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You are incorrectly assigning platform popularity as equal to driver maintenance. First, non-desktop uses of Linux significantly outnumber uses of Windows and

You are incorrectly assigning platform popularity as equal to driver maintenance. First, non-desktop uses of Linux significantly outnumber uses of Windows and macOS in general, and a large majority of drivers and functionality is shared there. Second, drivers not made by the usual giants are, as I mentioned earlier and experienced first hand, written and shipped once, maybe with a few updates for obvious issues, but this shit is harder than you think, with obscure uncaught bugs littered all over the place. Drivers need pretty much perpetual maintenance for all but the simplest blinkenlights. Third, even "desktop" drivers are run through their places in server environments, through e.g. workloads like Stadia. Fourth, proprietary drivers are not subject to any scrutiny whatsoever, whereas you won't get past the gatekeepers if you don't pull your shit together for the open source kernels. Popularity does not fix unmaintained code. Giving even just one annoyed and skilled person the ability to change the code does. And sometimes, external companies like Collabora will decide to overhaul things, which they again can't do for a proprietary driver.

oblio 6y ago
I know all of that, but it does not square up with real life. Go to your favorite computer store. Randomly pick 5 laptops, regardless of the price. So no cherry picking. Use these laptops with Windows installed on them, for a reasonably long period, for example 1 month, as your daily driver. Perform varied tasks on them, such as printing, connecting to external displays, to projectors, other peripherals, playing modern 3D games on them, etc. Then do the same with Linux. I'm willing to bet $100 that on average Windows will run better on them, have a longer lasting battery life, better network connectivity, etc. And if you're trying to tell me that on average Linux runs better than MacOS on Apple laptops and desktops, then this discussion is not worth continuing, we both probably have better things to do with our time.
- arghwhat 6y ago
  You will pay me just $100 to out of my own pocket buy five random laptops regardless of price, some of which will be several thousand dollars, from the local electronics store. You're very right that there is no value in continuing a discussion if that's the level of debate you're presenting. I'm off.
egeozcan 6y ago
There are many people like me, however, who choose to run Linux in a VM under Windows so they don't have to deal with bugs. Linux as a personal operating system got WAY better over the last years, sure, but you can't seriously argue that it got Windows AND MacOS beat.
- arghwhat 6y ago
  I am arguing just that, with a reasonably large and varied sample-size, although heavily biased towards macs over windows-powered machines. I get a lot of machines from clients. Now, a mac on its own tends to work quite well out of the box, but this does not hold for peripherals, and I feel like the machines always end up developing... quirks. I always felt that the path you picked just gives you the sum of all problems with few of the benefits. I could maybe do the other way around for compat, but the laptop wouldn't be able to stay on this side of the balcony railing for long if I did it the way suggested... :|

oblio 6y ago

I know all of that, but it does not square up with real life. Go to your favorite computer store. Randomly pick 5 laptops, regardless of the price. So no cherry picking. Use these laptops with Windows installed on them, for a reasonably long period, for example 1 month, as your daily driver. Perform varied tasks on them, such as printing, connecting to external displays, to projectors, other peripherals, playing modern 3D games on them, etc. Then do the same with Linux. I'm willing to bet $100 that on average Windows will run better on them, have a longer lasting battery life, better network connectivity, etc. And if you're trying to tell me that on average Linux runs better than MacOS on Apple laptops and desktops, then this discussion is not worth continuing, we both probably have better things to do with our time.

arghwhat 6y ago
You will pay me just $100 to out of my own pocket buy five random laptops regardless of price, some of which will be several thousand dollars, from the local electronics store. You're very right that there is no value in continuing a discussion if that's the level of debate you're presenting. I'm off.

egeozcan 6y ago

There are many people like me, however, who choose to run Linux in a VM under Windows so they don't have to deal with bugs. Linux as a personal operating system got WAY better over the last years, sure, but you can't seriously argue that it got Windows AND MacOS beat.

arghwhat 6y ago
I am arguing just that, with a reasonably large and varied sample-size, although heavily biased towards macs over windows-powered machines. I get a lot of machines from clients. Now, a mac on its own tends to work quite well out of the box, but this does not hold for peripherals, and I feel like the machines always end up developing... quirks. I always felt that the path you picked just gives you the sum of all problems with few of the benefits. I could maybe do the other way around for compat, but the laptop wouldn't be able to stay on this side of the balcony railing for long if I did it the way suggested... :|