Hacker News Reader

Comment by nix23 | Hacker News Reader

Linux, really has a problem and no one seems to care, if your HW is to old you have a problem, like my T61p RHEL9 panics a boot-time, but no problem, the kernel is anyway to new for the nvidia 240 series of drivers.

In the article the opposite....hint..hat would be no problem with windows...something has so change in the Linux-Mindset

View on HN

Linux not working, and Windows working in a situation is a single datapoint. Two things:

1. Current Windows is supposed to be a supported platform by virtually all current hardware, because Windows is the de-facto consumer and office platform for decades. Linux, in comparison, is an aftermarket solution.

2. Windows, as a platform, is rife with problems, driver problems included. The word "driver" is present 12 times in this collection, for an example: https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html (compared to the 46 times in the respective Linux article)

The Linux mindset, whatever it's supposed to mean, is perfectly fine. It works well, since its inception, as evidenced by the incredible amount of mindshare that goes into Linux - ranging from hobbyist interest to enterprise and government involvement.

>The Linux mindset, whatever it's supposed to mean, is perfectly fine. It works well, since its inception, as evidenced by the incredible amount of mindshare that goes into Linux - ranging from hobbyist interest to enterprise and government involvement.

Yeah on the server, not so much on the Desktop.

No, it works well, for a long time now, on desktop too. I'm using it personally and professionally, 500+ of my colleagues use it in a professional capacity. Various businesses and governments also build their systems on it. The system is capable, and it's not being held back by technical issues, of which all operating systems have many. And it's especially not held back by "mindset" - if anything, it's supported by its mindset. Its reason to exist, and why it's continuing to be attractive is the mindset.

> I'm using it personally and professionally, 500+ of my colleagues use it in a professional capacity

Yeah sure...all of them Googler's right?

No, I'd rather not say, but it's a large software company. Windows is the default option, and the policy allows for Linux, upon user request.

> Linux, really has a problem and no one seems to care, if your HW is to old you have a problem,

Mac OS Monterrey do not work to well on a powerbook G4 and even a Macbook contemporary to your T61P is not supported by post 2015 Mac OS releases.

I don't think Windows 11 works to well on a laptop of that era either.

I am pretty sure you can get a working T61P with some sort of Linux/BSD distro and security updates one way or another. It might means losing 3D acceleration support but I don't think you have any plan to play the latest AAA games on a 2007 laptop either.

So what is your point?

>I don't think Windows 11 works to well on a laptop of that era either.

Windows 10 works perfectly.

>plan to play the latest AAA games on a 2007 laptop either.

Well yes i do actually, like Morrowind...but hey who talks about the latest AAA Games, Games from 2001 need Acceleration too.

So what's your point?

I'm not sure. I challenge you to put a windows 7 or 10 boot disk into a brand new PC and see if you don't encounter any issues in the installation. I definitely recall running into problems. One of the big ones was often no working wifi/ethernet drivers, so you couldn't even install new drivers.

I could install Windows2000 on that machine, it was delivered with Windows7 and Windows10 works too (lenovo T61p)...the Ethernet drivers are really not a problem and wireless works without problems even on Windows2000, same with the Nvidia drivers...works on all 3 Windows's.

Challenge Accepted and won.

>(lenovo T61p)

Not the person you're responding to but I wouldn't call a T61p brand new, it was released in 2012 after all.

Yes let's throw it away because Linux is like Windows...just buy new stuff, 10 years is really to old.

Linux is not the problem, Linux is perfectly fine. Just Debian is the problem.

Funny then that my example was with redhat linux....but as always, they are a problem too right, just your distribution X is the best right?

RHEL 9 is similar to Debian, too old. Arch and Fedora don't have any problems. Well, Arch got an amdgpu wakeup issue, but they do have proper docs to fix it.

RHEL9 is based on Fedora 34, and btw like i wrote the kernel is to -->NEW<-- for nvidia driver 340. But hey in typical Linux fashion, just use distro x i "never had that problem"...oh btw i use arch...

A lot of different entities put work into a Linux distribution. In OP's case, it's probably Debian that's at fault, or rather, it's Debian who could fix the issue. The CPU doesn't support every distro explicitly, just Ubuntu and RHEL. OP is using Debian. Therefore it's either Debian's, or OP's problem.

In your case, it sounds like RHEL either had a regression, or decided not to support the architecture anymore. The laptop's release year is 2007, which is not too long ago, so I'd expect Linux to work on the machine. If this is a single incident, it might be an issue with the kernel, the distro, the particular media it's written on, or the machine itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com