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Comment by MathMonkeyMan | Hacker News Reader

Buy a ThinkPad. Install Ubuntu. Don't think about it again for 6-10 years.

As long as one doesn't use bleeding edge technology like fingerprint scanners or webcam logins.

I finally found something that worked with my fingerprint scanner, only to learn that the scan can't unlock the keyring or something -- it's a password but not actually a password. So I'd unlock the desktop with the fingerprint scanner, and then an indeterminate number of seconds later something would pop up asking me to type a password for my keyring.

So now, instead, I just type my password to begin with, and it's all gravy. I'd have to type it anyway.

I have a T480/Ubuntu-Gnome at work and a T480/Debian-KDE at home, both work fantastic, however for some reason the Lenovo Universal USB-C docks with 2 1080p external displays connected (1 HDMI and 1 DP) cause a lot of Gnome crashes when docking, and when it happens, I lose external displays and/or the usb keyboard, and have to spend 15 minutes fiddling around deactivating and reactivating in settings, or unplugging the dock PSU, and other desperate methods. Windows users don't have these issues for some reason, and other usb-c docks seem to work better most of the time, with exceptions.

There's also specific issues unrelated to Thinkpads, like bluetooth headphones microphones, Bose QC 35 II can't be used with mic over bluetooth, maybe Pipewire will improve this, maybe not, IDK.

Apart from Thinkpads, I also have a gaming desktop PC with an Nvidia RTX, I don't use Windows anymore, Steam, Proton, WINE, third-party launchers like Heroic work wonders for gaming, but I can't use Wayland at all, it's Xorg only (probably because of Nvidia drivers), otherwise it's flickering and crashes. And you can't screenshare whole screen easily in Wayland yet.

We're getting there and right now, I think I'm better off on GNU/Linux even with all these issues than with the enshittified Windows, but there's still a long way to go, things are moving slowly, and somethings the whole Linux community relies on unpaid work from one dude that delayed good bluetooth audio support by years because someone insulted him in a PR comment.

Fair points. I've had some frustrations with bluetooth; but, to be fair, same things happen for me on my Windows box (can't use high quality playback and mic at the same time).

Gaming I don't even attempt on Linux, though I've met two or three people now who are convinced you can 100% do it these days with Wine-based platforms and the right drivers.

Docks, in my limited experience, are a shit show on any system. I use Lenovo's thunderbolt dock (the expensive one) with my X1 Carbon Gen 6. It mostly works. I've been having problems with HDMI lately, no idea why.

FWIW, I used to have a super duper high end MacBook from work. It had similar problems. :shrug:

Nice to know MacBooks also can have this kind of problems, I was under the impression that if you paid the price, walled gardens and controlled hardware would make life easy.

Computers are hard. Could be worse, though, in alternate universes, major OSes never agreed on USB and other standards.

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