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Comment by cameronbrown | Hacker News Reader

Because the experience is terrible for the uninitiated. And this is coming from someone who ran Arch as their primary OS since I was 10. Laptop Linux on the whole is not a fun experience for those who just want a machine to work (which was what MacBooks were supposed to be about).

I just bought a Surface Laptop 3, and the machine is great. The hardware is nice, Windows on a laptop has improved tenfold since I've last used it. WSL2 means Linux isn't left out.

It's one machine/OS combo that does everything for me, including light gaming, whereas Linux and macOS both have significant compromises when using them.

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It's simply not true. Install Ubuntu or Fedora, run Gnome 3 and everything "just works". You can't use Arch as an example here - it is intentionally very basic, and takes a lot of effort to learn as you do almost everything from scratch. While many people appreciate that level of control, it is unnecessary if you're just trying to get work done.

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on a built-for-it new Intel-based machine. The amount of "just works" is surprisingly good. But when it goes downhill, it goes downhill steeply. Took me a day to figure out why it wasn't connecting to my Exchange server (TLS 1.3). No screen sharing on Wayland. Etc.

I'm not using Arch as the baseline - just saying that I'm familiar with Linux.

Not with the ongoing Wayland, Systemd, Pipewire, etc, rewrite-from-scratch work.

e.g. I don't have working VNC server at all on latest Fedora, with either X11 or Wayland, and no sign of it being fixed anytime soon.

And that is just one of many irritations with desktop linux, that simply don't occur on Windows, mostly because of MS superior QA

> that simply don't occur on Windows, mostly because of MS superior QA

You're comparing an OS that hasn't had a major release in almost 5 years to a bleeding edge Linux distribution. Install an older LTS version of Ubuntu or Debian and things will be quite stable.

Actually, no, I havent had an out-of-the-box working VNC for more than 5 years now, through various Ubuntu LTS releases and now Fedora.

Every single one of them has had various annoying bugs that would not have survived decent QA.

But your point is partially correct - at least the LTS releases had workarounds for the problems, whereas with Fedora I am SOL

With laptops, you need to buy hardware designed for Linux if you want a good experience with it. System76 and Purism make great machines. With Proton, Windows games run effortlessly from Steam on Linux.

I must disagree with you. I have been installing Linux for people who barely know how to use a mouse and the experience was always successful. Of course, I choose a distro with simple UI and software with GUI every time. I don't want to get into the typical "if my mom gets it everyone can" (also because she is a power user) but trust me, the people I installed it for had the same problems they would have had with any OS (some quite funny).

I attempted to but the driver support just wasn’t there for my laptop.

WSL2 works fine and it also means that when I want to game I have a wider selection of games to play.

Yup, I'm not a gamer anymore and when I was I used a PS, true.

Anyhow, my target initiating Linux to wasn't precisely gamers either.

What is your preferred distro?

It's been Xubuntu for almost a decade, I think. I tried Lubuntu but, at least at the time, it had no pulse audio which wasn't great. I tried Budgie but it has some paper cut bugs that I couldn't live with (some might).

Yeah, I guess the experience differs...

I run Ubuntu on my work Dell Latitude (i3wm), Debian on my personal System 76 (Mate) and both work more or less flawlessly, although I do agree with the guy who said Battery is not great.

I also have a Desktop with Windows and Linux dual booting, and while I agree Windows is quite polished when it works, I also find a million little annoyances.

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