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Comment by bengalister | Hacker News Reader

I recently tried to use Linux (Ubuntu 16.10) as my primary desktop and failed again. I tried yearly since year 2000. But again in late 2016 I switched back to Windows (10) and MacOs. Driver support is getting better but so are my expectations and Linux (well Ubuntu) doesn't seem to catch up fast enough. For instance I failed having my dual graphic cards be used in extended mode with the my native laptop screen and an external HDMI screen monitor. My bluetooth headset has a hard time being recognized by the OS I have to retry many times. And I cannot have sound through on my monitor connected to HDMI output of my Nvidia graphical card. Maybe I used the wrong distro, but all these issues are non-existent when I switch to Windows 10. Linux desktop is getting better but is still a painful experience when used with non common setup.

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It's interesting that your experience is so different from mine. I've preferred Linux environments since about 1998. Sometimes I boot to Windows, but Windows feels very limiting. With Linux and KDE, I can use custom keyboard shortcuts with ease, I can put my whole OS on a thumb drive, I can run the same instance on other computers, I can copy an instance as many times as I like, and I can try different variations of drivers and settings with no worries that I'll break anything so badly that I can't fix it. I can downgrade anything. I can upgrade programs and drivers even while they're running. I can upgrade at my own pace. I can run the same software on either a desktop or a server. For the few programs I use that don't run well in Linux, I have Wine, virtual machines, and dual booting.

I like Windows and Mac OS, but I feel like they have a long way to go before they're useful for my day to day work.

I actually have the opposite problem.

Everything I own and do is terrible on Windows and works fine on Ubuntu.

There is some weird finnicky things with Bluetooth headphones (especially headsets) but it is honestly such an easy fix (plug them in) that I don't even think about it.

Windows on the other refuses to connect at all to my Bluetooth headphones (Sony), my graphics card has broken drivers (and continues to) and that is even before I mention all of my gripes with Windows as a developer (compiling on Windows is basically a no-go)

The only thing I use Windows for is gaming, because unfortunately games are basically never released for Linux.

I always struggle with Windows updates, it's not on automatic update and it seems that after Win 10 shenanigans Microsoft is making it harder and harder top keep Windows machine updated. First it seeks for updates without finding anything, then after restart it says there are updates but by that time I have work to do and can't be interrupted with updates. Essentially, the solution is to shut it down and return to Linux machine.

> Linux desktop is getting better but is still a painful experience when used with non common setup.

Indeed every time I think of getting a new laptop or desktop, I try to do research into how well Linux will run on the hardware. Thankfully there seem to be a decent number of laptops that have Linux preinstalled now.

As much as I enjoy tinkering, even after using Linux for a while I still don't have a strong understanding of how things work, and it's frustrating to be forced to tinker when my intention was to get things done.

Perhaps I need to dedicate more time to understanding how things work?

I had the same opinion of Linux as you. I didn't want to tinker with it and get everything working well.

Just install Ubuntu. Ignore everyone saying Ubuntu is a kiddy OS ("All you need is X, Y, Z-ix"). Ubuntu is Linux Windows (not really, but it is pretty hard to mess up).

More like Mac Linux.

Neon or openSuse is more Windows-like IMO.

Linux Mint rocks for ease of setup and use.

Unfortunately Linux Mint does not track security issues or issue security updates. That alone is reason enough to avoid it completely, but then when you add in their server breach and the way they handled it...

Stick with Debian and Ubuntu. And more Debian, going forward.

I get security updates pretty soon after they're released on the Debian mailing list, actually. Logging on this morning I have an update for the gstreamer issues.

I use Debian for servers though.

> Perhaps I need to dedicate more time to understanding how things work?

Yes, if you don't already, learn basic command line very well, with stderr/stdin/stdout, pipes, sed, grep, find, cat, make, etc. etc. You'll then thrive in Linux, and it will help you with OSX, too.

Oh I already know how to use (most of) those things. What I meant was more that if something on my machine is not working, like a driver or something, I usually have to resort to just copy pasting whatever people tell me to do.

I guess what I meant was more that I don't understand how Linux the OS works, not how to work in Linux?

I've been dealing with the same issue. I haven't figured out any real trick to it; the best I can tell, a working Linux system is composed of so many different utilities worked on by so many different people, there's a lot less standardization than what you might expect.

For example, if I do something and it doesn't work, I want to see something that went wrong. This could show up:

1. In stdout/stderr 2. In a logfile specific to that software, somewhere on my computer 3. In an aggregated logfile somewhere on my computer 4. Nowhere, but will do 1, 2, or 3 after you enable something in a config file or cli parameter

This all assumes that if there's something you have to look up (like where it logs files to), you can figure it out based on the man page or website or inspecting your filesystem, and then it actually logs some actionable information on the problem.

I've just come to terms with the fact that everything, no matter how simple it should be, is an ordeal the first time I do it. I just set aside time to research and make notes.

