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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

I left desktop Linux in 2010 because everything did not just work. Looking at the responses to your comment, it seems that basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always just work. If it's been true since 2010, I think the problem is systematic, and won't go away with "just one more year".

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> it seems that basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always just work

This is true. I've been using Ubuntu since 2006, but still see issues with

Wifi: Ubuntu 22 didn't work out of the box with a 2014 macbook air

Bluetooth: maddening trying to set "listening" mode instead of headset mode on JBL earphones - it seems to choose randomly every time it connects, and the setting isn't exposed in any UI

Sleep: I don't think I've ever seen sleep/suspend working reliably on a Linux laptop, to the point I don't know the difference between the two. I have one thinkpad which never wakes from sleep, and also never fully shuts down on system shutdown without a long press of the power button.

I accept all this so that I don't have to wait seconds for basic UI things to happen, like switching virtual desktop (osx) and opening the application launcher (windows).

Counterpoint: I've been using enterprise thinkpads for the past 15 years and never had issues with wifi, or suspend. So again, it's about how you choose your hardware so it works with Linux...

I've also used enterprise thinkpads for the last 10 years. No wifi issues on those, but sleep and bluetooth issues as described. I have no idea if Windows would have been more reliable.

I had a Thinkpad T480s that was absolutely perfect with Linux (Mint), although very underpowered, but that was due to Intel CPU.

This year I got a T14s Gen6 AMD as a replacement, and it's essentially unusable on Debian-based distros (Ubuntu, Mint), but works fine with Fedora and with Windows.

On Ubuntu and Mint, X just locks up every 80 seconds or so, and I have to hard-reboot it (or switch ttys and restart X). Nothing in syslog, nothing in dmesg, nothing in X.org.log to show what might be going on.

I have the T14s Gen3 AMD and everything just works with CachyOS and Fedora. In general I tend to use as recent kernel as possible with AMD. They do update their drivers a lot in every Linux version.

If you mean with ”just working” that any distro works out-of-the-box with any piece of hardware ever existing, then obviously no, that won’t happen. It won’t happen with any OS ever.

I have never had any issues with any Linux-distro regarding WiFi. Most hardware I have used has been largely compatible even. Maybe I have just been lucky, but it seems there’s millions of us who are really lucky these days.

What has also changed from 2010’s is that the documentation like Arch wiki is a lot better. You can also ask an LLM to help you configure things - obvs the docs are better and safer - so if and when you do have a problem, there’s actually sources to help you fix it.

A lot of the WiFi and BT issues were due to proprietary firmware blobs which weren't included in package management repos either due to licensing issues or decision not to pollute OSS repos with nonfree software.

This has mostly been solved by either putting them in the nonfree repos or just the fact that WiFi hardware vendors aren't using such stuff anymore.

I still remember pulling firmware blobs for my Broadcom cards, then it magically worked fine. It was far from trivial and I think that's what caused a lot of people who tried Linux on laptops in early 2000s to turn away.

> it seems that basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always just work

This is why I don't use Windows. Early last year I paid for a copy of "Windows 10", and it didn't support most of the hardware in my laptop. Even plugging in a mouse I had to use keyboard shortcuts to let it load a "driver", and after that it still didn't support the scroll wheel. Wifi didn't work at all, and wired network was painfully slow. It did at least support FHD resolution in 24-bit colour but very slowly.

My audio interface was completely unsupported, my MIDI interfaces were completely unsupported. Eventually I gave up attempting to run it, wiped the laptop again, reinstalled Ubuntu, and went for Bitwig instead of Ableton, and I've had no problems since.

Maybe one day we'll see the year of Windows on the desktop, but this isn't it yet.

This was true in 2010. I use to have a USB wifi adapter that was specifically meant to make sure linux would always work. I lost that adapter years ago.

I can't remember the last time I tried a distro that didn't just work on a random computer with a random wifi but it has been several years now.

Nvidia cards on the other hand...last year I had to try about 10 distros before I found something that wasn't a huge pain in the ass.

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