

Now that number needs to be assigned to the VM. This can either be done using the command line as below, or, you can edit the XML directly within Virt-Manager

make an XML file (unnecessary if editing the XML within virt-manager)

# virsh dumpxml name_of_vm > name_of_vm.xml

Edit the file to have the new UUID, there should be a string somewhere in the XML that has the system UUID.

This might be optional, but we're going to hide the fact that windows is running in a VM

There will be a section that looks like:

<cpu mode='host-model' check='partial'>
   <model fallback='allow'/>
  </cpu>

Modify it to be:

<cpu mode='host-model' check='partial'>
   <model fallback='allow'/>
   <feature policy='disable' name='hypervisor'/>
  </cpu>

Also at the end of <features> add:

<kvm>
   <hidden state='on'/>
  </kvm>

Undefine the the VM (--nvram is needed for UEFI VMs): (again, unnecessary if editing the XML within virt-manager)

# virsh undefine --nvram name-of-vm

Now define the VM using the new XML file:

# virsh define name_of_vm.xml

other things that will be useful will be to setup a samba share so you can quicky transfer files between the linux host and windows guest.

If anything doesn't make sense, let me know, I wrote this at 1 AM