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Windows 10 made me buy a mac... After many years of alternating between Windows and Linux, the lazy "drivers just work" alternative without all the Microsoft bl

Windows 10 made me buy a mac... After many years of alternating between Windows and Linux, the lazy "drivers just work" alternative without all the Microsoft bloat is a Mac. Linux is great, love it on the server, but it's never a "just works" experience on any modern laptop type hardware.

acidburnNSA 2y ago
Drivers seem to just work in Linux now too these days!
- TylerE 2y ago
  For the most boring consumer stuff maybe, but like any audio hardware that ain’t totally mainstream is not good.
  - an-unknown 2y ago
    > […] like any audio hardware that ain’t totally mainstream is not good. Funnily enough, it totally depends on the hardware. If your audio hardware is supported by Core Audio on Mac, chances are it will also work on Linux without problems. If your audio hardware is older, chances are it will not work on Windows due to the lack of modern drivers but will work on Linux without problems. This also applies to a lot of other older hardware like scanners/printers/... or even built-in peripherals in older laptops. But if it's something strange (e.g., MOTU MIDI interfaces come to mind which use a non-standard USB protocol), you'll have to hack your own kernel driver which you probably don't want to do. Of course if you are adventurous and do hack your own kernel driver, even this will work, and you'll probably even find someone else's driver code on github. What's also interesting about hardware support on Linux is that a lot of things which require extra drivers on Windows just work out of the box on Linux, especially if it's in any way relevant for servers like various network cards or if it's one of the many "standard" USB UART chips.
- shric 2y ago
  Tell that to anyone wanting a performant Wayland experience with an Nvidia GPU and Sway while maintaining secure boot. It's doable, but it doesn't "just work".
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Should work soon; 555-series drivers are doing great on GNOME and KDE both in my testing. But yes; Nvidia has been the sore thumb of Wayland and Linux adoption for almost a decade now. It's interesting to see the tides finally start turning!
- t0mas88 2y ago
  Does a high dpi screen, WiFi 6 and hibernate all work out of the box these days and keep working for a few years? Because I still see coworkers with issues in those areas even in 2024, while a simple macbook air does all of those no questions asked. Maybe they're not doing it right, but it looks close to my experience up to a few years ago.
  - ensignavenger 2y ago
    If you buy a Linux laptop all of those things should work just fine, yes. Just like if you buy a Macbook, MacOS will work fine, but if you buy a Windows laptop and try to install MacOS onto it... you are likely to be in for a much worse time than trying to install Linux on a Windows laptop.
    - slowmovintarget 2y ago
      Hibernate does not "just work" though. Every system update causes settings to come unbolted. The screen starts shutting off at the 30-second mark, being super aggressive until you do an `xset -dpms` to turn it off. Killing Gnome from the system console and restarting will make it use whatever other setting it's supposed to use, but it doesn't "just work." Granted, this won't be for every flavor of Linux, just the one I happen to be using. I imagine there's all kinds of different issues with the proliferation of Window Managers and graphics servers. Users looking for "just works" are not looking to dive into the various overlapping software processes. Worse, the UIs themselves don't give you insight into what underlying settings you're manipulating when you click some button or toggle in the GUI settings. As a Linux user you know there's a conf file somewhere. But the UI obscures that from you. Perhaps the doc (or the source code (!)) says what the UI is doing. I'd love for there to be a little fly-over in the UI or even a path to the underlying configuration files. I'd be perfectly happy tweaking those in Emacs or Vim but I'm less happy hunting them down to figure out what they are. I'm determined to avoid Windows, and I want x86 hardware because I can load it up for AI workloads. So I'm happy to be on Linux, but it comes with an overhead that most consumer level equipment doesn't. Linux is the equivalent of those shop tools that aren't safe by default, and are intended to provide the flexibility needed by machinists that know what they're doing. I'll accept that trade-off, but I'm not going to sell it to anyone who is a developer.
- dgunay 2y ago
  It's hit or miss. Some laptops work flawlessly, others do not. And then there's the gamut of features that not many people use, but maybe it's critical to your use case (like a mixed multi-monitor setup).
- k8sToGo 2y ago
  My Kensington VeriMark just works on Windows. Doesn’t work at all on Linux.
speed_spread 2y ago
I would happily pay 15$/month to get a maintained Linux distro that "just works" on my machine without the Mac bloat/perkiness/weknowbetterthanyoudo. Many distros get _so_ close, but there's always an extra setup step to get basic things right. Machines-specific drivers, etc.
- k310 2y ago
  I posted elsewhere: My brother, the least tech-oriented person you can imagine, got tired of windows updates breaking his drivers and ended up with a linux system sold by and supported by Dell. I get zero calls for help. Other than browsing, he uses Libre Office for random documents and a photo management app I forgot. I take his experience as a very positive sign for linux. From Dell, supported by Dell. Save your $15/month.

acidburnNSA 2y ago

Drivers seem to just work in Linux now too these days!

