I've been a linux desktop user for a long time now (~25 years?). I generally don't talk about it, as it's not a suitable environment for a lot of people. So I'm always surprised when I stumble upon somebody using it. Just recently I took a Google Cloud training course and the instructor used it as his daily driver. Not only was this impressive to see "out in the wild" but it was nice to see all the tools needed to lead a remote training course worked in his setup. He had a webcam working great (even focused/panned on him as he moved). He had a powerpoint/slideshow going. He had zoom/teleconferencing software working. And it all worked through the course. There was never 10-20 minute pause because something wasn't working right. Having this level of viability and operability is something I never expected to see.
This comment is a bit odd to me since I don't think those basic things you mention have been difficult to get working on most distros for quite a while now.
Ok a bit flippant, but I've been running KDE on my NUC as a secondary desktop for years now. Most of the time it works fairly well, but then suddenly something breaks or needs tweaking. And when it does it's often not trivial for a non-geek to handle.
That said, if they can get Krdp working properly, I'll almost certainly switch to KDE as my main driver, and demote Windows to my secondary.
These threads always seem to oscillate back and forth between "It's 2024 and you can't get Peripheral X working with Linux!" and "Peripheral X's have worked for 20 years now!"
That probably means that it works for some people, but not all. So if you want to use peripheral X, maybe you get lucky and you have just the right versions of hardware and software, and it works. Or maybe you're unlucky, and it doesn't work, and you can spend months trying to get it work. It's just not how I want to spend my time.
That's pretty much impossible. In a sibling thread I explained that even if a machine is Ubuntu certified, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's compatible in real world.
Assembled PCs tend to be more compatible (because of more standard components), but on the othe hand each individual component doesn't receive the coverage (testing) as laptops. There was no way for me to know that my mobo's sleep is broken on Linux, even if the previous mobos from the same producer had good compatibility.
> In a sibling thread I explained that even if a machine is Ubuntu certified, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's compatible in real world.
I've never even heard of Ubuntu certification. I instead search for people who are using the product I wish to buy with Linux, and see what they say about its compatibility. This always works. So it is not pretty much impossible.
> I instead search for people who are using the product I wish to buy with Linux, and see what they say about its compatibility
I'm not sure if you refer to friends or strangers on the internet.
In the former case, one is restricted to a very small pool of models to choose from.
In the latter case, "strangers on the internet" who say that their hardware "works perfectly", are typically completely unreliable; saying "my hardware works perfectly is treated as a badge of honor, so there's a perverse incentive.
One example, in a lot I've personally experience, is that I've read from multiple "strangers on the internet" that the wifi from the laptop I'm typing from, "works perfectly". In reality, the Linux drivers are half broken (on Linux, it has a poor signal).
I'd imagine that the Linux users who report success are probably more selective when it comes to hardware. It's been my primary OS for 25+ years and I've seldom faced compatibility issues, but I also do my research and buy accordingly.
Weirdly, by compatibility is better on Linux than on Windows.
On Windows, on a clean install, I need to install the drivers from WU to get audio working, etc. And then I need to open Intel website to get the latest Bluetooth driver, go to Dell to get the latest wifi, as on Windows Update's these are not the latest.
And even after all of this, some of the drivers on Linux is better maintained, because the support for old Intel GPUs on Windows is very short. Meanwhile, on Linux, I get Vulkan support, and all recent drivers on my Broadwell.
Video perf is way better on Linux here.
I'm always befuddled by comments like this. I have been daily driving Linux (arch,btw) for quite a while, and I have never once had a driver issue, even with NVIDIA graphics cards. The only times I run into issues is when I am trying to run games with anti-cheat, but even that is being worked on by Valve. Linux mostly just works in my experience, I don't see where the idea comes from that its a huge blocker, minus the lack of specialized software.
Friend of mine got a new laptop which i recommended without looking closely on the specs, as it was listed as supported on ubuntu a lenovo yoga x 11 gen I think.
Found out afterwards that the version with windows preinstalled(that the friend bought, because of the cheap windows licence that maybe needed) comes with a special mipi camera from intel with ipu6 out-of-tree driver that only supports specific kernels and specific distros and while there are packages for ubuntu I couldn't get it to work.
Linux works if you don't buy the wrong hardware, windows works on any bought hardware.
I'm not against linux and I use it and most of the time it works out of the box, but this "most of the time" will bite you when you stop looking at specific reviews and driver support and just buy a laptop.
> but this "most of the time" will bite you when you stop looking at specific reviews and driver support and just buy a laptop.
I've never once looked at reviews. The only time I've been bitten in the last 20 years was when given a MBP for work (the intel model with butterfly keys).
There's definitely edge cases out there. But these days they're exactly that: edge cases.
I said that linux mostly works out of the box, but your "edge cases" where in this case:
All lenovo yoga x1 models from the 8. gen onwards with windows preinstalled e.g. over 2 years
All lenovo carbon x1 models from the 10. gen onwards with windows preinstalled e.g. over 3 years
I'm pretty sure it also affects all newer hp and dell models since at least ~2023
It's great that your choice of laptops are never the ones that are broken, but then again, I never said linux never works.
