5 ms·

Linux must run well on ALL laptops because every distro tells you to just burn a USB stick, install on your rando laptop, and it will work great! Which is, if c

Linux must run well on ALL laptops because every distro tells you to just burn a USB stick, install on your rando laptop, and it will work great! Which is, if course, a lie. You end up with a lot of disappointed users who have "done the experiment" and have determined that the Linux desktop doesn't work! Which is true, for their hardware. Distros aren't doing anyone any favors by not warning potential users that their hardware may not be compatible.

nerdchum 4y ago
How bad is it? Is it just the occasional peripheral that doesn't work? Or will systems fail to run entirely?
- maccard 4y ago
  "occasional peripheral" is usually WiFi, trackpad, Bluetooth or GPU. Bluetooth may be manageable from that list, but if one of those 4 doesn't work pretty much out of the box, it's a non starter for most people
  - doix 4y ago
    In my very small sample size, those things "work" well enough. What doesn't work is sleep state and power management. Just my personal experience, but that's what I'm always fiddling with. My laptop still drains much faster in Linux with the lid shut and "sleeping" despite my fiddling. Hopefully this will be sorted in the next few years and the technology doesn't change again.
    - noirbot 4y ago
      Yea, power management is absolutely terrible. I've been messing with it for a year, but I can't really get my Linux laptop on any distro to have better than about 2 hours of battery life while running, and 5-6 while in "standby". That said, the wifi and mouse issues are often by far the worst. It's probably somehow related to the standby stuff, but sometimes I'll just log in and it'll decide my trackpad didn't reinitialize correctly, so rebooting is the only option to easily fix it. There's also a persistent issue with Gnome where the modal for asking for a password for a wifi connection just crashes consistently until you restart. It's happened to me on 4 different distros.
  - forgotusername6 4y ago
    Install Linux. Find out that WiFi doesn't work. Manually transfer files to compile WiFi driver via usb. Compile WiFi driver. WiFi works. Boot a few weeks later. WiFi no longer works. Driver built without being signed. Kernel now requires signed drivers. Work out how to sign and trust driver. Boot a few weeks later, WiFi no longer works. Kernel has upgraded again. Signed driver not in the right place. Disable security on driver checking. Put laptop in draw forever. Even though I am capable of fixing all of these things I just don't have the energy. If I want Linux I'll just use WSL or a VM.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - haspok 4y ago
      The last I had this problem was in 2015, when Dell in their infinite wisdom (or because they got a deal) decided to ship _some_ of their XPS 13s with a "Killer" (?) wifi, which didn't have proper Linux drivers, it was too new. Actually, half of the hardware in that machine at that time was unsupported by Linux, I remember I had to wait for about 6 months to get audio working properly. Oh, and I bought an Intel card which solved all wifi issues immediately... I haven't had that problem since, in fact, I find that Linux runs more reliably on a typical laptop (OK, I'm a Thinkpad person, if that's "typical") than Windows (except bleeding edge hardware, I don't understand why Intel can't release their drivers for their next in line CPUs in time, but I'm sure they have their reasons...).
      - forgotusername6 4y ago
        My failed attempt was on an HP stream. It was the cheapest laptop in the store and was woefully underpowered for running windows that it came installed with. I thought maybe I could use it as a lightweight, cheap little Linux notebook to do some hobby projects away from the desk. It wasn't to be.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    I've yet to see a laptop trackpad not work in Linux. I've run Linux on many, many, laptops, including Apple's PowerPC iBooks.
- zwaps 4y ago
