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Comment by coned88 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand. I run linux on an IBM Thinkpad T40 for the better part of a decade.Then I moved to a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon which also runs Ubuntu fine.

IN fact installing linux takes at most 20 min and I am done. Drivers and everything are all automatic.

Windows on the other hand can take hours to install from scratch. God forbid you need a service pack or to find a driver that's not easily found anymore.

People have a cognitive dissonance about what it takes to run Linux. It's by far much easier than people lead on. Yes if you need to get into the underneath of things then maybe it becomes more difficult. But I don't think that's been part of the story for average users for a long time.

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>> Yes if you need to get into the underneath of things then maybe it becomes more difficult.

IMO Windows is even more difficult when you want to get into underneath of things. Fiddle with registry settings, services and at times deleting AppData\App folder to get something fixed. At least in case of Linux you get good set of answers to your Google queries, but that is not as good in case of Windows. Also, Windows and the ecosystem of software around it has a huge reliability and performance problem still unsolved. Freezing, crashing are still rampant with Windows 10. If I boot my laptop after a week Windows Update holds me up for at least half an hour. Every update restarts the OS several times.

That's because it's a Thinkpad. The T-series had been the Red Hat company issue laptop for years, and has had boatloads of internal support as a result.

You're right in that a Thinkpad will mostly work out of the box long as you don't want that Nvidia GPU to work, but everyone else? Good luck. My XPS 15 was a lost cause, losing three quarters of it's battery life under Linux and with countless video problems.

And on a desktop? Hah! Roll the dice baby, and keep rolling them with every update, because sooner or later something's going to break. It always does.

That XPS laptop of yours probably isn't great with OS X either. Yet nobody blames Apple for that.

It's a bit of a double standard. If you want a pain free workhorse, go with something that's supported out of the box. Don't buy that Nvidia GPU if you intend to use it for a Linux desktop, where it is unlikely to be of much use anyway (unless you are one of those CAD people in which case you use what your vendor supports).

Personally I settled for Thinkpads many years ago (the T- and X-series, not non-Thinkpads that Lenovo tries to peddle under that brand name) and they haven't given me any trouble yet. Seeing how Windows laptops sometimes doesn't wake from sleep properly makes me suspect that that's not much better tested either. If it boots, ship it.

Nvidia is more trouble only that you need to install the proprietary driver rather than using what comes with the kernel. You also need vdpau if you want hardware decoding of video.

I have a Dell XPS 15 running Pop!_OS, and it’s great[1]. No issues. It’s a much better experience compared to setting up Kubuntu[2].

[1] http://bryangrohman.com/pop-os-dell-xps-15/

[2] http://bryangrohman.com/kubuntu-dell-xps-15/

Has Linux changed a lot? Last I tried installing it years ago, I had to find each driver individually and had to get some stubborn ones working. At the time I thought to myself - no average Joe would figure this out, no wonder nobody uses Linux (and by nobody I meant non-devs)

Absolutely. I've installed Linux on quite a number of computers, and I've yet to run into a missing driver. It just works. Whereas I've also installed Windows on a lot of computers, and that's far more likely to have issues with drivers...

99.9% of drivers are in the kernel nto downloaded from random spots on the internet. The big exception is proprietary gpu drivers which user friendly distros provide packages for in the repos.

The big issue is thus. If you intend to run linux don't buy random hardware and hope it supports linux then complain linux is hard to make work. This is a natural course because people have all sorts of existing hardware and no real desire to buy new. It's also reasonable to try because linux does support a lot of hardware. Try it and if you like how the environment but not how works with your machine buy your next machine with linux in mind.

Had less problems with Linux tyan with Windows for about 10 years now.

Installation is quicker.

No bloatware/scareware to uninstall (bundled McAfee etc).

I've spent more time hunting for drivers on Windows than on Linux the 10 last years.

Linux is also significantly faster for some of my workflows (git commits, anything with maven or node).

For me (partially colorblind, never cared much about fonts, everything is an improvement from what I grew up with) I also find certain Linux DEs a lot nicer and easier to use than Windows and even MacOS. Again this is my personal opinion, but I have used Windows for years before I switched to Linux and I've also been enthusiastic about Mac and Apple and have used it for years, I just happen prefer KDE or a well tuned Gnome, Cinnamon or elementary

The downsides? In my experience Linux is slightly less stable. And there exist stuff that is only supported on Windows (an old scanner I have. Although I should add it is not great under Windows either.)

For old scanners, you can try VueScan (paid app under Linux) which is a real breeze for those scanners which you cannot find driver anymore.

I did. I like VueScan and had a paid license at that time IIRC. But that particular scanner just didn't work which was a shame since it was supposed to be a good with photos and negatives. And as mentioned above it was good on Windows either.

Edit: I actually looked it up now on the VueScan website and here is what is says: "VueScan is compatible with the <my scanner model> on Windows x86, Windows x64 and Mac OS X."

Linux issues are not about hardware support anymore (well mostly). The guy was talking about ui inconsistencies and overall ugliness of some distros (there are of course exceptions).

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