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I think more then "prettier UI" is necessary. I switched from Windows to Linux a few months ago, and while I appreciate being able to use more developer tools a

I think more then "prettier UI" is necessary. I switched from Windows to Linux a few months ago, and while I appreciate being able to use more developer tools and not have annoying ads in my OS, I feel like Linux is just more unstable. My wifi/bluetooth randomly stop working, forcing me to restart my computer. That's unacceptable.

davemp 8y ago
Unfortunately there's not much the Linux community can do about bad drivers. (I assume you have some broadcom chip). The only people really equipped to write the drivers are the vendors. The documents and firmware running on the chips are not published and you can't realistically email their engineers. So Linux devs are basically SOL. Hats off to the legends who sit down and reverse what's needed anyways. In general, vendors only have financial incentive to get windows drivers working well. It's the self defeating prophecy of the Linux desktop. Apple spins their own hardware and I'm sure gets proper documents from the vendors they select.
- IshKebab 8y ago
  Yes there is. Windows can restart it's graphics drivers of they crash for example. And it has a stable driver ABI so companies can actually release closed source or out-of-tree drivers in a sane way. Linux just assumes that all drivers must be perfect with no bugs, and must be open source and distributed with Linux itself. That's just not realistic.
  - beagle3 8y ago
    Upgrading Windows from 7 to 10 caused s lot of older devices to stop working for a lot of people, despite the stable ABI; in most cases, it was just driver unavailability and not incompatibility, but that’s a distinction without a difference for most users. Linux just keeps on working with old devices across distributions and updates. Linux takes 6m-24m till vendor unsupported drivers stabilize - but at that point, it works way better than windows (and basically forever) in my experience.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      That is simply not true. Old drivers get shaved out of the kernel tree and good luck getting them to work again in more modern kernel versions.
      - beagle3 8y ago
        I am sure they are, as was the i386. And yet, from experience of ~20 people, none had hardware obsoleted by Ubuntu, even very old hardware - though some had hardware obsoleted by win10 (which was in some cases the trigger to try Ubuntu)
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Tell that to my AMD card, which no longer has the same OpenGL support level as before they decided to reboot the Radeon drivers. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/ubuntu-drops-amd-catalyst-fglrx-driver-16-04 https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/ubuntu-drops-amd-catalys... Sure, maybe I can take some weekends off to port the missing features to new kernels....

davemp 8y ago

Unfortunately there's not much the Linux community can do about bad drivers. (I assume you have some broadcom chip). The only people really equipped to write the drivers are the vendors. The documents and firmware running on the chips are not published and you can't realistically email their engineers. So Linux devs are basically SOL. Hats off to the legends who sit down and reverse what's needed anyways. In general, vendors only have financial incentive to get windows drivers working well. It's the self defeating prophecy of the Linux desktop. Apple spins their own hardware and I'm sure gets proper documents from the vendors they select.

IshKebab 8y ago
Yes there is. Windows can restart it's graphics drivers of they crash for example. And it has a stable driver ABI so companies can actually release closed source or out-of-tree drivers in a sane way. Linux just assumes that all drivers must be perfect with no bugs, and must be open source and distributed with Linux itself. That's just not realistic.
- beagle3 8y ago
  Upgrading Windows from 7 to 10 caused s lot of older devices to stop working for a lot of people, despite the stable ABI; in most cases, it was just driver unavailability and not incompatibility, but that’s a distinction without a difference for most users. Linux just keeps on working with old devices across distributions and updates. Linux takes 6m-24m till vendor unsupported drivers stabilize - but at that point, it works way better than windows (and basically forever) in my experience.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    That is simply not true. Old drivers get shaved out of the kernel tree and good luck getting them to work again in more modern kernel versions.
    - beagle3 8y ago
      I am sure they are, as was the i386. And yet, from experience of ~20 people, none had hardware obsoleted by Ubuntu, even very old hardware - though some had hardware obsoleted by win10 (which was in some cases the trigger to try Ubuntu)
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        Tell that to my AMD card, which no longer has the same OpenGL support level as before they decided to reboot the Radeon drivers. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/ubuntu-drops-amd-catalyst-fglrx-driver-16-04 https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/ubuntu-drops-amd-catalys... Sure, maybe I can take some weekends off to port the missing features to new kernels....