And finding a fix can be elusive, when often times the answer is "your distro sucks, use $OTHER_DISTRO" or "use Google."
> Rational actors will react to this by reasonably picking hardware that is known to be well supported.
But what about when you pick hardware that is supposedly well supported and you still have problems? Run into that more times than I care to remember.
Nobody said linux or open source software was perfect.
Yes, do not inform potential users that they might be taken for a ride, don't mention that 7-years old hardware is not supported, or that Gnome3 doesn't even know how to switch back to the default display. I mean, we wouldn't want to have informed users am I right?
You are pretty much making legulere's point: hush hush no criticism in public, and even if it is valid please report it quietly.
So I assume you would agree if Apple or Microsoft had a similar attitude? (And no need to mention "yeah but with MS/Apple you paid, therefore...", paying entitles you to tech support, and we're only talking about informing users here.)
aside from apple stuff (who have made it quite clear they believe their users want a totally walled garden and are not interested in compatabilty with the rest of the world), the other two are now rare afaik.
so if it happens to you regularily, then yeah, very likely it is nothing more than your distro sucks.