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> the REST of Linux really sucks for laptops, with all the hardware-specific tweaks needed Just to state the obvious, "hardware-specific tweaks" are hardware-s

> the REST of Linux really sucks for laptops, with all the hardware-specific tweaks needed Just to state the obvious, "hardware-specific tweaks" are hardware-specific. It is not hard, these days, to buy hardware where everything just works out of the box. It doesn't make sense to say that in general Linux sucks for laptops when what you're complaining about is a problem caused by your hardware.

blondin 4y ago
i bought a laptop from a linux-first company. a laptop designed for linux, with custom hardware and OS and all. i feel very miserable using it. my solace is that it is not my main device. on this very day, i had to disable tap-to-click on the trackpad. so no, comments like the above are true. i would not recommend a linux laptop to anyone. the used Thinkpad and Dell folks are the exceptions, not the norm.
- cookiengineer 4y ago
  Maybe you have issues with the synaptics driver? In case you do, I wrote an in-depth configuration guide for it a while ago [1]. Maybe this helps? [1] https://cookie.engineer/weblog/articles/synaptics-touchpad-on-linux.html https://cookie.engineer/weblog/articles/synaptics-touchpad-o...
  - eitland 4y ago
    Added to my pinboard.in (For everyone who thinks this is because Linux has much problems: I had no serious problems with the touchpad in my first 20 years but I hear it is a thing so I expect to see it sooner or later ;-)
- bscphil 4y ago
  Shrug the last laptop we purchased was a boring Dell Inspiron. Wiped Windows and put Arch Linux on it the day we got it without even checking any compatibility stuff. Everything worked out of the box, nothing has ever needed to be configured or crashed. This is 11th gen Intel, nothing old.
- egeozcan 4y ago
  I got a windows laptop from my employer. In one week, sound stopped working. I had to follow the instructions here to fix it: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkCentre-A-E-M-S-Series/Fix-for-Missing-Intel-High-Definition-DSP-Driver-on-ThinkCentre-Desktop/m-p/5012225 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkCentre-A-E-M-S-Series/Fix-... Then it stopped working on nearly every Windows Update after. I'm not going to argue that under Linux there would be less problems or something crazy like that, but Windows has its own share of problems as well.
cookiengineer 4y ago
What's pretty surrealistic in this discussion is that MacOS in comparison cannot even run on all that hardware. And Windows won't either because driver support ended a long time ago when you use old hardware. Of course Linux sucks, but it only does so because it has the issue of trying to run anywhere with no default settings enforced, because those would fail anyways.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  > And Windows won't either because driver support ended a long time ago when you use old hardware. Or new hardware. I have an EliteBook 845 G8 (Zen 3) from December 2021. Windows doesn't recognize its webcam. Some issue with some USB chip along the way. No, HP's provided drivers don't help. Yes, HP recommends Windows 11. I have its cousin, an EliteBook 840 G8 (Intel 11th gen), same vintage. Windows doesn't recognize its touchpad / trackpoint during install. It needs specific drivers from Windows Update. Luckily, the internal keyboard and an external USB mouse work fine. I've even tried with the latest win 11 22h2, that's been recently released, no luck. On the webcam front, it actually works at first, then it figures it requires some "updates" which break things again. Linux has worked perfectly from the beginning on both of them, no random tweaks required. And I'm not even running Ubuntu or similar, which you'd expect to do things automagically, just plain Arch.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    If the hardware vendor won't submit the driver to Microsoft for driver validation, which is a requirement to for the driver to be available via Windows Update, that's not Microsoft's fault. HP likely chose to have a semi-custom part in those models and included the driver in the shipped build of Windows. They also likely make the driver available for download somewhere (though this "somewhere" is not always easy to find.)
    - vladvasiliu 4y ago
      > HP likely chose to have a semi-custom part in those models and included the driver in the shipped build of Windows. They also likely make the driver available for download somewhere (though this "somewhere" is not always easy to find.) Well, there's a big page with drivers available for download for this specific model on HP's website. They also offer a tool to check for missing / outdated drivers, similar to Intel's. According to both, everything is installed and up to date, but the USB part isn't working (has an exclamation mark in device manager). I think the pre-installed Windows 10 did support the webcam, but then it had issues with the display backlight being extremely dim. Anyway, in practice, this is only mildly annoying. I don't use Windows all that often, and the webcam even less.

