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Comment by Santosh83 | Hacker News Reader

When something breaks on Windows, the situation is no different and in fact possibly worse. Since it is proprietary, you have far fewer people who really know the innermost guts of the system and can help. Microsoft's own forums are practically useless for non-paying 'users.' As for the rest of the Internet, it is the same as Linux:

"Run this command and tell me the output"

"Run this script as admin/root"

"Go into these folders and delete these files"

"Add these lines to these files (Linux)/Registry (Windows)"

and of course the famous:

"Reset/Refresh/Reinstall" catch-all.

The problem is exponential complexity of interactions of various systems, hardware and software, and almost nobody really seems to know the exact workings and interactions of the system. At least no one on web forums.

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Things very rarely break, either it works or it doesn’t (cue the people who will say an update ate their homework...).

The big difference is that the chance that ALL devices on a brand new laptop will work out of the box (including all the bells and whistles like sleep modes, audio routing when adding/removing Bluetooth gear, multiple external displays with different DPIs, etc) is nearly 100% on Windows and in my experience nearly 0% on even the most up to date linux distros, at least unless you did very careful research before buying your machine.

This isn’t a criticism of linux desktop distros vs windows but it’s pointing out that the most important things you need when making a desktop OS for general purpose hardware is a big market share and relations with hw vendors. It’s a chicken and egg problem for linux.

Also: people generally aren’t interested in understanding or properly solving some problem. If a reinstall solves their problem that’s in many cases easier for most than editing a config file! Windows Systems are (can and often should be) ephemeral. I wish windows would make the nightly-wipe I have seen in university classroom installs of windows the default for home editions.

>(cue the people who will say an update ate their homework...)

Microsoft literally pulled a patch in October because it was deleting files:

https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/microsoft-explains-why-windows...

Those users I believe woke up with personal files missing and all their hardware still working perfectly :/

>The big difference is that the chance that ALL devices on a brand new laptop will work out of the box (including all the bells and whistles like sleep modes, audio routing when adding/removing Bluetooth gear, multiple external displays with different DPIs, etc) is nearly 100% on Windows and in my experience nearly 0% on even the most up to date linux distros, at least unless you did very careful research before buying your machine.

I'm going to disagree with you on this. But first I need to point out that if you mean literally "out of the box," then I would certainly agree with you; but I'm going to assume by "out of the box" you mean "fresh install."

I run a small computer repair/assistance shop and it is my experience that very few laptops, new or otherwise, work 100% with a fresh install of Windows 10 or 7 (we do very little with 8). BUT the crucial difference between the non-working devices under Linux vs Windows is that on Windows the WiFi and/or ethernet card (almost) always works right away which then allows Windows Update to find drivers for the non-working devices. Under Linux, the Wifi card will often not work with a fresh install which then makes getting the other devices working extra difficult. It's even worse if the ethernet port also doesn't work.

Yes, I meant including downloaded updates both from Microsoft and from hw manufacturers. Hopefully most of them are automatic but in some cases they are not. Without internet connection I wouldn’t even bother switching on a new laptop, it’s usually a race to get a new firmware before the machine bluescreens. As you say the whole process hinges on the fact that network adapters both wired and wireless usually work out of the box (in the literal sense).

Ah, yes. Downloading updates from HW manufacturers... Nothing like obtaining kernel mode code over unencrypted http from a random server in Taiwan or even China.

This applies to all OSes if you use binary proprietary drivers. But it’s of course the same also in the case of firmware/bios updates that are even lower level than kernel.

But on the other hand - If hackers own the hw manufacturers systems in Taiwan, chances are your original firmware was already bad.

Not really - this is a different issue : generic problems vs out of the box behaviour.

I expect Bluetooth to work out of the box on a Lenovo laptop in 2018, while I don't expect Linux to work well at all. I've been using linux since 1996, and things haven't changed : unless hardware makers start supporting it natively, we'll always have problems.

Now, I may be very wrong on the windows side of things : I expect it to work, but maybe it doesn't!

Agree that Windows works out of the box far more often than Linux, the reason precisely being what you said, that hardware makers do not release drivers for Linux for the most part, or even enough specs to write one without buggy reverse engineering. The situation is getting better but rather slowly. And when new hardware comes out, we go right back to square one again.

But when Windows does break, the troubleshooting is, in my experience, even more obtuse than with Linux.

The situation has been "getting better" for 10 years, it still terrible experience and will probably forever :(

The only solution is to buy native Linux devices such as from Dell, system76 or tuxedo. Any other device which only supports Windows toddler OS will be a terrible experience. I'm writing this from a $2k razer blade stealth which has been a horrific experience with ubuntu (NEVER gonna buy a razer again).

It's considerably easier to run Linux on my ThinkPad x270 than it was on my xps 13 Developer Edition which came with Ubuntu pre-installed.

In fact, I have no issues at all on my x270. Everything – including Bluetooth – Just Works™ out of the box.

I'm curious what kinds of issues you had on your xps?

WiFi and Bluetooth only worked with the Dell drivers for example; I accidentally removed them due to an apt-get fuckup and it was hell to get it back.

I also had a lot of problems with the audio; I don't recall what the issue was there exactly (it's been 3/4 years).

I also had a XPS 15 at my current employer (not with Linux pre-installed), and that was even worse. The screen kept flickering (but only in Linux). I returned it to my employer and just got the x270. Been happy ever since :-)

I just cringed a bit remembering my idealistic but ultimately doomed mission in the early 2000’s to convert an entire organization to Linux on the desktop, complete with a test group of forward-thinking, masochistic users who I encouraged to jump off the cliff with me. In a parallel universe I’m on the phone with a user at 3am cheerfully explaining how to use pico to edit their /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf!

Thankfully on this front most of the desktop environments have come a long way, one can give a user a laptop running Debian or Fedora and that user will be able to install software right in Gnome Software, change wifi networks, display resolution/configuration and so forth without ever using their keyboard.

Its feasible in 2018 to give your aunt a laptop running Linux (just so long as its not Hannah Montana Linux or Gentoo) and expect her to be able to go about her normal Facebook browsing, document editing routine without much issue.

https://certification.ubuntu.com/certification/make/Lenovo/

At least they try.

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