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As someone that starting using Linux instead of Mac 2 years ago, this is definitely not the case. External monitors are always glitching out (not detected on resume), sleep didn't work at all, adding hibernate support took days of research (due to whole disk encryption). I once completely hosed my system by installing the latest NVIDIA drivers (Windows will automatically fall back to a built in driver if third party ones crash) and it took me days to get it working again and then it never worked the same. Tearing while scrolling Firefox is a disaster even after trying every X11 trick in the book.

The one thing I really, really like is using i3 to make every app run on a specific monitor and tiling all windows. When I restart my machine, every app I use launches on the right monitor. This customization has been awesome.

Ironically, I first used it in 2010

It's definitely gotten better over the past decade, and maybe the jab is a little unfair if you're using off-the-shelf Ubuntu on very vanilla hardware. But that's mostly what I do when I use Linux, and yet I've never had it "just work" without several asterisks.

Sure, the mouse and keyboard just work. The display and network adapter (usually) just work. Audio may or may not just work. A second display may not play very nicely. Setting up GRUB/dual-booting always takes some effort to get it running smoothly enough for daily use. Installing my dev tools, there's always one random things that goes wrong. Sometimes I'll install my browser the wrong way and it doesn't get an icon in my launcher; so I have to go look up how to configure that manually. I still have this weird issue where whenever I boot Linux and then boot back to Windows, my system clock (in Windows) is off by 6 hours; I gave up trying to fix it because it wasn't worth the effort.

It's a death by a thousand cuts. I'm sure officially-supported installations like those on the XPS 13 work just fine, but if you're installing it yourself you're going to get pulled off track from what you were trying to do with your computer, and into forums trying to find someone else who had your exact issue. Some people revel in this experience, and I've been known to take a sense of accomplishment from it before, but most of the time I don't want to be messing with my computer, I want to be using it.

I've never had an experience with dual booting that wasn't absolutely miserable.

> It's definitely gotten better over the past decade, and maybe the jab is a little unfair if you're using off-the-shelf Ubuntu on very vanilla hardware

> I'm sure officially-supported installations like those on the XPS 13 work just fine

That's fair, my use cases pretty much line up with that. I do view the XPS with Pop to be a MBP killer. I did install it myself (getting it on a USB drive is harder than literally the rest of the setup combined (did not dual boot, clean install,) and that wasn't bad at all) but Dell's Project Sputnik ensures Linux compatibility with the XPS line, and Pop!_OS noticed and applied firmware updates for my laptop. I compare the experience to choosing between a MBP and a Hackintosh. XPS + Linux seems to work better for dev work, better for software compatibility, far better for gaming, and is arguably a better experience overall compared to the MBP.

Now, I do also run Pop!_OS on a desktop that I put together (Ryzen 5 & GTX 1060) (no dual booting) and have had a similarly flawless experience. Pop!_OS installed my NVidia driver on the initial install. Better experience for dev work than Windows (haven't given WSL a shot yet though,) but a small number of gaming titles don't work. No where near the experience of setting up a Hackintosh, and compatible with far more software than Catalina.

Personally I couldn't care less about either one for gaming; I would never spend money on gaming hardware and then put anything other than Windows on it.

I would certainly do Linux over a Hackintosh any day, because for me the entire point of Apple-anything is having the complete package that's been designed and ensured to work well together. At least with Linux they know you're trying to assemble something yourself and there's a large community of forum-goers giving you a good chance of finding all those little fixes you're going to need.

Personally I use Windows for gaming and a Mac for dev and my Linux partition for that rare dev use-case that just doesn't quite work on the Mac (happens maybe once a year)

I feel like Linux people have got so used to sorting out those thousand cuts, they don't really think about it as a problem anymore, just part of initial setup. But as soon as Joe Bloggs installs it and his wifi doesn't work or his graphics card has a minor glitch it's a complete dealbreaker.

And I agree with your assessment that I don't think I've ever installed even Ubuntu and had everything work perfectly out of the box. In contrast, Windows has plenty of things you'll want to change configuration on, but usually nothing that's outright broken.

That's true- and macOS has plenty of things I reconfigure whenever I set up a fresh install too, so I guess you could argue that takes up just as much time. I would say it's a do-once-and-forget thing, but then I'm sure there are people who would say the same about Linux issues.

> I still have this weird issue where whenever I boot Linux and then boot back to Windows, my system clock (in Windows) is off by 6 hours; I gave up trying to fix it because it wasn't worth the effort.

I fixed this in pretty quickly after install. The reason for the issue is that your Linux machine uses UTC to store time on the hardware clock whereas Windows uses the local timezone. The solution is to either let windows use UTC or Linux use local time.

In my case I went with Windows on UTC based on this link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_time#UTC_in_Wind...