TylerE 2y ago
For the most boring consumer stuff maybe, but like any audio hardware that ain’t totally mainstream is not good.
- an-unknown 2y ago
  > […] like any audio hardware that ain’t totally mainstream is not good. Funnily enough, it totally depends on the hardware. If your audio hardware is supported by Core Audio on Mac, chances are it will also work on Linux without problems. If your audio hardware is older, chances are it will not work on Windows due to the lack of modern drivers but will work on Linux without problems. This also applies to a lot of other older hardware like scanners/printers/... or even built-in peripherals in older laptops. But if it's something strange (e.g., MOTU MIDI interfaces come to mind which use a non-standard USB protocol), you'll have to hack your own kernel driver which you probably don't want to do. Of course if you are adventurous and do hack your own kernel driver, even this will work, and you'll probably even find someone else's driver code on github. What's also interesting about hardware support on Linux is that a lot of things which require extra drivers on Windows just work out of the box on Linux, especially if it's in any way relevant for servers like various network cards or if it's one of the many "standard" USB UART chips.
shric 2y ago
Tell that to anyone wanting a performant Wayland experience with an Nvidia GPU and Sway while maintaining secure boot. It's doable, but it doesn't "just work".
- talldayo 2y ago
  Should work soon; 555-series drivers are doing great on GNOME and KDE both in my testing. But yes; Nvidia has been the sore thumb of Wayland and Linux adoption for almost a decade now. It's interesting to see the tides finally start turning!
t0mas88 2y ago
Does a high dpi screen, WiFi 6 and hibernate all work out of the box these days and keep working for a few years? Because I still see coworkers with issues in those areas even in 2024, while a simple macbook air does all of those no questions asked. Maybe they're not doing it right, but it looks close to my experience up to a few years ago.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  If you buy a Linux laptop all of those things should work just fine, yes. Just like if you buy a Macbook, MacOS will work fine, but if you buy a Windows laptop and try to install MacOS onto it... you are likely to be in for a much worse time than trying to install Linux on a Windows laptop.
  - slowmovintarget 2y ago
    Hibernate does not "just work" though. Every system update causes settings to come unbolted. The screen starts shutting off at the 30-second mark, being super aggressive until you do an `xset -dpms` to turn it off. Killing Gnome from the system console and restarting will make it use whatever other setting it's supposed to use, but it doesn't "just work." Granted, this won't be for every flavor of Linux, just the one I happen to be using. I imagine there's all kinds of different issues with the proliferation of Window Managers and graphics servers. Users looking for "just works" are not looking to dive into the various overlapping software processes. Worse, the UIs themselves don't give you insight into what underlying settings you're manipulating when you click some button or toggle in the GUI settings. As a Linux user you know there's a conf file somewhere. But the UI obscures that from you. Perhaps the doc (or the source code (!)) says what the UI is doing. I'd love for there to be a little fly-over in the UI or even a path to the underlying configuration files. I'd be perfectly happy tweaking those in Emacs or Vim but I'm less happy hunting them down to figure out what they are. I'm determined to avoid Windows, and I want x86 hardware because I can load it up for AI workloads. So I'm happy to be on Linux, but it comes with an overhead that most consumer level equipment doesn't. Linux is the equivalent of those shop tools that aren't safe by default, and are intended to provide the flexibility needed by machinists that know what they're doing. I'll accept that trade-off, but I'm not going to sell it to anyone who is a developer.
dgunay 2y ago
It's hit or miss. Some laptops work flawlessly, others do not. And then there's the gamut of features that not many people use, but maybe it's critical to your use case (like a mixed multi-monitor setup).
k8sToGo 2y ago
My Kensington VeriMark just works on Windows. Doesn’t work at all on Linux.

speed_spread 2y ago

I would happily pay 15$/month to get a maintained Linux distro that "just works" on my machine without the Mac bloat/perkiness/weknowbetterthanyoudo. Many distros get _so_ close, but there's always an extra setup step to get basic things right. Machines-specific drivers, etc.

k310 2y ago
I posted elsewhere: My brother, the least tech-oriented person you can imagine, got tired of windows updates breaking his drivers and ended up with a linux system sold by and supported by Dell. I get zero calls for help. Other than browsing, he uses Libre Office for random documents and a photo management app I forgot. I take his experience as a very positive sign for linux. From Dell, supported by Dell. Save your $15/month.