  Power management and sleep (like, closing the lid of the laptop and it waking up correctly every time) has basically never worked for me on Linux machines - of which I had several.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Very interesting, when was this? That, and "audio doesn't work", are one of the few Linux issues I hear people about that I've never had to deal with myself.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Same. Currently my Framework drains battery far too quickly when suspended. Also the fingerprint reader doesn't work, which I don't care about. It turns out for my typical patterns the battery thing is only a nuisance. I assume this experience was at the top of heap, since Framework actively courts Linux installations (I believe they sell Linux preinstalled?). It's also a bit strange, if predictable, that so many HN commenters seem genuinely surprised that Linux doesn't cleanly find and install every device driver on every mainstream laptop. Given the insider nature of many people here, I wonder if this implies that distro maintainers aren't getting enough first installation feedback. Unironically I suggest starting a TikTok (or something) campaign that encourages people to post short videos of Linux laptop installation going off the rails and wanting to throw the machine against the wall. A bug report, but with more passion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- blairfrandeen 4y ago
  I installed Ubuntu on a Dell laptop recently that wasn't on the approved list. It required a few tries, and running some scary commands in my BIOS to change the filesystem parameters. It works fine, and I can still dual boot to my old windows partition. The issues, funnily enough, happen when I go back to windows: the clock has been set back to UTC time, and the Bluetooth has forgotten my mouse. And now I switch back to Windows so rarely that it doesn't matter.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  In my experience: hardware out for fewer than six months will have issues, especially on outdated LTS systems like Ubuntu. For example, my laptop (which I bought before it was even on the Lenovo website) had issues with Intel's audio driver that they forgot/didn't bother to submit firmware for to maintainers, though there was an easy workaround. In my experience, Linux will usually just work if you don't have any hardware from crappy vendors. Nvidia is one of the most important vendors that refuse to work normally, but many "gaming" vendors also haven't done any work to support Linux. Elgato and friends have hardware that's useless without software support and for that you need Windows or some weird project from Github. Unlike ten years ago, bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet, sound, video acceleration, suspend/sleep, and all the usual suspects just work if you give the kernel people time to merge the drivers (Windows drivers are ready before release, while Linux often gets them later) and if you pick a recent enough Linux distro. I think most people can grab a copy of the latest version of Linux Mint and just get started. Maybe Pop_OS! if you want a more Ubuntu feel without the Ubuntu hassle.
nicce 4y ago
Might be true for brand new laptops or some rare brands which are not using common touchpad or wireless chipsets. But almost any older laptop works, if it is made by any from the top10 biggest manufactures.
NhanH 4y ago
I bought ubuntu-supported dell laptop, and there were still plenty of issues. Ranging from randomly wake up from sleep in my backpack, to display issue plugging it in an external monitor (this still happens to this day, Linux doesn’t work well with a 4k monitor + a lower resolution monitor). Two years ago, I built a threadripper machine, and even more than 6 months after the CPU was released, linux didn’t work on that yet (iirc, you had to patch or used a special settings on boot, or it crashed). Ubuntu on that same machine suddenly decided last week to NOT recognize a monitor being plugged in via a KVM (there are 2 monitors), booting to windows still works so I am not even sure if it is a hardware or software issue. At this point, I think people who are claiming linux works perfectly on their machines are the one with special hardware, either very old, or very limited.
- api 4y ago
  You have to go deep and really research it, which is confusing and rules out most users. If it’s not a well known Linux friendly model you have to search every chipset and other element of the system. It’s too bad that Dell is selling supposed Linux-supported laptops that are not. I’ve heard good things about the Thinkpad Carbon X1, System 76, and Star Labs.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  > randomly wake up from sleep in my backpack That seems to be common to many laptops including those running Windows at this point in time: https://youtu.be/OHKKcd3sx2c https://youtu.be/OHKKcd3sx2c
  - charrondev 4y ago
    For me the only laptops I’ve ever seen that had consistent, efficient, and “just working” sleep is MacBooks. I’ve had ThinkPads and and Dells over the past 10 years that I just shut down every time I put them in my bag because there were too many occasions where I opened up my bag to find my laptop on, fans blasting, and very very hot. On the other hand I’ve had a MacBook for the past couple of years and the only time it ever reboots is for system updates. My M1 Pro I can close the lid, come back 2 weeks later, have it instantly wake up and have 90% battery left.
