It is worth being a bit careful, but that basically boils down to doing a search for the models you're looking at to identify any particular pitfalls, and you may in particular want to pay attention to the graphics and wifi chipsets. Not so much because you're likely to have any major problems, as because there are annoying quirks with some chipsets from time to time.
OpenSUSE 13.1 was a disaster: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=835277#c31
Mint 16's installer had problems: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=153379&p=80...
OpenSUSE 12.3 worked, but I had to mess around to get WiFi working: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=835277#c33 and the touchpad still has issues: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=869722 and there is other weird behavior, like the laptop screen not turning off when the laptop is in a docking station with the lid closed (did not have this problem with OpenSUSE 10.2), and the encrypted partition password prompt being off the screen if an external monitor is plugged in: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=862961
I'm a big fan of Linux, but things do not seem to have improved over the last seven years. It just feels sloppy and unstable. I'm sure some things have improved, but too much feels unpolished. Maybe I just have bad luck, but I was talking to a guy the other day who has been using Linux since 1996 who had the same impression (he was having problems with disk corruption on a desktop installation).
Is this a conclusion completely drawn from your trying to install two versions of Linux on a particular laptop? If so, I'd say it's a lot of generalization for a single data point.
But for everyone else I think that's enough data because that's how a user gets to use linux: given a laptop, pick random distro, try, if success: :) else: end. Unless we have linux laptops widely available.
Big fan of linux here, too
That works for me a vast majority of the time, and isn't a standard that either Windows or Macs are held to.
Buy a ZaReason or System76 laptop with Linux preinstalled and support, then compare the experiences if you want to call Linux sloppy. You wouldn't dismiss Android because you had a hard time installing it on your iPhone, or if you do, iOS should likewise be judged due to the difficulty in installing it on a Nexus.
Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure saying that would be "enough data" for someone, but it shouldn't be. Because, in fact, things have improved. It's pretty common to see that something doesn't work (both on Linux and Windows), but it's almost always can be fixed both on Linux and Windows. But what surprised me is the fact that everything just works out of the box (I mean in sense of hardware support) now on Linux more often than on Windows. It wasn't like that not so long time ago. There are few quite common problems (UEFI stuff, Nvidia drivers) that are quite "linux-specific", but range of supported right out of the box devices improved dramatically.
Also, it's not just install problems, and not just the problems that I listed in my original post. It's the fact that desktop search doesn't seem to be able to search the contents of my LibreOffice files when it worked just fine in OpenSUSE 10.2 (I've now taken to using "deepgrep" from the command line when I need to search my spreadsheets). It's the fact that task icons on the KDE panel sometimes end up on top of each other. It's the fact that when I leave the computer idle for a little while it tells me that it is locked and a password must be entered, but simply touching any key gets me right in (making the user think the computer is locked and it is safe to walk away from it when it isn't - nasty from a security standpoint). It's the fact that when I ssh into another computer and hit CTRL-D to log out ssh gets stuck and I have to kill it. It's the fact that it sometimes gets stuck when shutting down, so I have to hold the power button down to shut it off (which makes me worry about the possibility of corrupting something). Like I said, it feels sloppy.
That a random distro fails to work on a random laptop means that it's Monday. OS X wouldn't have installed at all, and the wrong version of Windows may have failed even harder.
If you know you're going to use linux, look up the laptop you're buying. But as a general rule I find if it's Intel all the way down it tends to work well (so ultrabooks work particularly well).
You do realize that the laundry list of flaky behavior described in the post are replying to has nothing to do with the hardware (except maybe the shutdown issues), right?
Also, as I stated in my original post this laptop was certified for Ubuntu (I found that out before purchasing), so I did keep in mind that I was going to install Linux on it when purchasing, and I was expecting drivers to not be a problem. You can call me a fool for expecting OpenSUSE to work on it when it was certified for Ubuntu, but there is only so much you can confirm in a advance (and, Ubuntu-derived Mint failed on it).
OS X wouldn't have installed at all, and the wrong version of Windows may have failed even harder.
This misses my point. I realize that Linux manages to accomplish quite a lot without the support from hardware vendors that Windows enjoys. But, between 1995 and 2007 there was a huge amount of improvement in "just works" and polish for Linux. Much to my disappointment, I don't think there has been that kind of improvement between 2007 and 2014. As I said from the beginning, my experience may just be a fluke. Or, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's caused by Novell no longer being behind OpenSUSE. Maybe it is caused by resources being spread across too many distros so none of them get enough polish. Maybe it is caused by a focus on selling enterprise licenses creating a disincentive to fix bugs in free versions. Or, maybe it's all just in my head.
hardware
>and the touchpad still has issues: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=869722
hardware
>and there is other weird behavior, like the laptop screen not turning off when the laptop is in a docking station with the lid closed
hardware
>(did not have this problem with OpenSUSE 10.2), and the encrypted partition password prompt being off the screen if an external monitor is plugged in
hardware (questionable: more like how KDE deals with hardware. I don't know KDE, I's suggest switching to something that doesn't do what KDE did.)
I can't see anything that you mentioned what wasn't hardware related. Also, I don't actually know what Ubuntu certification entails, but I agree with you that it isn't meant to guarantee that OpenSUSE and Mint run perfectly.
> I can't see anything that you mentioned what wasn't hardware related.
I listed five bugs that have nothing to do with hardware, and you didn't address any of them. I really think you replied to the wrong post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7458973
Why didn't you try it with the distribution that claims to work with it? That would make your anecdote a valid argument.