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>Linux is almost there. It's a crap shoot for me

Just get Ubuntu Certified Hardware. They have over 500 models of laptops they certify. I have never had a kernel update break wifi. I don't know about all the other stuff, but most distributions store old kernels and allow you to boot back into the old kernel pretty easily. Don't know if this is an option on OS X.

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Hell, I run Arch Linux on a number of laptops and workstations, and the only time I've had a kernel upgrade break anything was the wifi on my wife's old netbook some time around 3.12, and that was Broadcom's fault. So I downgraded to 3.11 (didn't even need network access for that), and a few months later on 3.14 it was working again.

Most of the upgrade pain I've had has been caused either by the migration to systemd or by the decision to unify /usr/bin, /bin, /usr/sbin and /sbin into one folder.

One problem with Ubuntu's hardware certification is that it's always for a specific Ubuntu version. I use Ubuntu and would really like it if they would pick at least a few common laptops and commit to ensuring that a certain number of future Ubuntu updates will continue to work perfectly on those laptops. It would help a lot in knowing what to buy.

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