Today I found out that my brand new Macbook Pro (company provided) does not actually go to sleep when I close the lid. Every 30 minutes or so, it wakes up, builds up a wifi connection and starts doing something. Even though the 'powernap' feature is turned off.

I find that sort of behaviour far more worrisome than a bluetooth headset not working.

> Every 30 minutes or so, it wakes up, builds up a wifi connection and starts doing something.

Have you tried to intercept the traffic?

My experiences are similar, it's not the software that's the biggest problem, I use mostly FOSS anyway. It was the lack of decent hardware support, e.g. Skylake laptop support, Displayport MST, that drove me to Windows 10.

What drove me back, already in Windows XP days, was that the UI/UX and gamer culture don't really get along with the FOSS ideals and using powerful gaming computers as a modern version of Sun 3/50 (where twm was created).

Works fine nowadays, Skylake + 4k MST screen.

I was an early adopter and it was a bumpy start for sure, but you expect that. Just wait half a year or so after a new processor generation and it'll be fine. Zero issues on my Haswell laptop for the past years.

Intel has full-time people working on the Linux graphics stack. I've contributed bug reports and stack traces and they have been super friendly and responsive.

I wouldn't say it is working fine yet, for example: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116671 I'm not convinced mobile hardware is supported by them given this bug is still open and Skylake is approaching EOL.

If you ever decide to try again, try to time it with a new computer purchase and buy a system from a vendor who ships Linux based systems. Hardware support is always the trickiest bit with Linux as it tends to lag behind a bit due to developers not getting access to the hardware until after it is publicly available combined with the Linux driver model (in kernel drivers) + the distribution model of sticking with stable kernel releases.

TLDR; If you want good hardware support without worry, buy from a Linux vendor.

I had a system76 laptop with ubuntu pre-installed and still had nothing but problems. I've tried a myriad of laptops (always with hardware that's supposed to play well with linux e.g. intel graphics/wifi etc...) with linux (as well as every distro under the sun), and while some definitely worked better than others, every single one had obnoxious game breaking issues/bugs (suspend/resume being occasionally unreliable being the most common, even on 'linux compatible' machines).

My system76 laptop also had an obnoxious firmware bug (that seemed to only effect linux) with the media keys that they basically told me they couldn't do anything about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52TaFzCDDkA

Linux desktop environments and software also have serious QA issues in general IMO. When running linux on the desktop I found myself spending more time reporting bugs than actually using my computer. I really enjoyed tinkering with linux, but when it comes to day to day use (particular on laptops) I found that the quality and reliability just wasn't there.

I ended up running windows on my system76 machine and eventually moving to a macbook air.

Maybe I'll try again in a few years :(

Now this is strange, because I've had exactly the opposite experience with the same hardware. I've gotten both a (Thinkpad) W530 and a P50 working fully (with four monitors!) with their dual-GPU hardware out of the box with Linux Mint 18 (Cinnamon), which is based on Ubuntu 16.04. Incidentally, Windows 10 shit itself with a simple ATI 7990 and the onboard NIC on an Asus motherboard when I tried to install it a couple of months ago.

I bought a $360 Thinkpad w520 quad core mostly to see if I could move from linux in VMs to it being a daily driver. That was two weeks ago. I'm amazed at how well it works: this laptop has a nightmare graphics setup (Nvidia Optimus) but it works very well when you pick a card in the bios; the Optimus setup doesn't work very well. On the other hand, it isn't even supported in Windows 10: I tried it anyway, and it keep crashing. Meanwhile, Ubuntu 16.04 is a revelation (I mostly used Linux Mint in the VMs). Fast, very stable, 7 hour battery on integrated graphics, works with one DP monitor (haven't tried two yet, waiting for a docking station to arrive). I use it for development, VMs and RDP, fantastic experience so far. To my amazement, Wine can even run Excel & Word (2010). I have never got Office working in Linux before, this is quite amazing, although ultimately not very useful since it seems to run Windows VMs better than my 2015 i7 mac (which is only dual core), and LibreOffice is almost different software on Linux vs the mac, it's so much better. Ubuntu is really good to use, it's very fast to move around apps and workpaces, great keyboard shortcuts. There are a lot of moving parts but it seems to hang together. Plus my bluetooth magic trackpad worked. So I'm probably going to get an entrylevel quad-core P50 in the next month or two, and sell the macbook; I think I'll finish ahead, so I'll put the change towards a good Chromebook.

I have it working with two DP monitors and the laptop screen. But this only works in XFCE not Unity, even though I use lightdm with XFCE. Optimus actually probably would have worked out of the box except that I added a brightness control xorg.conf tweak which broke Optimus (the problem with 2011 hardware is a lot of neolithic advice). With 16.04.2's 4.8 kernel and Nvidia 367 driver that tweak isn't necessary anyway.

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