Hope that helps

I bought my 2018 XPS 13 with a Windows 10 license, but tried installing Dell's official Ubuntu image on it after a few days, and couldn't live with it. Trackpad acceleration was awkward, fingerprint reader unlock didn't work, and font scaling was too small (along with other UI elements). I wouldn't be surprised if the trackpad and font scaling issues were fixable, but I no longer have the interest in fixing those issues. So while it's very usable, Linux is still far from parity with MacOS or Windows 10 on the "it just works" front, and I don't expect it to reach parity in the foreseeable future.

Pop!_OS is far more polished than Ubuntu nowadays, scaling is better on Hi-DPI displays and theming is far more consistent (largely due to the fact that their vastly superior store defaults to either DEB or flatpak.)

I will concede that the fingerprint reader doesn't work, and I haven't spent any time trying to make it work, I don't have much patience for tinkering with stuff like that these days.

That is what I have being seeing since used Slackware 2.0, followed by Yasdril, Debian, Mandrake, Red-Hat, Ubuntu, ....

It always goes as follows:

Complain: I am trying distribution X, having problems A, B, C

Standard Reply: Why are you still using X? Distribution Y is much better now.

Left as exercise for the reader when Slackware 2.0 came out.

It only just works for laptops that are slightly older, and with Linux friendly hardware.

For ex: I got a Lenovo X1 Extreme near release date and Linux was a bit of a pain to get working... I actually bricked my first laptop due to a simple bios config change which was actually Lenovo's fault - but I don't have to change those settings to install Windows.

Don't get me wrong. I love Unix/Linux. But saying it just works is misleading.

> but Linux seriously "just works" now

I agree it’s far better than it used to be but until I can install programs without having to crack open terminal I feel like it still has a ways to go.

The latest LTS version of the largest distro doesn’t even let you drag and drop to the desktop.

You don't need to crack open a terminal.

System76 maintains a list of trusted repos that allows you to install all of your software from the Pop!_Shop. All of the examples I gave are real, you can install VSCode, IntelliJ, Android Studio, Steam, and much more from official sources and official repos with one click on the Pop!_Shop. It is essentially a pretty, managed app store that handles updates, installs, and repos for you.

And if you want to install a game or other program not in the limited Pop!_Shop?

The Pop!_Shop isn't like the Linux app stores of yesteryear (namely Ubuntu's graveyard that is Software Center.) It has tons of software in it. Should you need software that isn't in the Shop (which almost never happens for me) you can install stuff the same way you would on Windows: download the DEB/flatpakref, double-click, and the Pop!_Shop will take over from there.

For non-Steam games, I use Lutris, which is probably the least polished part of getting software installed, but I still don't have to crack open a terminal. If that doesn't immediately work, I don't bother with it anymore. I can get 90%+ of my titles running this way.

>And the Pop!_Shop will take over from there.

From installing my vpn app to games from gog I find I have to go to the terminal for a good percentage of my installations.

Even with simple utilities though, I find that the app store is FULL of garbage. Why are there multiple VLC entries in the store published by people other than VideoLAN?

There is a Gog galaxy client published by a random developer that is just a wine wrapper of the windows client (and also doesn't work). This is not a good experience and I don't think the average user is ready for that sort of thing.

> I can get 90%+ of my titles running this way.

I'll agree that a majority can come from the app store (for me its probably more like 70%) but it needs to be way higher imo to be ready for the average user.

Along similar lines I am currently having an issue with my ubuntu 20 install where i have to change the audio device every time I boot my computer, there doesn't seem to be a way to set the default device -again- without popping into terminal. It is frustrating to deal with all these idiosyncrasies which is why I prefer to work on MAC OS when I can.

> That was probably a fair assessment a decade ago, but Linux seriously "just works" now.

My anecdotal experience tells me otherwise. During confinement, I tried to install OpenSUSE on an old laptop I had around for the kids to do their classes online. The laptop kept losing wifi credentials. Able, but not wanting to, troubleshoot I proceeded to install Unbuntu. That was all good until I went on the GUI to enable auto-login. Now I cannot log in. Not big issues, I have the skills to fix it but not the time.

edit: typos

> two fingers to right click works!

I really live by trying not to be snarky but this is testing my principles given how nice a mac trackpad is... (used Linux for a long time and now I've been on macos for almost the same amount of years, I love Linux and appreciate all the work people put into it, to be clear)

It may support more, I just don't know what else to do with it (I usually just use my MX Master 3.)

Tell me a gesture you use or rely on and I'll give it a shot and reply with my results. I'm ignorant on the cool stuff one can do with a Mac track pad. I thought the two fingers to right-click was pretty neat.

My AMD GPU on my travel netbook begs to differ with Linux seriously "just works" now.