The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Linux Workstations

Alternate title: Developers Have A Laptop Problem
Hi folks! A topic I hinted at in my "Plain Text" video after saying, "But even if you're storing large files, storage is cheap if you're smart."

We live in an incredible age, computers have never been so fast, nor storage so cheap, but it doesn't feel like it, right?
It's not you, computing has been getting worse. And the problem is LAPTOPS.
---

🖊️ Corrections are in the pinned ERRATA comment.

🙏🏻 CREDITS & PROMO
My name is Tris Oaten and I produce fast, technical videos.

👏🏻 Special thanks to my patreon sponsors:
- JC Andrever-Wright
- Miah Beach
- Taylor Dolezal
- Aaron Verones
- David Senk
And to all my patrons!

[NoBoilerplate]

ERRATA
- 00:34 I should have said that the mini pc in the second slide here is just as power efficient as the apple silicon machine it's beating. Yes apple silicone is very power efficient, but it's not magic. I agree ARM processors are great!
- 3:00 You wanna know something cool about CPU heat? It's equivalent to a regular electric heater: 100W of electricity in, 100W of heat out. The action of the CPU is almost incidental ;-)
- 11:50 "envinroment" instead of "environment" - woops!
- 4:44 I should have said "11x as expensive" LANGUAGE IS FUN
- 11:29 As many have pointed out, this is a photo of a MBP, not an Air. I feel so stupid, I didn't look closely (these damn things all look the same lol), this was my old work machine, which I dual-booted asahi linux on as a test before getting my own personal Air.

[hawkbirdtree]

This year, Apple and Microsoft has done everything in their power to make me use Linux. Thanks guys

[redlive]

In countries where you seldom have electricity, a good laptop with a powerful battery is life-changing. Desktops are just terrible in that kind of situation. Since I only have 1 hour of electricity every 5 hours, my desktop PC started collecting dust as I started relying on a laptop. This might be solved by installing solar panels, but that's quite expensive.

[MadaraUchihaSecondRikudo]

The issue is that if you're working in an environment that requires some "security" certificate like SOC2 or FedRAMP, one of the requirements is to have the organization manage all of the computers, which means installing corporate spyware on all corporate machines. Nobody is making that for Linux so there's a rising anti-Linux movement in corporate and it sucks.

[jangras]

Great video. I am transitioning from windows to linux. I tried multiple distros and stayed in dual boot for the last couple of years. What held me back was the videogames and the music editing software. I clicked on this video to see the problem we have with laptops. And not only I learned a lot about the issues they have, but I also discovered some solutions to them, to then learning how to fully transition to linux and its advantages on the way.

[erejnion]

Laptops are preferred mostly by students, as they often live in small dorms with no space for a proper desktop, and are changing their living arrangements constantly (e.g. moving between their parents' home and the dorm, changing the dorm, etc). That's when the whole "gaming laptop" and "mobile workstation" stuff starts to become a reasonable choice.

[rotteegher]

9:19
"My whole production pipeline could run from a solar panel on a raspberry pi"
- No Boilerplate.

I don't think most people realize just how powerful this statement is.

[THENATHE.]

Package managers will NEVER matter to the layperson because there isn't a good built-in GUI. Just because I have been using apt and winget for as long as I can remember doesnt mean my mom wants to.

[MasterGeekMX]

Met in college a guy who was getting a masters in Sciences and Technologies of Information. The guy has used laptops all his life, and struggled with some concepts of a desktop. One example was that he asked me for help as he was trying to do something in one of the Workstations at uni's lab, but it didn't respond to keystrokes. I told him to look that the keyboard he was using was plugged on the workstation on the side. He didn't notice at all because all of those years in laptops hardwired his brain to thinking the keyboard controls the screen next to it.

[immathiasyde]

My dad just bought a new Windows 11S laptop for his business, needless to say... it's was the most infuriating laptop setups ever. Requires WiFi, requires Microsoft account, having to say no to location, diagnostics, hand-writing, internet history info etc., having to install Chrome, Windows refused, figured out the laptop was in S-mode, had to change that, retry installing Chrome, change the default browser to Chrome, being confronted by Settings to try Edge before switching, having to remember what file types I need to change.

[SeafoodFriedRice]

Using a Linux workstation is like using a bidet. You don't know what you've been missing until you've tried it. Especially when you go on vacation without one (having to use Windows again). Then you get that immense liberating feeling when you get back from vacation and take a dump at home and the bidet is there (using your Linux workstation again).

[leandropiccionenter]

I love your approach to the problem and this video easily delivers a different perspective on a serious problem, with a valuable solution. But I have to say that functions like getting copy paste from my phone to my laptop without any special app that doesn’t work half of the time, it’s very nice. An easy solution to also consider for those who needs a laptop and want to save their back, is to get a workstation setups where you can connect your laptop but not using any of it for the actual working.

[balderdash]

My last job gave us a cash stipend instead of providing work laptops, and it was great. I started out with my old linux laptop, but once I started running out of memory I just brought an old desktop to work and got a lightweight chromebook for meetings (also we worked in education so most of our users were on chromebooks anyway, it's nice to use the same kind of hardware). Even counting the original price of the desktop, my total cost was a little less than the entry-level MBP my coworker was using, but with quadruple the memory and storage.

[Steve_Streza]

20 years ago Apple told us all to buy music on their music store. 8 years ago Apple told us instead to rent all of our music from their music subscription. The music store is in disrepair and full of obnoxious ads full of their rental service. You can't just "buy in" to a corporate ideology once, you have to buy into it forever or watch the thing you bought into fall into decay.

[blueboy]

Using Linux was the best decision I ever made

[manemobiili]

I use a laptop for my daily code activities and a desktop for games and multimedia. Rendering videos is twice as fast on my desktop, and it uses way older components that my laptop does. Also there is more flexibility! Regardless of what OS you use, there's things like storage capabilities, IO and live streaming that really benefit from 2 pc setup.

I love to use Lineage OS on my phones, Debian testing for command line and Windows LTSC on my gaming rig. There really isn't a one size fits all system, you just pick and choose stuff suited for your needs.

[Ninjastar]

Great title :) Great vid. Made me start the process of dual (actually triple) booting my bootcamp partition.

[aaronspeedy]

I really don't think the problem is laptops, but rather software becoming slower, and this is the most important thing I think Linux provides: a layer for a traditional and performant Unix ecosystem to thrive. If you start looking, you'll find that ecosystem, with window managers and shell scripting and composable software. It's really amazing.

[jarbarsi]

Something worth mentioning is that laptops not only need to thermal throttle to protect themselves, they need to thermal throttle to protect YOU, like a desktop cpu will allow itself to get to 99C before throttling because that's the temperature it can safely get to before being at risk of damage, but with a laptop, that temperature would be enough to burn you if you were resting on a poorly covered lap or if you rested your hands on the wrong spot on the keyboard, which is often one of the larger reasons why the same chips get worse performance, especially in extended endurance tests, because they have to throttle sooner so that they don't burn you.

[Alex-sskf]

I have a gaming Laptop and don't have most of the problems you mentioned. I upgraded a second m2 ssd and my ram without problems...
Cpu + gpu isn't overheating because I undervolted while still overclocking. Temps aren't even reaching the 85°C mark, (except for cpu in stress tests but irl that never happened for any extended time...). I ciuld bring my Temps a few C down by repasting but that's work for next year as they're still fine now..