fortran77 4y ago
I needed to install Linux last week on a new Intel NUC. * The NUC has an intel Ax411 Killer 1690i and Linux wouldn't recognize it. * On my monitors (I tried two different ones) the setup screen didn't fit and the OK/Next buttons on the bottom weren't displayed. I had to guess how many times to "tab" to finish the install. There was no way of fixing that. * The video card isn't quite compatible. It won't come back after the screen blanking kicks in. I disabled the screen blanking. * The machine won't wake after a sleep or a suspend Windows 11 works perfectly on this machine.
- projektfu 4y ago
  The AX411 is supported in Linux 5.14. Were you using something like Ubuntu 20.04LTS that didn't have a newer kernel? 22.04 LTS should support it. Fwiw, Windows frequently doesn't support Wi-Fi out of the box but, when it's preinstalled, the drivers usually are too.
  - fortran77 4y ago
    I tried 22.04LTS and 22.10 Ubuntu It turns out there are two versions of the AX411. It's the "killer" version that's not supported unless I either: - recompile the kernel to tell Linux that when it sees the ID for this card, use the driver for the standard card. That has been claimed to work. - recompile the kernel to enable an experimental feature This is 22.10 Ubuntu. You can see that the PCI device ID of 0x7af0/1692 is rejected by iwlwifi. # dmesg | grep iwlwifi [ 4.753725] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: enabling device (0000 -> 0002) [ 4.755454] iwlwifi: No config found for PCI dev 7af0/1692, rev=0x430, rfid=0x3010d000 [ 4.755471] iwlwifi: probe of 0000:00:14.3 failed with error -22 One frustrating thing was that all the information in the forums was wrong. People (like you!) will tell me that something will work when it won't. This doesn't help the Linux community get new useres. I had to read the source and figure out what was going on. After spending a couple of hours on this for a client, I realized I was insane and bought a $20 older, supported WiFi M2 card for this box. These machines will be installed by a client and I didn't want to have to specify a custom kernel build, too. I wanted to specify Unbunto LTS and have the software ready-to-install. You mentioned that "preinstalled" Linux has fewer problems. Not so. I bought a dell rack-mount server with Linux pre-installed, and that machine couldn't wake from sleep either. It would go to sleep and need to be hard reset to wake up again.
jaredhallen 4y ago
I'm sincerely not trying to be contrarian here, but I'm curious what issues you've run into and on what hardware? I've installed Linux on literally hundreds of machines over the years, many different architectures, makes, amd models. The only real compatibility challenges I recall were modems in the early 2000s, and graphics cards up until around 2010? I actually have the impression that hardware support is pretty fantastic. As an example, on quite a few occasions occasions I've moved an existing linux installation from one machine to another. New laptop? DD the drive from the old to the new, alter the partition size, grow the filesystem, and you're off to the races.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  Brand new hardware can have an issue if Linux hasn't integrated support yet. You get that from day one with a Windows Update or through the shipping hardware. But after a few months it's usually plain sailing. Linux installs nowadays are trivial that my mother-in-law can't even crash them anymore.
  - account-5 4y ago
    Surely that's an OEM and driver support issue and not a Linux issue? The two don't equate if the OEMs and drivers they produce are actively supporting windows and the developers on Linux get no support, meaning reverse engineering drivers, or late support. Yeah it's shit Linux takes longer to support newer hardware but it's hardly linuxs fault.
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      Linux and the Linux distros can hardly fix this problem, but for the end user it doesn't matter whose fault it is. They bought their laptop, they want it to work, and in such cases the only way to do that is through Windows. For example, the Linux kernel had a bug that caused the boot process to freeze after less than a second when you plugged in a display through an HDMI-to-DislayPort-converter on systems running Intel GPUs, caused by a change to the Intel driver that somehow interacted badly with another change in the NFS system if I recall correctly. Not your normal use case, but definitely a problem that shouldn't have taken half a year to get fixed for normal users. I ran into it when I helped a colleague upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu (LTS to LTS) and the only way I could find to work around the issue was to pin the old, unmaintained kernel package and keep and eye out for updates on the bug tracker. If I hadn't known some deeply technical details about the system, he would've probably had to reinstall (or more likely, install Windows) and lose several days getting his dev environment set up again. There's nothing the Linux project could've done to prevent this issue and I'm not blaming volunteers for not spending their days debugging this, but for the end user such problems are unacceptable.
