Saying, "Don't call this FUD" up top doesn't prevent this from being possibly the most blatent FUD I've seen in a long time.
Check if your hardware supports your OS before you buy it. Guess what? Then it all works great. What a waste of time.
Check if your hardware supports your OS before you buy it. Guess what? Then it all works great. What a waste of time.
Hahaha fuck no. I spent two weeks trying to get a Lenovo Y50's touchpad to work properly on modern Windows. It's impossible. Official drivers are unmaintained and whatever you get whether generic or frankensteined-in works terrible compared to the out of the box experience on a Linux distro.
Don't most people do this?
The audio out works perfectly under ubuntu
On the other hand, Linux tends to be much better at supporting older hardware that the manufacturers are no longer interested in selling, as well as working across a broader range of hardware platforms ranging from embedded IoT devices to supercomputers.
Sometimes up to several years or never.
Are VirtualBox and VMWare host drivers included in the Linux kernel? Granted they are not "drivers" per se but anyways.
OK, let's talk about hardware: literally thousands of WiFi adapters continue not to be supported by the Linux kernel some of which were released as early as five years ago.
And then, if you have a Windows driver you know it works and it's full featured.
The Linux driver may offer very rudiment support just to make something work.
So, it's not so simple. Far from it.
Further, if you really want to drive adoption the linux onboarding process has to be better than the windows onboarding process, which is a massively difficult because the windows process is "purchase a computer, hit the power button, and watch the OS as configured by the manufacturer boot."
I wouldn't be so confident, I had my fair share of crappy drivers on windows as well to the point if that the hardware is old, there's a good chance that it will run smoother on Linux.
Example - Intel. I've never had a single hardware support problem with a NUC. Intel processor, Intel video, Intel wifi, Intel bluetooth. All supported right in the kernel, out of the box.
AMD is getting there, too. I currently run a 4x4 with ryzen and vega, and an Intel ax200. All peachy.
Linux is a workhorse, not a Windows replacement for the unwashed masses.
LTS releases are explicit that they have limited hardware support, that is if they even attempt to backport new/updated hardware support at all. That's the point of Ubuntu's LTS Hardware Enablement (HWE) program[1], although it isn't perfect and I wouldn't rely on it for hardware support.
On top of that, I've run the auto updater that comes with the GUI (does more than sudo apt update).
If that isn't sufficient to use 4 year-old bluetooth headphones that are older than the OS, and FireFox to watch Netflix, it is far, far worse than Windows. Look, I really want this to succeed, but be honest, it's far behind Windows and Mac.
IMO, your average desktop user's use case isn't served well by an LTS if they plan on using relatively recent hardware, peripherals or software. LTS desktop releases suit Canonical's corporate customers' needs well, though, which is why they were released in the first place. A distribution that uses up-to-date software suits most use cases.
Bluetooth headphone support is something that bit me in the past, as well, but it's an issue that was solved with PipeWire. Ubuntu 20.04 still uses PulseAudio.
Four years ago anything you bought was fully supported by Windows 7 and 8.1 aside from lazy OEMs who refused to provide older OSes' drivers.
Yeah, and if you're running something like Debian 11, CentOS or Ubuntu LTS the answer will be, "Go compile the latest kernel".
I expected an experience similar to buying from a MSFT OEM or an Apple macbook (price was certainly comparable), however, I had to spend a fair amount of time getting _basic_ things to work (wifi - Intel - kept cutting out after a few minutes, problems with graphics, driving external monitors, etc). I think System76 probably did the best they could, but they don´t have a silver bullet for the problems discussed in TFA.
Who runs into hardware compatibility issues with Linux? People installing it themselves.
Who installs Linux themselves? Tech geeks/enthusiasts.
Who should know better than to install an operating system before checking for hardware support? Tech geeks/enthusiasts.
That's why I can't take those people seriously. If hardware support was a real problem, Apple would have gone out of business long ago. People like that aren't trying to have an honest discussion, they're just trying to bash something they don't like or understand.
There are many issues that need to be overcome in the Linux community before the Linux desktop can go mainstream, but we're not going to find answers to those problems by listening to these people.
Perhaps this wouldn't be the case if we fixed some of the issues in the article :)
There are plenty of people "on the fence" but problems mentioned in the article (among others) keep them away.
If the Linux desktop can't take off until my grandma is able to install it herself, then well, yeah it's truly fucked.
It also explains why Windows 11 (with WSL) is probably the best Linux distro for the desktop as it is already been 'painfully' admitted. [0]
I don't think you've thought this through. How many Windows users out there have installed it themselves? How many could install it themselves? How many could complete an installation if somebody else booted up the installer for them on a machine with a single empty hard drive?
The popularity of Windows and MacOS have nothing to do with how easy they are to install, or with "hardware support".
are you sure?
Windows is pre-installed on the majority of OEM desktops and laptops so there is no 'install' or 'install it themselves' step. Same for Apple computers with macOS and that is 100% a given for users.
