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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu LTS is the only GNU/Linux distribution that keeps me on Linux on one of my laptops (an Asus netbook).

All the other distributions fail short of 100% laptop support out of the box.

As I am no longer on my 20's with lots of time to spare, either it works out of the box, or it doesn't. I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects just to get something working.

Or just trying out distributions to see how they look like. My first distribution, Slackware 2.0, was a long time ago.

Ubuntu is great and I do like Unity as desktop environment on my netbook.

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I'm in my 20s and I feel the same way. It was fun initially to play around with different distributions, but I liked my work and I wanted to get things done without having to spend unnaturally long amounts of time setting things up.

In my case, I frequently update to x.04 releases or x.10 if they are more stable for updated packages that I rely on.

Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait.

Yeah, we get it. You are really worried about yourself and your time. Yeah, we get it that you want to make a generalization that "All the other distributions" don't have 100% support. Which is obviously not true by any respect. I'm typing on one right now that both Debian and Arch work without issue.

"I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects just to get something working." It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme?

What is it with Linux that someone really needs to hop in an talk about what's wrong with it, no matter what the topic beyond the mere mention of Linux?

Edit: To clarify a bit about this silly meme. Many people find some hunk of junk that the don't use anymore and that they never thought about working with Linux when they bought it. Then they are surprised it doesn't just work. To me, that isn't much different then buying a PC and trying to install OSX on it and complaining about how it didn't just magically work. Many laptops and desktops are certified and targeted to work with Linux. From many of the large manufacturers. You obviously might have trouble if you are trying to cram something onto something that it is not designed for. Are you even an engineer? How do you not realize that?

> It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme?

Maybe with desktops, but even just last year, trying to get wi-fi setup on my beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell. Multiple programs to do the same thing, and none of them work quite the same. So running scripts from the command line with the usual commands wouldn't work, so then the only thing that did work was the gui. But what if you don't want to use the gui, because you want the thing to reconnect automatically after power down (an option the gui didn't provide)?

Maybe running ubuntu, this wouldn't have been an issue, but beagle bone had archlinux, and then I tried multiple versions for the raspberry pi, most of them debian based.

So, no. This meme won't die just because most versions work out of box for desktops. It would have to work out of box for anything linux runs on.

Sure! So how did you go with running Windows or Mac OSX or Android on that Beagle Bone or Raspberry Pi?

Linux is the _only_ OS in existence that can run across the variety of hardware it hits. Whether it's from phones through to Supercomputers. Funnily enough when you get to different bits of the hardware spectrum you have to have different skills and capabilities - running on custom ARM hardware doesn't count as standard.

"trying to get wi-fi setup on my beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell"

Can I ask which wifi card/chipset you chose? Was it one that you researched and found out was 100% Linux compatible? Assuming you did do that and didn't find something that was barely hacked to together to have partial support did you actually find editing /etc/network/interfaces with the text below difficult?

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

    wpa-ssid GUESS_WHAT_GOES_HERE

    wpa-psk PSK_MEANS_PASSWORD

I'm going to assume you chose a wifi solution that was not 100% linux compatible. One that had a weird firmware blob or something else. My point is that I watched someone spend a week trying to get a wifi card working on Linux. He called me up for help so I looked up his Laptop and wifi card. I went on Ebay and spent $7(with shipping) for a card that was 100% compatible, swapped it out and it just worked.

Yeah, I have to agree with this. I used GNU/Linux on my laptop exclusively when I was in grad school, and every "sudo apt-get update && upgrade" felt like taking a turn in Russian roulette. The generic device drivers were almost always a nightmare. Power management was abysmal. And this was on a Lenovo machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly.

While I never did have a problem that wasn't eventually solvable, I finally came to accept that I really don't like playing sysadmin, and would much rather know that I can pick up my machine, perform library updates, and actually go work on something at a moments notice.

At least on a laptop. On a desktop machine, I'm willing to be much more patient.

Just for my own curiosity, did you intentionally chose a Laptop that you knew was 100% compatible to begin with?

Edit to the downvoter who can't use their words: The above comment said "Lenovo machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly". Seems like a relevant question as to whether that meant 100% compatible via Lenovo's declaration or online research and an educated guess. It was a sincere question as Lenovo does provide specific information about Linux compatibility.

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd031426

Mind explaining to me what I did wrong there?

@Sibling comment: The Linux Laptop resource websites can't keep pace with the short lifecycles of the typical laptop. It's either pay $400 for this outdated laptop I know will work out-of-the-box with *nix, or spend $300 on a machine that's 1.2x faster with unknown compatibility.