goosedragons 4y ago
Do they say ALL laptops? Here's a direct quote from page 1 of Ubuntu's installation guide: "Whilst Ubuntu works on a wide range of devices, it is recommended that you use a device listed on the Ubuntu certified hardware page. These devices have been tested and confirmed to work well with Ubuntu." No, it's not straight up on the download page but should it be?
hpcjoe 4y ago
If you substitute "windows" for Linux, you have a true statement. All the (mostly rando) laptops in my house (5) which were shipped with windows pre-installed, with broken features/drivers were wiped, and Linux was installed. Many things didn't work under windows. Wifi was the big thing that failed under windows. Then the more generalized networking stack, which was stock, was unable to connect to the internet, despite getting wifi working. With Linux, none of these were issues. Sound worked well. Networking just worked. GPUs just worked (though there was was some stupidity with nouveau and 2060 bits early on, that's been the only GPU issue I've had in the last 15-ish or so years running linux on laptops/desktops). I migrated family to MacOS, as it was easier to support than windows, and like linux, it just worked. Your mileage may vary of course, and you may be the occasional unlucky user with an odd problem. But really, none of the problems are worse than windows, and from my perspective (using computers since 1979 or so), if you start with a well designed distro (Linux Mint, Pop!, elemental, ...) you really won't have a problem. FWIW, Linux Mint is a reworked Ubuntu, with better defaults, drivers, codecs, etc. . I know people get worked up over this and often try to make jokes about "this year is the year of linux desktop" ... but its been my daily driver for 23 years, its been my desktop/laptop OS as long. Its figuratively all over but the shouting. So argue against it if you wish, there are many other windmills you can tilt against which might bear better argumentation. This battle is over. Ordinary people are using it, migrating to it.
- CJefferson 4y ago
  I'm happy that you have success, but I think there must be something seriously weird with your setup if the default windows install can't connect to WiFi. If WiFi didn't just work out of the box, I'm sure most people would just return the laptop, as it's most people only connectivity.
sys_64738 4y ago
Most systems that run Linux are unsupported by the vendor who refuse to provide support. This is the dividing line I find. The vendor might provide source code to the community to make their widget work with Linux but it's provided as-is and unsupported. I found this out with a dodgy NUC recently. Intel support told me that Linux is unsupported so they can't help. I had to install Windows and show the same issue before the issued the RMA.
xorcist 4y ago
Not really. The most successful Linux laptops are probably the various Chromebooks. They sell in the order of tens of millions per year, and certainly doesn't advertise running on any other hardware. It's mostly a problem with the semi-free Linux distributions that found their market share in this niche. It is not intended to be some majority option, despite what the marketing says.
lrvick 4y ago
I have run Linux as a daily driver on probably 50 laptops/ desktops over 25 years. I have never found a problem I could not solve. Sometimes that required me to use a search engine and understand a bit about debugging. In a few cases issues required my to gain an understanding of how the Linux kernel works, and make some patches. I got code upstreamed in the kernel before I was old enough to drink. These days you can buy plenty of computers that ship with Linux and everything will work great. If you just want it to work you can pay money and even have a support plan. That said, if you work in tech you should take note that the whole world runs on Linux now. You will do yourself a major favor just buying any random machine off the shelf, build a DIY distro like Gentoo on it, and learn how to make it run rock solid. The ability to fix anything about Linux to adapt it to virtually any hardware it was not designed for is a feature, not a bug.