ChromeOS succeeded due to this. But given that is going to be replaced by Fuchsia, we are just going to see Google putting Fuchsia on the desktop (and phones) instead.
The reasons why Google decided to migrate is another story but the hint is related to "hardware support" similar to how Apple supports their devices.
I can assume the company has done proper QA and testing to make sure that's the case.
If I want something to work on a typical linux installation, I have to dig through hardware wikis, pages of forum posts, and be ready to dive into config files in case the info above is wrong.
And even then there can be less of a guarantee
The year of the linux desktop will happen once Ubuntu or whatever distro is most popular has a logo that appears next to the windows and/or mac compatibility stickers.
And to add, if anything, we SHOULD be listening to geek enthusiasts if we want linux to go mainstream. Those are the people actually using it day to day, and the ones that will be installing it on other people's computers.
Do you really think we'll get to mainstream adoption by just ignoring issues techies face that a typical user would also face?
That's wrong and ignorant. I installed Kubuntu on my main desktop ~7 years ago, and have had zero compatibility or stability issues, even through 2 LTS upgrades. If everyone who wanted to try Linux used my exact hardware, the Linux desktop would not suddenly take off.
> And to add, if anything, we SHOULD be listening to geek enthusiasts if we want linux to go mainstream. Those are the people actually using it day to day, and the ones that will be installing it on other people's computers.
> Do you really think we'll get to mainstream adoption by just ignoring issues techies face that a typical user would also face?
Did you reply to the wrong person? I didn't say anything even remotely close to this.
> Who should know better than to install an operating system before checking for hardware support? Tech geeks/enthusiasts.
> That's why I can't take those people seriously. ... we're not going to find answers to those problems by listening to these people.
Am I missing something here? My point is issues techies face are the same as a non techie would. So why wouldn't you listen to that kind of feedback from techies?
It's not like they're complaining about kernel internals or architecture, they're complaining about user experience compared to other mainstream operating systems.
If a linux desktop distro can't or isn't willing to address that, then it's simply not designed for a typical user as much as people want it to be.
That last network card I bought that had a Tux on the box used an unmaintained GPL-but-out-of-kernel driver that no longer compiled on mainline kernels.
Not just some kind of pandering for market share to get linux users to buy it.
Not even then. I have a Ubuntu laptop direct from Dell (who has been selling Ubuntu laptops for 14 years), and every time I go to open it the battery is dead. So it's plugged in constantly. My cats love to sit on the closed lid because of how warm it is. Ostensibly it's asleep, but to the touch I can tell that it's running hot, and that's why it's dead within a few hours of being off the charger, even if it's not "on". I mean, it runs hotter sitting there idle and off than my new Surface does when it's on and compiling my Rust code. That's sad!
This is a laptop direct from a hardware manufacturer who supports Linux. This kind of thing was a problem when hibernation first became a thing. Okay, understandable. But 2+ decades later, in 2021, I can't purchase a Ubuntu laptop directly from a manufacturer that has this figured out. That's a problem for Linux. It's one thing to fall short. It's another to fall short for 2 decades.
I can expect to use the laptop until it packs up.
Ever opened bugzilla.kernel.org? Ever seen the number of regressions? In the past seven days alone:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/buglist.cgi?chfield=%5BBug%20cre...
Count the number of "stopped working" - at least a dozen and these are only from the people who have bothered to find the kernel bugzilla and file bug reports which is not an easy feat.
There's no such thing as "checking if your hardware is properly supported under Linux". Everything may stop working at any time.
On top of that why waste time installing a distro or playing around with display managers, Linux NVIDIA drivers when WSL does it all on Windows?
The fact is: WSL saves time and makes installing Linux redundant and actually a waste of time.
Oh dear.
Not sure what point you are making here. Yes, you can virtualize and OS and WSL is a nice way to do it?
Yes. That's the point. Installing Linux using WSL is several clicks away on the Microsoft Store, rather than wasting hours migrating, rebooting, formatting, dual-booting and then installing a Linux distro on the system.
WSL saves lots of time and makes installing Linux on another partition or in general a waste of time.
If I ever need to run an OS that spies on me, I'll use Windows, then WSL to tun Linux. But I don't want that, so I run Linux. It's freedom, which is more important for me.
You know, except for literally all the non-hardware related problems in that list.
Anything more concrete, please? The entire 12 thousand words piece cannot be wrong considering it's shared so much and contains over three thousand comments most of which share the spirit of the article.
Have you ever tried this? It's shockingly difficult. Even if someone says "yes this device works under Linux 100%" half the time you'll see ANOTHER post telling you it's garbage on Linux.
I "voted with my money", and the result is that my laptop, which is supposed to be the poster child of Linux compatibility, has at least one serious hardware compatibility problem out of the box, along with at least another minor one.
Say, I am buying Thinkpad T480s and Thinkpad X1 (2018). What would you suggest that I check?