7 ms·

While clearly anecdotal, my own experience is that things have really not improved all that much over the past seven years. I've been using Linux since 1995, s

• pessimizer 13y ago
  >I'm a big fan of Linux, but things do not seem to have improved over the last seven years. It just feels sloppy and unstable. Is this a conclusion completely drawn from your trying to install two versions of Linux on a particular laptop? If so, I'd say it's a lot of generalization for a single data point.
  • scotu 13y ago
    From a data scientist point of view. But for everyone else I think that's enough data because that's how a user gets to use linux: given a laptop, pick random distro, try, if success: :) else: end. Unless we have linux laptops widely available. Big fan of linux here, too
    • pessimizer 13y ago
      >But for everyone else I think that's enough data because that's how a user gets to use linux: given a laptop, pick random distro, try, if success: :) else: end. That works for me a vast majority of the time, and isn't a standard that either Windows or Macs are held to. Buy a ZaReason or System76 laptop with Linux preinstalled and support, then compare the experiences if you want to call Linux sloppy. You wouldn't dismiss Android because you had a hard time installing it on your iPhone, or if you do, iOS should likewise be judged due to the difficulty in installing it on a Nexus.
    • krick 13y ago
      > But for everyone else I think that's enough data Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure saying that would be "enough data" for someone, but it shouldn't be. Because, in fact, things have improved. It's pretty common to see that something doesn't work (both on Linux and Windows), but it's almost always can be fixed both on Linux and Windows. But what surprised me is the fact that everything just works out of the box (I mean in sense of hardware support) now on Linux more often than on Windows. It wasn't like that not so long time ago. There are few quite common problems (UEFI stuff, Nvidia drivers) that are quite "linux-specific", but range of supported right out of the box devices improved dramatically.
  • Bill_Dimm 13y ago
    Well, I was installing pretty common distros on a pretty common laptop, and most people would have probably given up after expending many fewer hours than I did, so I think the risk of a random person trying to install Linux and coming away with the impression that Linux doesn't work is pretty high. Also, it's not just install problems, and not just the problems that I listed in my original post. It's the fact that desktop search doesn't seem to be able to search the contents of my LibreOffice files when it worked just fine in OpenSUSE 10.2 (I've now taken to using "deepgrep" from the command line when I need to search my spreadsheets). It's the fact that task icons on the KDE panel sometimes end up on top of each other. It's the fact that when I leave the computer idle for a little while it tells me that it is locked and a password must be entered, but simply touching any key gets me right in (making the user think the computer is locked and it is safe to walk away from it when it isn't - nasty from a security standpoint). It's the fact that when I ssh into another computer and hit CTRL-D to log out ssh gets stuck and I have to kill it. It's the fact that it sometimes gets stuck when shutting down, so I have to hold the power button down to shut it off (which makes me worry about the possibility of corrupting something). Like I said, it feels sloppy.
    • pessimizer 13y ago
      When I'm buying a laptop, I keep in mind that I plan to install Linux on it, and plan accordingly. Exactly what I would have to do if I was making a decision to buy Apple or Microsoft. That a random distro fails to work on a random laptop means that it's Monday. OS X wouldn't have installed at all, and the wrong version of Windows may have failed even harder.
      • stormbrew 13y ago
        This is definitely the frustrating thing about anecdata about linux. The expectation that it work on absolutely every device perfectly is one that nothing could possibly pass, and even windows (without the OEM disc) probably doesn't pass without installing a bunch of crappy drivers from the OEM's hard to use website via sneakernet. The last time I clean installed windows on my laptop it didn't even have a compatible ethernet driver. If you know you're going to use linux, look up the laptop you're buying. But as a general rule I find if it's Intel all the way down it tends to work well (so ultrabooks work particularly well).
• hrjet 13y ago
  When it comes to installability and compatibility nothing beats Ubuntu. I have installed Ubuntu on about 10 machines (desktops + laptops) in the past couple of years. Always worked out of the box.
• Someone 13y ago
  "I recently tried installing Linux on a Dell E5430 (another mainstream business laptop, which is certified to work with Ubuntu)" Why didn't you try it with the distribution that claims to work with it? That would make your anecdote a valid argument.
  • Bill_Dimm 13y ago
    I tried Ubuntu several years ago, and really didn't think it lived up to all of the hype. I encountered a lot of obvious bugs (perhaps because I was using the 64-bit version, which was probably somewhat unusual at the time) and the admin tools seemed weak. Add to that some of the weird stuff that Canonical has been doing lately (privacy issues around their desktop search, Unity, Mir), and I'm just not too eager to go in the Ubuntu direction. If I hadn't gotten OpenSUSE 12.3 (mostly) working, Ubuntu would have been my next step.
    • stormbrew 13y ago
      Just use any of the other Ubuntu variants that don't have any of that crap. At the levels that count for this discussion they're mostly the same.