Hacker News Reader

Comment by latentcall | Hacker News Reader

What display servers, drivers do you need to mess with? I have a modern Dell laptop and everything worked immediately. Display, WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, storage, sleep mode, good battery life, every port worked, the webcam worked. This was on Fedora. The case is the same for Debian on a different Lenovo laptop.

I know Linux has this reputation for being difficult to use, no hardware support, etc and if this were 2009 I might agree with that. However, Linux couldn’t be easier to use right now.

Wayland works fine. Pipewire? My speakers on the laptop work good and plugged into a dock with conventional speakers works fine.

I’ve seen this repeated over and over and I don’t believe people are lying, I’m sure some have had the experience recently but I’d like to know what hardware they’re using.

The only reason I can see to use Windows is software support for something proprietary.

View on HN

We have Lenovo Thinkpads at work, which are actually certified for Linux but have known compatibility issues with Bluetooth audio there. I don't remember the exact details, but basically the end result is the Linux users here only have wired headphones.

And if you care about dedicated graphics, especially Nvidia, those drivers have a very different level of support for Windows.

If you care about obscure cases, I have some really cheap Asus laptop (almost a netbook) where Linux mostly works, but the fans stop spinning any time it wakes from sleep, until the next reboot. Somehow not an issue in Windows.

I quickly threw Fedora on a 6-year-old Microsoft Surface Go LTE, and the only thing that didn't work work was the sim card. Everything else was perfect, including touchscreen.

> I have a modern Dell laptop

That's the problematic part to me personally. I want a HDPI convertible/tablet form factor, that means no DELL, and linux support is currently not an option.

I had high hopes for the 12" Framework, but again it's resolution is 1200p, which is so much less than a Surface Pro for instance.

I installed Kubuntu 24 on a generic laptop (Machreator N17) and it worked fine other than having to disable D3cold in the BIOS so Wi-Fi works when waking from sleep. I did spend hours before the BIOS setting trying alternate rtw_8821 drivers to no avail.

Bluetooth support is still a shit show if you don't buy a laptop that has been in some way developed for linux (if not for your current model, then for a model using similar components). Alternatively, buying a custom bluetooth usb adapter may work but only on a supported distro and only ever with an older bluetooth protocol.

Same goes for WiFi. Good luck trying to get WiFi6 to work properly, ignoring the fact that you have to go out of your way to find an adapter that will even work in linux.

I don't think I've ever seen a device where Bluetooth works 100% of the time. I had issues on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS.

I have a Lenovo laptop where Bluetooth works perfect. I even had a Bluetooth mouse by Logitech that could switch between BT and the logi reciever, so I was able to use it on two computers back and forth with a button press. It instant connected to laptop, took ~1 second to connect to the proprietary receiver.

Maybe a fluke, because the keyboard died on that laptop. Just like every other Lenovo I've owned.

Never buying another one even if it has the exact specs I need when I am shopping for a great price, which is how they've gotten me 3 times now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com