nerdchum 4y ago

How bad is it? Is it just the occasional peripheral that doesn't work? Or will systems fail to run entirely?

maccard 4y ago
"occasional peripheral" is usually WiFi, trackpad, Bluetooth or GPU. Bluetooth may be manageable from that list, but if one of those 4 doesn't work pretty much out of the box, it's a non starter for most people
- doix 4y ago
  In my very small sample size, those things "work" well enough. What doesn't work is sleep state and power management. Just my personal experience, but that's what I'm always fiddling with. My laptop still drains much faster in Linux with the lid shut and "sleeping" despite my fiddling. Hopefully this will be sorted in the next few years and the technology doesn't change again.
  - noirbot 4y ago
    Yea, power management is absolutely terrible. I've been messing with it for a year, but I can't really get my Linux laptop on any distro to have better than about 2 hours of battery life while running, and 5-6 while in "standby". That said, the wifi and mouse issues are often by far the worst. It's probably somehow related to the standby stuff, but sometimes I'll just log in and it'll decide my trackpad didn't reinitialize correctly, so rebooting is the only option to easily fix it. There's also a persistent issue with Gnome where the modal for asking for a password for a wifi connection just crashes consistently until you restart. It's happened to me on 4 different distros.
- forgotusername6 4y ago
  Install Linux. Find out that WiFi doesn't work. Manually transfer files to compile WiFi driver via usb. Compile WiFi driver. WiFi works. Boot a few weeks later. WiFi no longer works. Driver built without being signed. Kernel now requires signed drivers. Work out how to sign and trust driver. Boot a few weeks later, WiFi no longer works. Kernel has upgraded again. Signed driver not in the right place. Disable security on driver checking. Put laptop in draw forever. Even though I am capable of fixing all of these things I just don't have the energy. If I want Linux I'll just use WSL or a VM.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - haspok 4y ago
    The last I had this problem was in 2015, when Dell in their infinite wisdom (or because they got a deal) decided to ship _some_ of their XPS 13s with a "Killer" (?) wifi, which didn't have proper Linux drivers, it was too new. Actually, half of the hardware in that machine at that time was unsupported by Linux, I remember I had to wait for about 6 months to get audio working properly. Oh, and I bought an Intel card which solved all wifi issues immediately... I haven't had that problem since, in fact, I find that Linux runs more reliably on a typical laptop (OK, I'm a Thinkpad person, if that's "typical") than Windows (except bleeding edge hardware, I don't understand why Intel can't release their drivers for their next in line CPUs in time, but I'm sure they have their reasons...).
    - forgotusername6 4y ago
      My failed attempt was on an HP stream. It was the cheapest laptop in the store and was woefully underpowered for running windows that it came installed with. I thought maybe I could use it as a lightweight, cheap little Linux notebook to do some hobby projects away from the desk. It wasn't to be.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- yencabulator 4y ago
  I've yet to see a laptop trackpad not work in Linux. I've run Linux on many, many, laptops, including Apple's PowerPC iBooks.
zwaps 4y ago
Power management and sleep (like, closing the lid of the laptop and it waking up correctly every time) has basically never worked for me on Linux machines - of which I had several.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Very interesting, when was this? That, and "audio doesn't work", are one of the few Linux issues I hear people about that I've never had to deal with myself.
- javajosh 4y ago
  Same. Currently my Framework drains battery far too quickly when suspended. Also the fingerprint reader doesn't work, which I don't care about. It turns out for my typical patterns the battery thing is only a nuisance. I assume this experience was at the top of heap, since Framework actively courts Linux installations (I believe they sell Linux preinstalled?). It's also a bit strange, if predictable, that so many HN commenters seem genuinely surprised that Linux doesn't cleanly find and install every device driver on every mainstream laptop. Given the insider nature of many people here, I wonder if this implies that distro maintainers aren't getting enough first installation feedback. Unironically I suggest starting a TikTok (or something) campaign that encourages people to post short videos of Linux laptop installation going off the rails and wanting to throw the machine against the wall. A bug report, but with more passion.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
blairfrandeen 4y ago
I installed Ubuntu on a Dell laptop recently that wasn't on the approved list. It required a few tries, and running some scary commands in my BIOS to change the filesystem parameters. It works fine, and I can still dual boot to my old windows partition. The issues, funnily enough, happen when I go back to windows: the clock has been set back to UTC time, and the Bluetooth has forgotten my mouse. And now I switch back to Windows so rarely that it doesn't matter.
jeroenhd 4y ago
In my experience: hardware out for fewer than six months will have issues, especially on outdated LTS systems like Ubuntu. For example, my laptop (which I bought before it was even on the Lenovo website) had issues with Intel's audio driver that they forgot/didn't bother to submit firmware for to maintainers, though there was an easy workaround. In my experience, Linux will usually just work if you don't have any hardware from crappy vendors. Nvidia is one of the most important vendors that refuse to work normally, but many "gaming" vendors also haven't done any work to support Linux. Elgato and friends have hardware that's useless without software support and for that you need Windows or some weird project from Github. Unlike ten years ago, bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet, sound, video acceleration, suspend/sleep, and all the usual suspects just work if you give the kernel people time to merge the drivers (Windows drivers are ready before release, while Linux often gets them later) and if you pick a recent enough Linux distro. I think most people can grab a copy of the latest version of Linux Mint and just get started. Maybe Pop_OS! if you want a more Ubuntu feel without the Ubuntu hassle.

nicce 4y ago

Might be true for brand new laptops or some rare brands which are not using common touchpad or wireless chipsets. But almost any older laptop works, if it is made by any from the top10 biggest manufactures.

NhanH 4y ago

I bought ubuntu-supported dell laptop, and there were still plenty of issues. Ranging from randomly wake up from sleep in my backpack, to display issue plugging it in an external monitor (this still happens to this day, Linux doesn’t work well with a 4k monitor + a lower resolution monitor). Two years ago, I built a threadripper machine, and even more than 6 months after the CPU was released, linux didn’t work on that yet (iirc, you had to patch or used a special settings on boot, or it crashed). Ubuntu on that same machine suddenly decided last week to NOT recognize a monitor being plugged in via a KVM (there are 2 monitors), booting to windows still works so I am not even sure if it is a hardware or software issue. At this point, I think people who are claiming linux works perfectly on their machines are the one with special hardware, either very old, or very limited.

