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Comment by 0xbadcafebee | Hacker News Reader

> Today, it’s a little unusual for something you buy not to work with Linux

Err... no, it's definitely not unusual. I specifically spent a month looking for a laptop with Linux support just so I didn't have to go through the hell of unsupported hardware, and it's still not fully supported.

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If I install Ubuntu 25.10, I can't get camera effects (blurred background and so on) to work in Meet because hardware compositing (or something, I'm not entirely clear on the details[0][1]) doesn't work properly on the open Nvidia driver on Wayland. Wait I thought this was all supposed to be the future?

0. https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/issues/644 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1due6ni/hardware...

It's a recurring bug in chrome

If you don't mind me asking, what did you end up buying, and what was lacking support? I'd expect full support from one of the "Linux first" suppliers like System76.

I just got a ThinkPad E14 Gen 6 and the only thing I had to fix/install manually was the driver for the fingerprint reader (fprintd). Everything else just worked, including my docking station and ultra wide monitor.

It helps to look for things that have some level of official backing. Dell has some models for Ubuntu and Red Hat uses various ThinkPads for employee Linux laptops. (Lot more Macs as well when I left but still plenty of ThinkPads that are overwhelmingly Linux.)

MIPI camera on my 3 year old Thinkpad still does not work

Lots of things work out of the box, but yes, it's still far from being the default. Kensington is releasing an update to its Expert Mouse trackball. The MSRP looks to be USD$150, so not an inexpensive accessory. It supports Windows and Mac but has no Linux support. No doubt in time there will be community supported projects to give it functionality on Linux close to, but not entirely like, what it has on the other two OSes.

Been running Fedora on Dell XPS 13 for a couple years with zero problems.

Same. And then I upgraded to the new Dell 14 Pro Premium, where webcam does not work (as for any IPU7 laptop for that matter). The rest is fine though, but still annoying.

I now just use Linux in the WSL. I get Linux with a superior GUI.

Is Windows 10 still supported?

by WSL? Not my own experience, but I have couple of guys who still on Win10/WSL. Myself I've migrated to Win11 not sure when exactly, likely 4 years ago

Why did you just not buy a laptop from a supplier that preinstalled Linux?

I did. Still issues.

Not even high resolution screens work properly yet.

Wayland has done some progress, but still half of my applications look like sh when I use fractional scaling.

Linux is great if all you need is a terminal. Once you need a peripheral, then good luck, literally.

There’s no OS that doesn’t have problems with wireless headsets in Teams. Bluetooth and sound stacks is a badly/barely working combination everywhere. Hibernation is usually the test that fails the sound stacks everywhere.

literally 0 issues on my macbook

It has different issues, but wireless headsets nor hibernation are among them

> Linux is great if all you need is a terminal. Once you need a peripheral, then good luck, literally.

Just wait until you try this new Windows thing. Zero hardware support for anything.

>Wayland has done some progress, but still half of my applications look like sh when I use fractional scaling.

Do they look like shell, or like shit? You can use grownup words here.

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