blondin 4y ago

i bought a laptop from a linux-first company. a laptop designed for linux, with custom hardware and OS and all. i feel very miserable using it. my solace is that it is not my main device. on this very day, i had to disable tap-to-click on the trackpad. so no, comments like the above are true. i would not recommend a linux laptop to anyone. the used Thinkpad and Dell folks are the exceptions, not the norm.

cookiengineer 4y ago
Maybe you have issues with the synaptics driver? In case you do, I wrote an in-depth configuration guide for it a while ago [1]. Maybe this helps? [1] https://cookie.engineer/weblog/articles/synaptics-touchpad-on-linux.html https://cookie.engineer/weblog/articles/synaptics-touchpad-o...
- eitland 4y ago
  Added to my pinboard.in (For everyone who thinks this is because Linux has much problems: I had no serious problems with the touchpad in my first 20 years but I hear it is a thing so I expect to see it sooner or later ;-)
bscphil 4y ago
Shrug the last laptop we purchased was a boring Dell Inspiron. Wiped Windows and put Arch Linux on it the day we got it without even checking any compatibility stuff. Everything worked out of the box, nothing has ever needed to be configured or crashed. This is 11th gen Intel, nothing old.
egeozcan 4y ago
I got a windows laptop from my employer. In one week, sound stopped working. I had to follow the instructions here to fix it: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkCentre-A-E-M-S-Series/Fix-for-Missing-Intel-High-Definition-DSP-Driver-on-ThinkCentre-Desktop/m-p/5012225 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkCentre-A-E-M-S-Series/Fix-... Then it stopped working on nearly every Windows Update after. I'm not going to argue that under Linux there would be less problems or something crazy like that, but Windows has its own share of problems as well.

cookiengineer 4y ago

What's pretty surrealistic in this discussion is that MacOS in comparison cannot even run on all that hardware. And Windows won't either because driver support ended a long time ago when you use old hardware. Of course Linux sucks, but it only does so because it has the issue of trying to run anywhere with no default settings enforced, because those would fail anyways.

vladvasiliu 4y ago
> And Windows won't either because driver support ended a long time ago when you use old hardware. Or new hardware. I have an EliteBook 845 G8 (Zen 3) from December 2021. Windows doesn't recognize its webcam. Some issue with some USB chip along the way. No, HP's provided drivers don't help. Yes, HP recommends Windows 11. I have its cousin, an EliteBook 840 G8 (Intel 11th gen), same vintage. Windows doesn't recognize its touchpad / trackpoint during install. It needs specific drivers from Windows Update. Luckily, the internal keyboard and an external USB mouse work fine. I've even tried with the latest win 11 22h2, that's been recently released, no luck. On the webcam front, it actually works at first, then it figures it requires some "updates" which break things again. Linux has worked perfectly from the beginning on both of them, no random tweaks required. And I'm not even running Ubuntu or similar, which you'd expect to do things automagically, just plain Arch.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  If the hardware vendor won't submit the driver to Microsoft for driver validation, which is a requirement to for the driver to be available via Windows Update, that's not Microsoft's fault. HP likely chose to have a semi-custom part in those models and included the driver in the shipped build of Windows. They also likely make the driver available for download somewhere (though this "somewhere" is not always easy to find.)
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    > HP likely chose to have a semi-custom part in those models and included the driver in the shipped build of Windows. They also likely make the driver available for download somewhere (though this "somewhere" is not always easy to find.) Well, there's a big page with drivers available for download for this specific model on HP's website. They also offer a tool to check for missing / outdated drivers, similar to Intel's. According to both, everything is installed and up to date, but the USB part isn't working (has an exclamation mark in device manager). I think the pre-installed Windows 10 did support the webcam, but then it had issues with the display backlight being extremely dim. Anyway, in practice, this is only mildly annoying. I don't use Windows all that often, and the webcam even less.