4 ms·

Yup, things were different 10 years ago and Ubuntu really made a lot of things easier. Back then getting 3D acceleration to work was a real nightmare (for a lin

by lawl 9y ago

Yup, things were different 10 years ago and Ubuntu really made a lot of things easier. Back then getting 3D acceleration to work was a real nightmare (for a linux newbie like me) at the time. Or WiFi drivers. Or getting your system to play videos, because you didn't have the correct gstreamer-* packages. 10 years later and pretty much every distro works out of the box on pretty much all hardware, but back then Ubuntu was definitely ahead of the pack in these regards.

pjmlp 9y ago
Only if you don't consider laptops as part of "pretty much all hardware". Even my Eee PC 1215B, which was sold with Linux pre-installed, had wlan driver issues. And nowadays with the whole AMD driver split, the 3D acceleration went down. For example, now I have to force enable it on Firefox.
jimnotgym 9y ago
I made the jump to Linux in the last 5 years. Confused by the myriad of distributions I downloaded a few of the more popular ones and ran them in Virtualbox. Ubuntu was noticeably faster and more stable so I chose Ubuntu. It turns out that what I was really seeing was Ubuntu was faster and more stable in Virtualbox and since that is the only way I can get Linux on my work desktop this is important to me. I'm sure many people use Linux this way, so this will continue to be important. Maybe Debian would be OK now, but Gnome 3 takes up far too much of the screen on my laptop with menu bars, and this is why I am sticking with Unity for now
veidr 9y ago
> 10 years later and pretty much every distro works out of the box on pretty much all hardware I do appreciate the strides Linux has made since a decade ago, but I still think that's crazy talk. I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" on, and I've installed it on at least 15 laptops in those ten years. I mean if "works" is defined to mean something equivalent to what macOS or Windows do. Wi-Fi, webcam, bluetooth, graphics acceleration, highres screen, sound, fingerprint reader, keyboard backlight, hardware volume/brightness controls, multitouch trackpad... at least some of those things are always broken on any mainstream distro I've tried, including Ubuntu. Doesn't mean Linux isn't awesome, but saying it works out of the box on almost all hardware is a pretty radical downward redefinition of "works".
- carlos22 9y ago
  > I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" on, and I've installed it on at least 15 laptops in those ten years. Buy any > 2 year old Dell Latitiude and it will work out of the box. Maybe the (IMHO useless) fingerprint reader not, but all other stuff will work. Had at least 5 different models. Also highres screen is an issue which is not fixable because you need to fix every software. Same applies to Windows in this case but it does a better job in pixel scaling non-HiDPI apps (but they are still ugly as hell in many cases).
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  > I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" on, and I've installed it on at least 15 laptops in those ten years. I've recently bought a HP ProBook (a xx75 model) for dual booting of Linux and Windows 7. Imagine my surprise when in Linux everything was working out of the box, whereas in Windows I had to actually use another laptop first in order to load WiFi drivers. Even USB 3.0 ports didn't work under Windows out of the box.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    To say nothing about the nightmare it is to find out what is actually broken in Windows. Should you use the Control Panel wireless applet or the vendor supplied GUI app with non-standard UI?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- rbanffy 9y ago
  > I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" Look for almost any Dell these days. I've used 6 (Vostros, Latitudes, Precisions) in the last couple years and all worked flawlessly from the start (except for the fact I had to uninstall Windows in all but one Vostro). I also use Linux on a small and light Acer "Cloudbook" (a Chromebook-like that comes with Windows). This last one was a bit confusing to install because of the UEFI/eMMC combo, but after understanding the peculiars of the installation, it worked perfectly ever since.

by lawl 9y ago

pjmlp 9y ago

Only if you don't consider laptops as part of "pretty much all hardware". Even my Eee PC 1215B, which was sold with Linux pre-installed, had wlan driver issues. And nowadays with the whole AMD driver split, the 3D acceleration went down. For example, now I have to force enable it on Firefox.

jimnotgym 9y ago

I made the jump to Linux in the last 5 years. Confused by the myriad of distributions I downloaded a few of the more popular ones and ran them in Virtualbox. Ubuntu was noticeably faster and more stable so I chose Ubuntu. It turns out that what I was really seeing was Ubuntu was faster and more stable in Virtualbox and since that is the only way I can get Linux on my work desktop this is important to me. I'm sure many people use Linux this way, so this will continue to be important. Maybe Debian would be OK now, but Gnome 3 takes up far too much of the screen on my laptop with menu bars, and this is why I am sticking with Unity for now

veidr 9y ago

> 10 years later and pretty much every distro works out of the box on pretty much all hardware I do appreciate the strides Linux has made since a decade ago, but I still think that's crazy talk. I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" on, and I've installed it on at least 15 laptops in those ten years. I mean if "works" is defined to mean something equivalent to what macOS or Windows do. Wi-Fi, webcam, bluetooth, graphics acceleration, highres screen, sound, fingerprint reader, keyboard backlight, hardware volume/brightness controls, multitouch trackpad... at least some of those things are always broken on any mainstream distro I've tried, including Ubuntu. Doesn't mean Linux isn't awesome, but saying it works out of the box on almost all hardware is a pretty radical downward redefinition of "works".

carlos22 9y ago
> I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" on, and I've installed it on at least 15 laptops in those ten years. Buy any > 2 year old Dell Latitiude and it will work out of the box. Maybe the (IMHO useless) fingerprint reader not, but all other stuff will work. Had at least 5 different models. Also highres screen is an issue which is not fixable because you need to fix every software. Same applies to Windows in this case but it does a better job in pixel scaling non-HiDPI apps (but they are still ugly as hell in many cases).
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
> I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" on, and I've installed it on at least 15 laptops in those ten years. I've recently bought a HP ProBook (a xx75 model) for dual booting of Linux and Windows 7. Imagine my surprise when in Linux everything was working out of the box, whereas in Windows I had to actually use another laptop first in order to load WiFi drivers. Even USB 3.0 ports didn't work under Windows out of the box.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  To say nothing about the nightmare it is to find out what is actually broken in Windows. Should you use the Control Panel wireless applet or the vendor supplied GUI app with non-standard UI?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
rbanffy 9y ago
> I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" Look for almost any Dell these days. I've used 6 (Vostros, Latitudes, Precisions) in the last couple years and all worked flawlessly from the start (except for the fact I had to uninstall Windows in all but one Vostro). I also use Linux on a small and light Acer "Cloudbook" (a Chromebook-like that comes with Windows). This last one was a bit confusing to install because of the UEFI/eMMC combo, but after understanding the peculiars of the installation, it worked perfectly ever since.