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Comment by garbanz0 | Hacker News Reader

My experience leaving Windows was like yours... until I did a software upgrade or had to replace my graphics card, etc. Hours of fighting the command line, glitchy graphical bugs. For me, the desire to cultivate my linux computer like a garden ended up being a distraction from using my computer like the tool it is. Just my 2cents.

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When was the last time you tried Linux? I just replaced my entire computer (CPU, motherboard, GPU, etc) and my Debian (bookworm) installation booted with zero issues. No need to reinstall anything.

I certainly remember fighting with xorg.conf settings, graphics drivers, and kernel modules in the past. I haven't had to deal with troubles like that in nearly 10 years though.

> When was the last time you tried Linux?

Ugh. Like, literally every time someone talks about having problems with Linux this exact same sentence is said in response.

I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various devices and I still constantly run into issues. Constantly. It's great that you have zero issues, but please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.

Because 20 years ago using Linux meant that I had to deal with configuring ALSA, NDISWrapper, GRUB, CUPS, etc. whereas last night it took me less than 15 minutes to install Mint on a late-model ultrabook and have everything working perfectly. It's a real phenomenon.

Some vendors are better than others at Linux support. I would suggest sticking to Lenovo or Dell if you'd like a smooth experience.

I think its just a bit of a crapshoot with hardware. I'm running Mint right now and I love it, but hardware support isn't perfect:

- My AMD zen4 CPU still isn't fully supported by Mint's shipping kernel (5.15.0-56). It works today (including sleep states). But it took a month or two to get a kernel which supported sleep states correctly. And I still can't see CPU or motherboard temperatures.

- My keyboard and mouse don't work over bluetooth. I think its the vendors' fault, but I bet they'd both work fine work on macos or windows.

- My speakers randomly get all garbled and weird sometimes. I've figured out running `sudo killall pulseaudio` fixes it (until next time).

- I like using Apple's "magic touchpad". But the driver is nowhere near as good as Apple's. Sensitivity is all wrong in linux. It registers accidental light touches as clicks sometimes, and it just feels janky. And application support for smooth scrolling is all over the place - some apps support it perfectly and others (Firefox, IntelliJ) interpret any tiny single pixel scroll on the touchpad as a multi-line scroll. I've reverted to using a traditional mouse.

That said, some things have been a delight. My old AMD 480 graphics card worked perfectly out of the box, with no configuration required. When I upgraded out my motherboard and CPU a few months ago, the computer booted just fine with no reconfiguration or anything. It just took it all in stride. (I've still never seen windows handle that so well.)

I'm not surprised some people have no problems with desktop linux. But YMMV.

> I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various devices and I still constantly run into issues. Constantly. It's great that you have zero issues, but please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.

While I find this true on Linux, I find it more true on Windows and OS X nowadays.

The difference is that with Linux, there is probably a workaround. If I have an issue with Windows or OS X (nee macOS) and it's not affecting a million people, I'm simply screwed.

That's what drove me off of Windows and OS X.

There is a lot of Linux distros out there too.

Trying Debian Stable versus a bleeding edge Arch Linux will likely give wildly varying degrees and complexity of 'issues'.

What would you want them to do differently? They believe things have improved over time and want to share that information. I think it’s helpful but you seem to think it’s tiring or that they just shouldn’t?

If they think there has been a step change improvement in the linux experience then they should make that a falsifiable claim by specifying when it happened themselves.

I was using plain Ubuntu around 2020. Upgraded from an ancient GeForce to a pretty standard AMD graphics card and it totally wrecked my installation. While debugging in the command line, my screen was constantly flickering. Headache inducing. Then while trying to reinstall Ubuntu, I accidentally messed up my windows installation. It took a weekend to get everything back to normal, and it just wasn't worth it at all.

Wow that's really unfortunate. Recently with Fedora experienced the complete opposite with the same change, didn't even need to install drivers (or even remove the old ones), just worked out of the box. Long time I haven't used Ubuntu though. Biggest problem for me was the fact that the kernel was oftentimes too outdated (for my cutting edge needs), maybe that's why Fedora worked so well (Linux 6 already).

A live usb can have you back up and running in perhaps 30 mins. Haven’t had to suffer a broken install since live cds invented at the turn of the century.

Can't speak for the other guy but the latest Ubuntu update absolutely wrecked my desktop. No network, no graphics. It blew my mind because I haven't experienced anything like this in more than a decade.

This experience pushed me straight into rolling release territory but I'd imagine most people would go to MS immediately, or even Apple if PC gaming is not something they do

Not all distros are created equal. Not sure what the best is in this regard but Pop!_OS seems to handle video card drivers well. It has worked well for me.

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