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There is always somebody to pop in to say "x works in my case". Like those "oh my zsh" users that never ever had their prompt broken or those vi lovers that "ju

There is always somebody to pop in to say "x works in my case". Like those "oh my zsh" users that never ever had their prompt broken or those vi lovers that "just sync their config file on github and that's it".

lallysingh 8y ago
And when talking about other platforms, you'll get plenty of "x doesn't work in my case" posts. What's your point?
- Karunamon 8y ago
  That "it works on my machine" is quite possibly the most useless, middlebrow-dismissal comment that could be made when discussing problems. It working for you doesn't make it work for the other guy.
eropple 8y ago
"My case" is "my current company deploys thousands of Linux notebooks" and what I am saying is that while there are certainly problems with the Linux end-user experience, it's not generally the baseline stuff anymore. Desktops have been fine--not great, depending on your DE and your preferences, but fine--for a while now. (I'd say that Ubuntu 14.04 was the first widely stable Linux distro I ran into.) Laptops are getting there. There's room to improve, but a lot of these complaints are getting stale.
odensc 8y ago
I find that more often there's somebody who pops in to say "x doesn't work." The people who've never had an issue will seldom go and say things are working like they should. Sure, it sucks that wifi, bluetooth, and sleep mode don't work for you - so maybe Linux isn't a good choice for you if those are important. And the Linux community should definitely work towards fixing those issues, but the same stuff happens on every operating system. I've had hardware just straight-up not work in Windows, then I head into Linux and it works immediately - and I'm not saying that means Linux is necessarily better, it means different hardware works better with different software. And yes, the "works on my machine" comments are useless, but IMO no more useless than "it doesn't work for me," as if that somehow means... anything? My touchpad doesn't work on Windows, does that say anything about the viability of the OS? No, my touchpad just doesn't work good with it. Though it is admirable you continue to use Linux, most people would just go back to what works at that point.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  It probably has something to do with Linux Desktop's long, long, history of evangelism and condescension. Basically nobody goes around telling people they're idiots for using Linux or Mac and should switch to glorious Windows, but you get plenty of people still to this day doing that for Linux Desktop. So then someone will say "I can't use Linux Desktop because X", and the evangelist will proceed to blame that person for not being good enough to use their personal OS of choice. There's also the fact that Linux likes to tout how it is made by the community. If I have a problem with Windows, I blame Microsoft. If I have a problem with a driver on Windows, I blame the company that made the driver. But if I have a problem on Linux, who is to blame other than the community? And then the community turns around and blames everyone else.
- eropple 8y ago
  > it sucks that wifi, bluetooth, and sleep mode don't work for you - so maybe Linux isn't a good choice for you if those are important. ...or maybe his hardware's not well-supported. And what's well-supported is by any metric significantly improved from, say, five years ago. If you buy fairly mainstream hardware, at least on the Intel side of things, I think it tends to be fine. My experience has led me to think that a lot of these ongoing complaints (the ones that aren't actually stale) are some weird hardware somewhere along the line. When buying neither of the last two laptops I bought (HP Spectre x360, Lenovo ThinkPad T480) did I do any sort of Linux compatibility check. For the ThinkPad I figured it'd be fine because Lenovo historically has had solid support, but I kind of expected there to be problems with the x360 that never manifested. I got rid of it for other reasons, mostly around HP's support being pretty lousy and demanding I go without a work machine for two weeks because a keycap had come broken from the factory, but the Linux support? Just fine.

lallysingh 8y ago

And when talking about other platforms, you'll get plenty of "x doesn't work in my case" posts. What's your point?

Karunamon 8y ago
That "it works on my machine" is quite possibly the most useless, middlebrow-dismissal comment that could be made when discussing problems. It working for you doesn't make it work for the other guy.

eropple 8y ago

"My case" is "my current company deploys thousands of Linux notebooks" and what I am saying is that while there are certainly problems with the Linux end-user experience, it's not generally the baseline stuff anymore. Desktops have been fine--not great, depending on your DE and your preferences, but fine--for a while now. (I'd say that Ubuntu 14.04 was the first widely stable Linux distro I ran into.) Laptops are getting there. There's room to improve, but a lot of these complaints are getting stale.

odensc 8y ago

I find that more often there's somebody who pops in to say "x doesn't work." The people who've never had an issue will seldom go and say things are working like they should. Sure, it sucks that wifi, bluetooth, and sleep mode don't work for you - so maybe Linux isn't a good choice for you if those are important. And the Linux community should definitely work towards fixing those issues, but the same stuff happens on every operating system. I've had hardware just straight-up not work in Windows, then I head into Linux and it works immediately - and I'm not saying that means Linux is necessarily better, it means different hardware works better with different software. And yes, the "works on my machine" comments are useless, but IMO no more useless than "it doesn't work for me," as if that somehow means... anything? My touchpad doesn't work on Windows, does that say anything about the viability of the OS? No, my touchpad just doesn't work good with it. Though it is admirable you continue to use Linux, most people would just go back to what works at that point.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
It probably has something to do with Linux Desktop's long, long, history of evangelism and condescension. Basically nobody goes around telling people they're idiots for using Linux or Mac and should switch to glorious Windows, but you get plenty of people still to this day doing that for Linux Desktop. So then someone will say "I can't use Linux Desktop because X", and the evangelist will proceed to blame that person for not being good enough to use their personal OS of choice. There's also the fact that Linux likes to tout how it is made by the community. If I have a problem with Windows, I blame Microsoft. If I have a problem with a driver on Windows, I blame the company that made the driver. But if I have a problem on Linux, who is to blame other than the community? And then the community turns around and blames everyone else.
eropple 8y ago
> it sucks that wifi, bluetooth, and sleep mode don't work for you - so maybe Linux isn't a good choice for you if those are important. ...or maybe his hardware's not well-supported. And what's well-supported is by any metric significantly improved from, say, five years ago. If you buy fairly mainstream hardware, at least on the Intel side of things, I think it tends to be fine. My experience has led me to think that a lot of these ongoing complaints (the ones that aren't actually stale) are some weird hardware somewhere along the line. When buying neither of the last two laptops I bought (HP Spectre x360, Lenovo ThinkPad T480) did I do any sort of Linux compatibility check. For the ThinkPad I figured it'd be fine because Lenovo historically has had solid support, but I kind of expected there to be problems with the x360 that never manifested. I got rid of it for other reasons, mostly around HP's support being pretty lousy and demanding I go without a work machine for two weeks because a keycap had come broken from the factory, but the Linux support? Just fine.