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Comment by 6gvONxR4sf7o | Hacker News Reader

I recently tried ubuntu again for my desktop. I’ve seen so many posts here about how things have improved. It couldn’t register my wireless card and all the directions I found said to run CLI commands that required internet access to fix the fact that I couldn’t access the internet…

It seems like Ubuntu is still having the same issues I remember over a decade ago. I booted back into windows and it #JustWorked. I get the chicken and egg problem involved, but god damn, how is this still the problem?

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I mean, I love Linux as much as anyone, but Linux fans should be careful throwing “just works” label for Linux.

It’s heavily hardware dependent, thus users like yourself reads about improvements (which is true) but then crash on networks or nvidia “walls”.

If your usage differs a bit (hidpi, mixed DPIs displays, nvidia optimus, etc) you’re in for a hell of a experience.

> I get the chicken and egg problem involved, but god damn, how is this still the problem?

Bad luck on your part mostly. Of the handful of brands for wireless adapters most work. You keep getting one that is poorly supported like Broadcom.

Some vendors just refuse to support Linux.

You can be sure that it will cost you time even though it didn't cost any money. If you need the card, attach a CAT5 cable and run the command. If you have unsupported hardware, get supported hardware. It really comes down to how badly you want your freedom.

It’s a problem with your hardware vendor, not Ubuntu or any other linux distro.

Some of the vendors just not interested in cooperation and do not provide drivers or specs for their devices to linux developers.

So if you’re interested in linux, check hardware compatibility before buying things like wifi card.

Well… it’s ubuntu

"Use a different distro" is the best advice any Linux person could possibly give, because no matter what distro you use they can still say it!

It’s just that drivers have always been a particular problem with linux, but IMO ubuntu has a very bad track record, because they want to provide it “out-of-the-box” windows style, but this approach gives users very little recourse when things fail.

Other distros have way better driver management, even if it needs some minor poking around.

Can you explain this a bit more? How do you install drivers on, say, Arch, that won't work on Ubuntu? Isn't it exactly the same at the kernel level?

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