6 ms·

> Linux To be fair a couple of mainstream distros are far easier to get than Windows or Mac, only people have a lot of previous Windows experience by the time

> Linux To be fair a couple of mainstream distros are far easier to get than Windows or Mac, only people have a lot of previous Windows experience by the time they encounter Linux. These days iPads of course are at a different level, but that wouldn't be a fair comparison. Source: I had a 6 years of power user experience from Windows when I first started using Linux.

AussieWog93 5y ago
>To be fair a couple of mainstream distros are far easier to get than Windows or Mac Until you try to plug in a WiFi Dongle, printer, SD Card reader or pretty much any other piece of hardware that isn't a keyboard or mouse.
- ginko 5y ago
  Those all mostly work out of the box these days. Even devices that don't get driver support on newer Windows anymore.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    Depends on your definition of "work". I've had issues with every device I listed on Kubuntu 20.04.
    - Jorengarenar 5y ago
      I, on the other hand, had an issue with every type of device you have listed using Windows, but none on Arch Linux. And I can add to the list devices like: an SATA to USB adapter, gamepad (not only DualShock, but also X1 Gamepad [sic!]), external CD-ROM, Wacom tablet With each of them there was an issue on Windows, but on Linux it's Plug-n-Play; heck, even my gaming mouse needed drivers on Windows for all buttons to work, while on Linux noting additional was required
      - ginko 5y ago
        A while ago I bought a used Nikon Coolscan negative scanner. The last edition of those came out in around 2004 and the last driver only supports Vista. It came with a PCI Firewire card. My installation process on Arch was installing the card, rebooting plugging everything in and installing SANE. That's it, I could now scan my negatives.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      It's very hardware-specific so it's impossible to generalize, but usually stuff will either work out of the box or not work at all on free systems (Linux, BSD). The exception is if your distro refuses to ship with proprietary software (good!) in which case you need to install extra drivers (eg. firmware-linux) for stuff to work. Something to consider is how old the hardware is. Typically, drivers will land in Linux kernel 1-2 years after hardware is released, so you need to use slightly older hardware and/or a distro which keeps up to date on a rolling-release basis. For example, good luck finding 802.11ax hardware supported by free systems right now: 802.11ac on the other hand (spec from 2013) works perfectly for 90% of chipsets. To be clear if you're not familiar with driver development: this is 100% the fault of crappy hardware manufacturers who are doing everything except their job. Their job is to produce hardware and publish datasheets for them: problem is due to corporate/copyright culture and abuse of dominant position from Microsoft since 90s (see IBM/Microsoft scandals and the threats to dismantle Microsoft), they stopped to publish datasheets and instead publish a crappy windows driver that's full of bugs and will stop working with new releases. We should not be supporting these vampires with our money but hey the problem is the hardware vendors who do distribute their datasheets can be counted on our fingers and their hardware doesn't have the raw power of your latest NVINTELDIARM. Excellent usenix talk on this topic: https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-keynote https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-ke... Previous HN discussion on this topic, about Lenovo more precisely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28977175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28977175
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Since around 2008 most of the stuff I use have been better supported on mainstream Linux than on Windows. Literal plug and play.

AussieWog93 5y ago

>To be fair a couple of mainstream distros are far easier to get than Windows or Mac Until you try to plug in a WiFi Dongle, printer, SD Card reader or pretty much any other piece of hardware that isn't a keyboard or mouse.

ginko 5y ago
Those all mostly work out of the box these days. Even devices that don't get driver support on newer Windows anymore.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Depends on your definition of "work". I've had issues with every device I listed on Kubuntu 20.04.
  - Jorengarenar 5y ago
    I, on the other hand, had an issue with every type of device you have listed using Windows, but none on Arch Linux. And I can add to the list devices like: an SATA to USB adapter, gamepad (not only DualShock, but also X1 Gamepad [sic!]), external CD-ROM, Wacom tablet With each of them there was an issue on Windows, but on Linux it's Plug-n-Play; heck, even my gaming mouse needed drivers on Windows for all buttons to work, while on Linux noting additional was required
    - ginko 5y ago
      A while ago I bought a used Nikon Coolscan negative scanner. The last edition of those came out in around 2004 and the last driver only supports Vista. It came with a PCI Firewire card. My installation process on Arch was installing the card, rebooting plugging everything in and installing SANE. That's it, I could now scan my negatives.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    It's very hardware-specific so it's impossible to generalize, but usually stuff will either work out of the box or not work at all on free systems (Linux, BSD). The exception is if your distro refuses to ship with proprietary software (good!) in which case you need to install extra drivers (eg. firmware-linux) for stuff to work. Something to consider is how old the hardware is. Typically, drivers will land in Linux kernel 1-2 years after hardware is released, so you need to use slightly older hardware and/or a distro which keeps up to date on a rolling-release basis. For example, good luck finding 802.11ax hardware supported by free systems right now: 802.11ac on the other hand (spec from 2013) works perfectly for 90% of chipsets. To be clear if you're not familiar with driver development: this is 100% the fault of crappy hardware manufacturers who are doing everything except their job. Their job is to produce hardware and publish datasheets for them: problem is due to corporate/copyright culture and abuse of dominant position from Microsoft since 90s (see IBM/Microsoft scandals and the threats to dismantle Microsoft), they stopped to publish datasheets and instead publish a crappy windows driver that's full of bugs and will stop working with new releases. We should not be supporting these vampires with our money but hey the problem is the hardware vendors who do distribute their datasheets can be counted on our fingers and their hardware doesn't have the raw power of your latest NVINTELDIARM. Excellent usenix talk on this topic: https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-keynote https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-ke... Previous HN discussion on this topic, about Lenovo more precisely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28977175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28977175
skinkestek 5y ago
Since around 2008 most of the stuff I use have been better supported on mainstream Linux than on Windows. Literal plug and play.