Comment by nickjj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickjj | Hacker News Reader

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It was pretty finnicky for me. I tried switching 2 years ago, which I wrote about here[0] but also ended up going back to Windows and WSL 2.

I couldn't get my USB audio interface to work with my hardware combo without getting a ton of crackly sounds and pops that happened every time I recorded my microphone when screencasting. This was after literally an entire week of troubleshooting and trying every audio thing I could think of.

I think that's the main problem with Linux hardware compatibility. A lot of devices work in isolation but certain combinations don't work. The USB audio interface I have is known to work trouble free on Linux and I know some folks using it based on what they say on YouTube but for me, it didn't work. Was it due to my motherboard or something else who knows, but it works in Windows.

I'd rather not stick with Windows, but the reality of my current situation is there seems to be a hardware incompatibility for this box to run native Linux.

[0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/i-tried-linux-as-my-main-dev-...

why are you and the guy below trying to use debian, and then complaining about hardware? using old kernels and drivers with newer hardware and then complaining things aren't smooth?

People new to linux don't necessarily know that debian comes with old kernels, or what the consequences of this are. When I got into linux (admittedly, around 9 years ago), it was quite hard to come by information on what the appropriate distros for which situations were. Heck, at the time, I thought distros were just different skins for the computer, no thanks to the *buntu panel of distributions.

I wish the linux community did a better job explaining that Debian is generally not a good fit for desktops/laptops, and that distros geared for this use-case should be used instead, like Ubuntu or Fedora.

"Debian uses old drivers" is a pretty big meme. If you're the kinda person who reads Hacker News or messed around with USB Audio Interfaces, it shouldn't be that hard to d a quick search on what the best distros are.

Ubuntu. Mint. PopOS. Manjaro. Covers like 95% of use case syou could ever have.

Debian has backported kernels:

https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux-image-amd6...

> it shouldn't be that hard to d a quick search on what the best distros are.

The best distro is Debian.

> why are you and the guy below trying to use debian, and then complaining about hardware?

Ubuntu and Fedora, actually, FWIW.

I do like Debian on really boring servers, for the stability, though I'm (slowly) trying to switch anything I can to FreeBSD, because I don't like most things Poettering comes up with, and Wayland looks to be a slow-motion garbage truck crash that might, might sort itself out, as far as its overall ecosystem, in a decade or two, possibly even before the next thing comes along to replace it (I'm sure it's working alright for a lot of people, and that's good). Then there's the new cross-distro application packaging systems, of which only AppImage isn't comically bad.

> Why are you and the guy below trying to use debian ... using old kernels and drivers with newer hardware and then complaining things aren't smooth?

The blog post mentions I was using Debian Unstable btw.

Using a different distro wouldn't have gotten me a newer kernel at the time of when I wrote that post. The post was written in Jan 2019 and I was using Linux kernel 4.19 back then which was about the latest stable Linux kernel at the time. I think 4.20 might have been out but in either case all of my hardware was around for years prior to that kernel release.

Well, I use Arch, can I complain about hardware?

Nvidia optimus is an absolute clusterfuck, even with 477 drivers, if you have multi DPI displays.

If I close my laptop lid it activates airplane mode on gnome and do nothing on other distros.

I've tried every kernel on earth and nothing fixes it out of the box. I've had to remap airplane mode to sleep to have an acceptable experience.

After a week of struggle, this laptop is back on Windows 10, where everything works perfectly. Although I still use linux on my older laptop.

Was it a HP by any chance. I got a Zbook and its the first laptop in more than a decade i can't get to work with linux. Starting 20 or so docker containers with docker compose kills something and makes it freeze / lock up.

I didn't think it was hard not to be compatible i suppose HP tried their best.

Yeap, HP Pavillion. Unfortunaly, I can't justify buying another laptop just to use Linux when everything works great on Windows.

Pavillon no-good. Elitebook better.

Booted one minimal Debian-derivative (without SystemD!1!!) from USB-keychain into RAM 124 days ago. Still running, no reboots, but no suspends/resume either. Though it's ancient. But all Intel-components, and working flawlessly with LTS-kernels.

Debian makes up-to-date kernels available in the backports repository.

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