api 4y ago
You have to go deep and really research it, which is confusing and rules out most users. If it’s not a well known Linux friendly model you have to search every chipset and other element of the system. It’s too bad that Dell is selling supposed Linux-supported laptops that are not. I’ve heard good things about the Thinkpad Carbon X1, System 76, and Star Labs.
ryukafalz 4y ago
> randomly wake up from sleep in my backpack That seems to be common to many laptops including those running Windows at this point in time: https://youtu.be/OHKKcd3sx2c https://youtu.be/OHKKcd3sx2c
- charrondev 4y ago
  For me the only laptops I’ve ever seen that had consistent, efficient, and “just working” sleep is MacBooks. I’ve had ThinkPads and and Dells over the past 10 years that I just shut down every time I put them in my bag because there were too many occasions where I opened up my bag to find my laptop on, fans blasting, and very very hot. On the other hand I’ve had a MacBook for the past couple of years and the only time it ever reboots is for system updates. My M1 Pro I can close the lid, come back 2 weeks later, have it instantly wake up and have 90% battery left.

fortran77 4y ago

I needed to install Linux last week on a new Intel NUC. * The NUC has an intel Ax411 Killer 1690i and Linux wouldn't recognize it. * On my monitors (I tried two different ones) the setup screen didn't fit and the OK/Next buttons on the bottom weren't displayed. I had to guess how many times to "tab" to finish the install. There was no way of fixing that. * The video card isn't quite compatible. It won't come back after the screen blanking kicks in. I disabled the screen blanking. * The machine won't wake after a sleep or a suspend Windows 11 works perfectly on this machine.

projektfu 4y ago
The AX411 is supported in Linux 5.14. Were you using something like Ubuntu 20.04LTS that didn't have a newer kernel? 22.04 LTS should support it. Fwiw, Windows frequently doesn't support Wi-Fi out of the box but, when it's preinstalled, the drivers usually are too.
- fortran77 4y ago
  I tried 22.04LTS and 22.10 Ubuntu It turns out there are two versions of the AX411. It's the "killer" version that's not supported unless I either: - recompile the kernel to tell Linux that when it sees the ID for this card, use the driver for the standard card. That has been claimed to work. - recompile the kernel to enable an experimental feature This is 22.10 Ubuntu. You can see that the PCI device ID of 0x7af0/1692 is rejected by iwlwifi. # dmesg | grep iwlwifi [ 4.753725] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: enabling device (0000 -> 0002) [ 4.755454] iwlwifi: No config found for PCI dev 7af0/1692, rev=0x430, rfid=0x3010d000 [ 4.755471] iwlwifi: probe of 0000:00:14.3 failed with error -22 One frustrating thing was that all the information in the forums was wrong. People (like you!) will tell me that something will work when it won't. This doesn't help the Linux community get new useres. I had to read the source and figure out what was going on. After spending a couple of hours on this for a client, I realized I was insane and bought a $20 older, supported WiFi M2 card for this box. These machines will be installed by a client and I didn't want to have to specify a custom kernel build, too. I wanted to specify Unbunto LTS and have the software ready-to-install. You mentioned that "preinstalled" Linux has fewer problems. Not so. I bought a dell rack-mount server with Linux pre-installed, and that machine couldn't wake from sleep either. It would go to sleep and need to be hard reset to wake up again.

jaredhallen 4y ago

I'm sincerely not trying to be contrarian here, but I'm curious what issues you've run into and on what hardware? I've installed Linux on literally hundreds of machines over the years, many different architectures, makes, amd models. The only real compatibility challenges I recall were modems in the early 2000s, and graphics cards up until around 2010? I actually have the impression that hardware support is pretty fantastic. As an example, on quite a few occasions occasions I've moved an existing linux installation from one machine to another. New laptop? DD the drive from the old to the new, alter the partition size, grow the filesystem, and you're off to the races.