« And this was on a Lenovo machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly.»

I don't know where you got that info, lenovo laptops have actually been getting away from being linux friendly, at least in my own experience over 5 generations of thinkpads.

Agreed. Desktops? Great compatibility. Laptops? Not so much. This August, in 2014 for those keeping score at home, I had to create a custom LiveCD of Fedora 20 to even get the distro to boot! The vanilla FC20 LiveCD images were shipping a Linux kernel a few weeks to old to work on the new, generic, bare-bones Asus laptop.

The custom spin downloaded all the packages from the updates repository, loading an ever-so-slightly newer kernel that played nice with that Asus's particular UEFI/Intel Haswell combo.

That computer's working great after doing that, but not everyone can be expected to: A) Troubleshoot why a "should work every time" plain-jane OS image won't even boot--kernel panics in 2014? Who knew, right? B) Figure out how to create a more up-to-date version of that image

UEFI and secure boot and on and on... It's not ~2005-2011 anymore, laptops are a lot more complicated and more diverse than they used to be a very short time ago.

Was your Laptop certified by the manufacturer or distribution to run Linux? Does OSX work on that Laptop out of the box?

I have no experience running or installing OSX and am utterly unequipped to answer that question. I also have no idea what "certified by the manufacturer or distribution to run Linux" means. As I explained elsewhere, there is such a staggering amount of proprietary hardware in use in laptops, none of the Linux Laptop authorities can keep up.

I can, however, answer your unspoken question: Will Windows run on it? Well... Yeah. Windows runs on everything powered by an x86 processor. Windows 8.1 came installed on the machine.

The average computer user can't understand the concept that a certain operating system will not work on their computer. You pick a machine out from an array of nearly-identical machines, then start using Windows 8 or OSX 10.x as soon as you open up the cardboard box and plug in the computer.

My question is that I don't understand why someone buys a Windows laptop expects Linux to run on it perfectly. It's the same to me as expecting OSX to run on a Windows Laptop or to install Windows on a Macbook Air. Why wouldn't you just buy a Laptop with Linux pre-installed or at least a Laptop that is certified to be 100% compatible? And if you now try to say that there aren't as many options, take a look at how many options Apple provides to run OSX.

Links to certifications: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/models/?query=&c... https://access.redhat.com/search/browse/certified-hardware/#... http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd031426

Links to "open up the cardboard box and plug in the computer" http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314... https://system76.com/

The problem is not "few options", the problem is "few GOOD options".

With Apple laptops, there is limited choice sure, but the choices are all pretty darn good. With Linux preinstalled laptops, they are entirely uninspiring computers.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...

The Dell one is nice. Are you sure the X1 comes with linux though? It looks like the only choices are W7 & W8

not related to your comment, but: I can't reply to most comments in this thread, I can't post a top level comment and I can't down-vote any comments... I guess my account has been flagged somehow... I can do all these things in other posts.

> Will Windows run on it? Well... Yeah. Windows runs on everything powered by an x86 processor.

I've tried installing Windows 7 on an old Dell laptop a while ago. I got it working eventually, but had to hunt around for drivers for various things -- rather important things, like network, and video. In the end, I had to persuade some download site to give me the Windows XP drivers for the video card, and it worked with that (which, btw, is pretty awesome).

Of course, this is just anecdote, just like any story about Linux not working immediately on some modern laptop is -- but my experience is that these kinds of issues are much rarer than 10 years ago. Especially with Linux (with which I have most experience), but also with Windows.

> UEFI and secure boot and on and on... It's not ~2005-2011 anymore, laptops are a lot more complicated and more diverse than they used to be a very short time ago.

I think rather the opposite is true. The post-ultrabook era has seen an increasingly uniform PC laptop environment. There are far more laptops you can buy now that are well set up to run linux than ever before because the parts are less likely to come from TinyCompany Electronics, LLC. Taiwan and more likely to come from, say, Intel. An Ultrabook-labelled laptop post-2011 is practically guaranteed to do a good job with linux.

This analogy to OS X is completely unreasonable. OS X software and hardware is co-designed to work together, by a single manufacturer/developer. In fact, you could even say that OS X is specifically designed not to work on any hardware not made by Apple. Creating a "hackintosh" desktop is seriously difficult business.

