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My extended family all switched to Ubuntu because this is what I put on their cheap laptops. I showed them Firefox, Skype and the photo manager and it all worke
by fierarul 6y ago
My extended family all switched to Ubuntu because this is what I put on their cheap laptops. I showed them Firefox, Skype and the photo manager and it all worked well. Everything is done in the browser nowadays.
At some point one laptop was purchased with Windows so one guy could game. He played Fifa for a week then asked me to put Ubuntu since "this is what he was used to".
So, you see, it works that way too!
I've also been introducing Chromebooks with some success. One of them seems to fail spectacularly: I assume the battery is dead and needs a hard reset every once in a while which means going through some weird wizard that's confusing for basic users.
Sadly, Linux hardware support is still hit and miss. My latest Lenovo Legion has a whole lot of issues, the biggest one being that the trackpad just doesn't work. Sound also dies sometimes when waking up from sleep. But other than that it's a beast of a machine with a killer Ryzen CPU!
- jamaicahest 6y ago> Sadly, Linux hardware support is still hit and miss. My latest Lenovo Legion has a whole lot of issues, the biggest one being that the trackpad just doesn't work. Sound also dies sometimes when waking up from sleep. But other than that it's a beast of a machine with a killer Ryzen CPU! That, in my opinion, is the deal breaker. My pc is a tool I use for getting things done, not something I want to tinker with every time I have to do something. I'm a literate computer user, programmer and sys admin, and I know how to change settings in Linux but I do not want to spend my time digging through mailinglists for a hack, every time I try to use my webcam/soundcard.
- roblabla 6y agoIt's only a problem if you don't do your research before buying. There are a lot of laptops with stellar linux support, some even advertise it. Some laptops have shitty windows drivers too. Whatever you end up buying, you should read the reviews for beforehand anyways.
- fierarul 6y agoTrue, but when it's among the 1st Ryzen laptops and you need a beefy CPU for work you might take a chance! I still hope a good kernel hacker will buy it and fix the trackpad. I would even chip in some money in a fund, but it's not clear to me how that is done.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoI guess this would be one of the persons to ask: [1] http://who-t.blogspot.com/ http://who-t.blogspot.com/
- depressedpanda 6y agoThe solution, of course, is to buy hardware that supports Linux. If you are a literate computer user, that should be fairly trivial to accomplish. E.g., both my Dell XPS and ThinkPad X1 work flawlessly with Linux.
- tupputuppu 6y agoThe state of touchpad drivers with any hardware is quite bad.
- CodeGlitch 6y agoI think either you've had bad luck or I've been very lucky! I've never encountered this (been using Linux since 2005)
- ghthor 6y agoI've never encountered this.
- DigitallyFidget 6y agoWeird, I've not encountered a laptop yet that doesn't work better or at least the same for touchpad with Linux. I always setup my laptops to dual boot for a variety of reasons and never once encountered touchpad driver issues, it always works as expected right after install. From business laptops to consumer laptops, to gaming laptops.
- 6y ago
- curt15 6y ago>My extended family all switched to Ubuntu because this is what I put on their cheap laptops. I showed them Firefox, Skype and the photo manager and it all worked well. Everything is done in the browser nowadays. Unfortunately Ubuntu is really pushing snaps which adopt the Windows practice of forced updates (https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for-snap-from-store/707 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...) and in fact go one step further by forcing updates even on metered connections.
- fierarul 6y agoWell, all good things... I kept wanting to try Fedora or some other major distro but I'm too used to Ubuntu. Maybe plain Debian is the future?
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoHave you tried [1] https://www.deepin.org/en/ https://www.deepin.org/en/ ? [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepin
- fierarul 6y agoOf all the distros why would I try that one? I never even heard of it before.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoBecause they used Ubuntu as base, then pivoted back to Debian stable, and have a nice desktop?
- fierarul 6y agoI guess it's fair, it just seemed like such a random suggestion.
- benhurmarcel 6y ago> Sadly, Linux hardware support is still hit and miss. That's the case on laptops, yes. But on desktops it's really quite good, it's rare to encounter any issue at all. Unfortunately most people want laptops so that's a significant problem.
- fierarul 6y agoI suspect this is a myth too because desktops get a plain USB keyboard / mouse, maybe a webcam and call it a day. What if I put a TV tuner in there? Hello compatibility lists. As it happens my Ryzen desktop did have fewer issue but staring with the monitor off makes me have no GUI and I think I also ran into some sleep/suspend issues after an Ubuntu update. I'm really not keeping track. If you keep your expectations low Ubuntu is quite lovely.
- m-p-3 6y agoFor me it's been elementary OS. It's based on Ubuntu (so any Ububtu-related issues are easy to search and find a fix for), and the family loves our cheap laptop running it.
- 29083011397778 6y ago> Sadly, Linux hardware support is still hit and miss This actually cuts both ways. I ended up dual-booting for AutoCAD on my laptop. It's apparently at an age where AutoCAD still works well, but trackpad drivers don't work correctly in Windows. Because it's only used for AutoCAD though, I'll only ever be using a mouse, rendering the problem (mostly) moot. This isn't an issue with Ubuntu, as everything from the trackpad, to the funky keyboard keys, just works.