And who says Linux isn't ready for the Desktop?
Seriously, though, you folks put up with _a lot_ of crap like this (the jokes and the endless system configuration tweaking)
Seriously, though, you folks put up with _a lot_ of crap like this (the jokes and the endless system configuration tweaking)
I'm currently working on Mac OS, and the limitations when rebinding keyboard shortcuts for example are absolutely infuriating. Getting to log in on my home Arch Linux desktop is so relaxing every day after work - if something doesn't work the way I want it to work, I can just fix it myself.
The thing with Arch is it is a bit of a pain to install compared to basically every other OS. Needlessly painful in my personal opinion but I'm not going to argue against the hard work the maintainers put in. However the beauty of Arch is once it's running it will last for years with very little effort.
It's funny you mention keyboard bindings though, I've spent so much time trying to get keyboard bindings right on OS X and it's still not right. I wish OS X had an option to toggle between Mac and IBM bindings. I get the command key is useful on occasions but Apple really are the odd one out these days and it's a pain switching between Macs and PCs because of it.
In the past 5+ years I've not had to install a single driver _except_ one nvidia driver on one of the machines I wanted to game on. And that was not necessary except for gaming.
Lately, it's just pretty much "install Debian from .ISO" -> done.
By the time I've installed everything I want, I bet I've spent less time getting Arch set up than the Windows install that comes with my computer (tracking down software on Windows sucks, on Arch pacman gets it done quickly).
If you're using Nvidia, most distributions (except Free Software zealots like Debian and Fedora) include their proprietary driver in the repositories, and honestly nouveau is quite good for most things. If you have the choice, go for AMD cards and they'll work much better out of the box.
It's really luck of the draw, you may get a machine that has a device without good driver support, but it seems increasingly rare. Some ThinkPads now officially support Linux and Dell has been producing the XPS 13 Developer Edition for years which ships with linux and is supported by Dell.
Arch really isn't that complicated, and the documentation is fantastic.
I've been trying to switch to openSUSE (want one distribution everywhere), and I've had more trouble than in Arch, and not much trouble at that. Linux in general is pretty trouble-free these days if you have decent hardware.
Most of the people who have trouble on Linux are trying to use some crappy laptop with really low quality WiFi or something. The nicer your hardware is, the better Linux will work on it. That being said, even crappy laptops seem to run Linux reasonably well these days.
But these are personal tweaks, the machines run happy as they are post-install without any meddling. Steam runs happy, proton is running a lot of games without any problem. So it _is_ ready for the Desktop for some of us.
though really i think for many people part of the appeal of Arch, FreeBSD, etc, IS the endless system configuration tweaking.