Linux and Windows are nothing like that. With both, the ecosystem of hardware is quite large, and there is an implicit expectation that any OS should work on any machine (ignoring edge cases like embedded hardware). With Windows, this assumption works well because all hardware manufacturers test their machines with Windows. This is almost never the case with Linux, where even if you are lucky to find that a manufacturer has tested with one Linux distro, they might not have tested with your preferred distro. What are you going to do if your distro "isn't certified"? Just walk away? That's not a reasonable choice for many people.

Creating a "hackintosh" desktop is seriously difficult business.

I did it recently, and it's not that hard, if you stick with a subset of hardware known to work. Yeah, upgrades from each dotdot release take a little longer, but it's totally worth it.

Do you mean like this? http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

"implicit expectation that any OS should work on any machine" Really? I don't think that And OSX can run on many Windows machines http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible

You are talking about 6 years ago.

Also: "What are you going to do if your distro "isn't certified"?" Buy something that is.

This is at the top because these complaints are valid even today. Linux doesn't cover the things I have with anything even approaching the level of convenience of Windows.

I say this not because I don't use Linux. I love Linux! I love it so much I just spent some serious time building Linux From Scratch[0] on a laptop so I can know and understand it better. I develop exclusively on * nix platforms, and I use it for everything I can.

However, my main machine is still a Windows machine with Cygwin installed. I do this because my main workflow is to use 3 portrait monitors[1] for effectively 6 workspaces visible simultaneously[2].

To get this effect, I use Nvidia surround to combine these three monitors into a single continuous desktop, then use a program called "WinSplit Revolution" to manage my windows.

I've messed around with countless tools and spent weeks worth of time trying to replicate such an environment on Linux, but I can't. The Nvidia drivers don't support surround, or if they do it's through a nearly undocumented series of settings. I can't find a program to arrange windows this way, after trying tiling window manager after tiling window manager. And, even in more mainstream settings like installing Ubuntu on my new laptop, things like my mouse pad STILL don't work.

But on Windows, I can install everything quickly and all my edge cases are covered. It may be to much to ask for Linux to cover all these, so I'm not disparaging it. I just don't use it for this case.

All I'm saying is, don't be so quick to ignore complaints about the state of things. The world of desktop Linux could still use a lot of work.

[0] -- http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

[1] -- http://i.imgur.com/z4dRbll.jpg

[2] -- http://i.imgur.com/FEumEXi.png

> Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait.

And then you took the bait!

Also Asus netbook + Ubuntu

I've found unity is a bit heavy for my poor little netbook, and have found xfce a bit better for performance.

I use Linux mint (which is based on Ubuntu) for my main dev machine. The only limitation I've had with it is video- it can't handle the goPro stuff very well.

You might like Linux Lite for a netbook (based on 14.04 LTS):

https://www.linuxliteos.com/linuxlite.html

Looks good- thanks for that.

Also ASUS netbook + Ubuntu LTS, flawless for years, to this day. Now it's mostly elementaryOS (also based off Ubuntu LTS) on every desktop/notebook, works just as well and it feels even lighter.

I've been using every LTS release since the first ever, and I can't praise it enough. Keep up the good work!

What do you think of Midori as a daily browser (assuming you didn't apt-get something else)?

I think it's a decent browser, it's only drawback is it's single-threaded.

I use Midori on Linux and IE on Windows because of the scrolling.

IIRC Firefox is doing decently with scrolling on OS X with Apple's trackpads, but it doesn't work as well with the same trackpad in elementaryOS (or with the touchscreen in Windows). Midori works perfectly.

From my experience, scrolling well is a bigger deal than how many threads it has for whether or not I like using a browser. I know there are stability advantages to the process separation, but I haven't had any trouble.

I rather like the notion of Ubuntu's Unity interface. It reminds me of my favourite window manager, Window Maker, which I'm running at the moment. I recommend Ununtu to those who don't want to muck about much. Like you, I don't have time or the inclination to mess with the config files anymore. Server, yes. Desktops? They need to work pretty much out of the box anymore. This is 2014 afterall, and modern laptops and desktop boxes have support in the latest kernels, either in Linux or FreeBSD.

Linux Mint is even more friendly than Ubuntu if I'm honest. It has all the codecs, various desktop flavours, and is generally what my wife and kids prefer these days.

typing this on an HP Pavilion 15 Laptop. Installed Arch Linux, and Catalyst Drivers. works without flaw. Much better than the Windows 8 that was on the machine.

of course, I avoided Unity and went with KDE 4, because I'm not a massochist. Blue Ribbon, otherwise.

YMMV, ubuntu failed me on 3 separate laptops which ran fine with arch.

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