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To be fair, I've never once read or heard someone describe the Linux ecosystem as "it just works." The entire time I've grown up with computing, Linux was somet
by andrewmcwatters 1y ago
To be fair, I've never once read or heard someone describe the Linux ecosystem as "it just works." The entire time I've grown up with computing, Linux was something you tinkered with as a nerd.
Debian and Ubuntu were like the distros you used if you wanted a semblance of a life as a GNU/Linux user.
- benoau 1y agoI don't think "tinkered with" is the right description for using Linux as a daily driver. It's more like a cartoon character plugging holes in a boat with their fingers and toes and running out of digits - they're trying not to drown. Of course the alternatives are even worse, Apple, Microsoft and Google's "super trawlers" busily sucking the life out of the ocean itself.
- justinrubek 1y agoI've never had this bad of an experience with linux, and certainly not now.
- benoau 1y agoDo you use it on a laptop? Because I think that's where most of the pain points lie.
- notnullorvoid 1y agoI've daily drove Linux on various laptops and haven't had much issues in the last decade. Most of these laptops have been Intel CPU with Nvidia GPU.
- marssaxman 1y agoI haven't used anything but Linux on a laptop in over a decade, and for me it really does "just work" (unless you're including one-and-done BIOS setup issues and the like).
- prmoustache 1y agoIt really depends the kind of laptops. Gaming laptops with nvidua gpus and exotic stuff? maybe. Business laptops with intel everything from integrated graphics to lan/wifi are usually painless. That has been my experience on Fedora in the last 15 years. Caveat being to do some research before purchase about support of third party devices like printers or scanner.
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoIt's definitely been really, really bad in the past even with major distributions. So, the comical description is not far off.
- hedora 1y agoI've found this is distro dependent. I'm happily using devuan, an even-more-conservative variant of debian, and it's rock solid. I had to fix a few hardware-related things and manually switch from pulseaudio to pipewire. It's been fine for almost a year since I did that. I've reliably had the hole-plugging problem over the last 5 years with Manjaro + Ubuntu LTS.
- prmoustache 1y agoFor a non blind user and on a machine that is well supported (rule of thumb: a thinkpad of at 3years ago or more), it does just work. At least as well as on win/mac where frustrations and issues also do exist.