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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

That is the only usable way for Linux Desktop on laptops after 20 years going for it.

This is completely untrue. I had a Asus laptop in 2003 in which everything worked out of the box under Red Hat Linux, save for video acceleration, but mine was a unfortunate model since most colleagues had no problem with their much better laptops. A couple years later I bought a (much more expensive) wonderful Fujitsu Siemens P7010 which supported Debian Linux out of the box 100% after I provided the firmware for the wireless card (a few Kb download). That machine lasted almost 10 years and was one of the most beautiful machine I ever owned. Then I purchased another Fujitsu i5-something laptop, and again: everything worked out of the box under Debian, and now my girlfriend uses it under Manjaro. Then I purchased a X240 i5 1080p Thinkpad with additional bigger battery for a whopping 8-9 hours of continuous use, again 100% working under Debian Linux, plus 4 or 5 netbooks, all 100% supported. I could count other models I installed to friends, colleagues and relatives, all perfectly supported. Linux supports a lot of hardware if you don't rush to buy the very last model, which wouldn't be advisable anyway for other reasons.

So you had issues but it isn't true,....

I'm a happy native Linux desktop user for almost that long. Preferred it to windows. Let's not exaggerate about "only usable".

My experience with Linux since 1995, kind of proves otherwise, I lost track on hand holding Linux on laptops, including those sold with Linux pre-installed.

Perhaps you chose wrong models? My Librem 15 is flawless with Linux (suspend and everything else works in 100% cases).

Yes, but this doesn't prove that Linux desktop is only usable as WSL any more than my experience proves that windows is only usable as wine. You didn't enjoy the experience - that's ok.

I've got zero problems on a T490. All I did was grab the nixos-hardware module for it and off I went.

Maybe don't buy hardware that other people haven't tested first? Some vendors pre-install or announce Linux support but don't actually have anywhere near proper support.

Like the Linux problems on Dell XPS models?

Yes, IIRC that was some of the models shipping with a non-Intel network card, not all were affected. Same with the Framework and its power states not working.

Unfortunately Linux "support" means little, you have to go by other people's experiences with the specific laptop or at least the specific hardware pieces used by it. But if you check before you buy, which is a pretty trivial affair for anyone tech-savvy enough to manage their own Linux install, or if you're careless and lucky, things go swimmingly.

There are happy DOS users.

I've got four laptops running linux, with all their features working. I stuck a USB stick with Ubuntu/Pop OS on it and booted, they ran and everything worked.

Thinkpads are famous for working great with Linux. The HP and Asus that I had worked great until their hardware failed.

it's worked out of the box on every ThinkPad I've ever purchased

Ubuntu works like a charm on an HP Envy x360 13.

My Asus 1215 B, sold with Linux pre-installed has a different opinion on the matter.

If you think pre-installed linux is bad, wait until you try pre-installed windows.

I have experienced this. Thinkpad E480, sold with pre-installed windows 10. At some point got a Windows update, and suddenly it frequently goes to BSOD, especially after sleep mode.

Works great on professional graphics workstation laptops.

This is simply not true. I have been using Linux (Ubuntu) on my work laptop (Dell) for at least four years, and have used Linux on my personal laptop for much longer. Please don't spread FUD.

Exactly. WSL2 effectively makes Windows 10/11 the best Linux distro out there without all the steps of formatting, wiping and backing up disks and then installing it.

the problem with that "distro" is the window manager sucks

The filesystem is horrible too.

Drivers - also not great. Left up to the manufacturers, no commitment to code quality, closed source, and often comes with bloatware.

Then after all those 'problems' I should be seeing tons of users choosing a Linux Desktop distro (which one out of millions) mass migrating out of Windows by now. Why is that still not the case yet after 20 years?

It seems that after 20 years, these users still do not care enough to do any of that and WSL2 has only given a reason to make backing up / migrating / wiping / installing a Linux Desktop distro even less worth it these days.

Why do you think they aren't? There's a massive gaming on Linux movement which is only going up, and Chromebooks are outselling Apple Macs. Most main OEMs sell Linux-compatible devices, that come with Linux preinstalled.

So when we say 'Linux' we're now talking about 'Chromebooks' with ChromeOS.

Not only they defeated the purpose of someone else's point on getting rid of 'closed source' and 'spyware' controlled by Google, it is already at risk of ending up getting replaced by Fuchsia but may still be called 'ChromeOS' and it won't be based on Linux. That is my bet on this decade.

I still don't see any evidence of Windows being challenged by any Linux Desktop distro other than being used in WSL2. That is it.

20 years for 1% increase, sooo massive.

Chromebooks aren't Linux, the userspace runs on the Web Platform, and Crostini is no different from WSL 2.

> Chromebooks aren't Linux

pretty certain they are

let me guess... Android phones aren't Linux either?

or the millions of Dell/HP servers running nginx/Java/Postgres/...?

> Let me guess... Android phones aren't Linux either?

Exactly, ask the Termux guys how much fun they are having obeying to this set of API restrictions,

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis

Do you see any Linux APIs there? I don't.

And just for the case you are feeling clever,

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-...

> or the millions of Dell/HP servers running nginx/Java/Postgres/...?

We are not speaking about servers on a thread about laptops and desktop computers.

It is quite clear that UNIX owns the server room.

how many raw NT kernel APIs do your typical Win32 programs call?

probably zero?

so I guess Win32 programs aren't really Windows programs then?

Win32 running on top of NT is no different to the Android API running on top of the Linux kernel

Whatever makes you feel happy, beware not to stumble on the fuchsia carpet on the way out.

what a fantastic rebuttal

watch out for the Wine stain

There are marvelous cleaning products for that, you should inform yourself.

2% market share on the desktop market, or people giving big bucks to Apple instead of supporting Linux laptop OEMs, don't need rebutals, they are well known facts.

As for Android and ChromeOS, keep padding yourself on the back, maybe one day you can run Gimp on them without layers of VM and containers.

I think Windows being a product of a big company also played a role. It mainly came pre-installed on most device. Because Microsoft pushes for it, and user, especially the non-technical one, won't bother to install something else on their machine. So, for most computer user, there is just no other choice.

Who cares?

You're making the presumption that more popular is better. You're also heavily implying that linux desktop users should care that it's less popular - I genuinely don't. 2022 is another year of the linux desktop for me, and I'm so glad to be off windows again.

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