sys_64738 4y ago
Brand new hardware can have an issue if Linux hasn't integrated support yet. You get that from day one with a Windows Update or through the shipping hardware. But after a few months it's usually plain sailing. Linux installs nowadays are trivial that my mother-in-law can't even crash them anymore.
- account-5 4y ago
  Surely that's an OEM and driver support issue and not a Linux issue? The two don't equate if the OEMs and drivers they produce are actively supporting windows and the developers on Linux get no support, meaning reverse engineering drivers, or late support. Yeah it's shit Linux takes longer to support newer hardware but it's hardly linuxs fault.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Linux and the Linux distros can hardly fix this problem, but for the end user it doesn't matter whose fault it is. They bought their laptop, they want it to work, and in such cases the only way to do that is through Windows. For example, the Linux kernel had a bug that caused the boot process to freeze after less than a second when you plugged in a display through an HDMI-to-DislayPort-converter on systems running Intel GPUs, caused by a change to the Intel driver that somehow interacted badly with another change in the NFS system if I recall correctly. Not your normal use case, but definitely a problem that shouldn't have taken half a year to get fixed for normal users. I ran into it when I helped a colleague upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu (LTS to LTS) and the only way I could find to work around the issue was to pin the old, unmaintained kernel package and keep and eye out for updates on the bug tracker. If I hadn't known some deeply technical details about the system, he would've probably had to reinstall (or more likely, install Windows) and lose several days getting his dev environment set up again. There's nothing the Linux project could've done to prevent this issue and I'm not blaming volunteers for not spending their days debugging this, but for the end user such problems are unacceptable.

goosedragons 4y ago

Do they say ALL laptops? Here's a direct quote from page 1 of Ubuntu's installation guide: "Whilst Ubuntu works on a wide range of devices, it is recommended that you use a device listed on the Ubuntu certified hardware page. These devices have been tested and confirmed to work well with Ubuntu." No, it's not straight up on the download page but should it be?

hpcjoe 4y ago

If you substitute "windows" for Linux, you have a true statement. All the (mostly rando) laptops in my house (5) which were shipped with windows pre-installed, with broken features/drivers were wiped, and Linux was installed. Many things didn't work under windows. Wifi was the big thing that failed under windows. Then the more generalized networking stack, which was stock, was unable to connect to the internet, despite getting wifi working. With Linux, none of these were issues. Sound worked well. Networking just worked. GPUs just worked (though there was was some stupidity with nouveau and 2060 bits early on, that's been the only GPU issue I've had in the last 15-ish or so years running linux on laptops/desktops). I migrated family to MacOS, as it was easier to support than windows, and like linux, it just worked. Your mileage may vary of course, and you may be the occasional unlucky user with an odd problem. But really, none of the problems are worse than windows, and from my perspective (using computers since 1979 or so), if you start with a well designed distro (Linux Mint, Pop!, elemental, ...) you really won't have a problem. FWIW, Linux Mint is a reworked Ubuntu, with better defaults, drivers, codecs, etc. . I know people get worked up over this and often try to make jokes about "this year is the year of linux desktop" ... but its been my daily driver for 23 years, its been my desktop/laptop OS as long. Its figuratively all over but the shouting. So argue against it if you wish, there are many other windmills you can tilt against which might bear better argumentation. This battle is over. Ordinary people are using it, migrating to it.

CJefferson 4y ago
I'm happy that you have success, but I think there must be something seriously weird with your setup if the default windows install can't connect to WiFi. If WiFi didn't just work out of the box, I'm sure most people would just return the laptop, as it's most people only connectivity.

sys_64738 4y ago

Most systems that run Linux are unsupported by the vendor who refuse to provide support. This is the dividing line I find. The vendor might provide source code to the community to make their widget work with Linux but it's provided as-is and unsupported. I found this out with a dodgy NUC recently. Intel support told me that Linux is unsupported so they can't help. I had to install Windows and show the same issue before the issued the RMA.

xorcist 4y ago

Not really. The most successful Linux laptops are probably the various Chromebooks. They sell in the order of tens of millions per year, and certainly doesn't advertise running on any other hardware. It's mostly a problem with the semi-free Linux distributions that found their market share in this niche. It is not intended to be some majority option, despite what the marketing says.

lrvick 4y ago

I have run Linux as a daily driver on probably 50 laptops/ desktops over 25 years. I have never found a problem I could not solve. Sometimes that required me to use a search engine and understand a bit about debugging. In a few cases issues required my to gain an understanding of how the Linux kernel works, and make some patches. I got code upstreamed in the kernel before I was old enough to drink. These days you can buy plenty of computers that ship with Linux and everything will work great. If you just want it to work you can pay money and even have a support plan. That said, if you work in tech you should take note that the whole world runs on Linux now. You will do yourself a major favor just buying any random machine off the shelf, build a DIY distro like Gentoo on it, and learn how to make it run rock solid. The ability to fix anything about Linux to adapt it to virtually any hardware it was not designed for is a feature, not a bug.