Even if you set aside the webcam problem, the lenovo laptops who where always called out for their good linux support had problems:
The 2016 yoga x1 model couldn't get to sleep (s3i problem which many laptops had) and if it good back from sleep it need a special command to reconnect trackpad and trackpoint.
There where some special patches to make it work and after about a year it worked, still not a possibility for non technical people
The 2016 thinkpad x1 carbon gen. 6 model sometimes needs a special command to reconnect the trackpad and trackpoint, think that got fixed after ~3 years.
Neither of theses devices have a working fingerprint sensor, I can't even think of one that works with linux
Neither of these devices had a supported mobile (lte) modem, as the built in modem wasn't supported and you can't change it because the bios has only whitelisted the preinstalled model.
The new s3i sleep modus also made it impossible for linux laptops to sleep for about a year until it was fixed.
Did all of this get better over time?
Yes
Will every big new hardware thing still mean that some linux things are broken for some time?
Yes
Again, linux works for most of the hardware most of the time, but this will bite you when you expect certain things or devices to work.
But you’re comparing manually installing Linux with a preinstalled Windows. Of course Windows is going to win there - it’s not a fair comparison.
Let’s take an extreme example of that same argument: If someone’s only experience of macOS was manually installing on hackintoshes then they’d say macOS was hard to use too.
And by that same token, I can tell you from experience that manually installing Windows on new hardware isn’t a piece of cake either. You have the same bullshit experience trying to locate drivers.
The common theme here is that nontechnical people wouldn’t be building their own OEM systems or wiping laptop drives and performing fresh installs. Regardless of whether that’s Linux or Windows.
I'm a hardcore Linux user, and most of my machines always had some driver issues.
The laptop I'm writing from needs my mobile phone as wifi bridge, because the Linux driver is poorly written, and it causes extremely poor signal quality. I also can't workaround tearing that plagues the whole desktop environment.
My other laptop has issues with the speakers that will never be fixed. And another one or two issues that I can't remember.
I wanted to buy a certain Lenovo laptop that is officially Ubuntu certified. Lenovo doesn't offer the OEM Ubuntu that they used for the certification though, and the vanilla version doesn't work (I've stopped checking after an year or so).
My desktop has a wake from suspend problem.
To be fair though, I have no doubt that if one chooses a certain machine (laptop) based on Linux compatibility, they will be happy - but it implies a certain sacrifice upfront.
I have used Linux desktop for around two decades on my laptops and never had any issues with drivers or anything else. Various distributions have worked very well out of box with different models of laptops and PCs.
"It works perfectly" statements are invariably false.
For starters, Bluetooth has been broken on Linux until recent times (a couple of years, probably, maybe less), because of the piece of crap that Bluez is. In some Ubuntu distros, Bluetooth may still have some broken functionality (I remember examining the configfiles).
Ubuntu's hibernation was broken last time I've checked, because the setup was setting a 2 GiB swapfile, which is not enough for the RAM of modern machines. My last installation, last week, still set the same size.
I cannot even remember the last time I plugged in a web cam and it didn't work on Linux. Just yesterday I borrowed a USB inspection camera from a friend in order to help me run a new ethernet line to my shop. The kit came with a "WIFI dongle" that you are supposed to use with your phone and some random app, but instead I just plugged it into my laptop, fired up Cheese and it came up immediately.
To Intel's credit ipu6 packs a ton a ton a ton of super advanced capabilities in. Having a good video pipeline is a huge edge. That it took a while for upstreaming to get really into gear on Linux does not super astound me. This feels like a place where we need to expect the open source world to have to find its purchase first before traction forward can really start.
This was a super shitty experience though. It really felt unplanned & chaotic. Hopefully some of the kernel architecture carved out for ipu6 is good & useful for running other video pipelines.
Most webcammers don't knowingly think heavily on color science, but ideally our devices can.
The lack of device drivers for iOS means that manufacturers had to start getting serious about ensuring their devices follow USB class specifications, because otherwise they will not work on an iPad.
Linux (which has USB class drivers) has only benefitted from this.
While true, cameras in Linux are a bit of a hassle. Trying to get one webcam in two applications at the same time, cropping or rotating the camera in one app but not another, etc.
This is getting better/fixed with pipewire though.
Yeah, 20ish years ago I remember having to compile alsa drivers, network drivers, cups drivers, etc. I can honestly see why some left and never came back.
That hasn't been the case for a long time now. I can't remember the last time I plugged something in that didn't work. My home setup is a minipc with wireless kb and mouse on a unified USB receiver, hdmi to a large monitor, bluetooth speaker, wireless printer, and USB webcam with mic.
I didn't have to do a single thing. It all just works. And it has for years, through various distro hopping.
> I've been a linux desktop user for a long time now (~25 years?). I generally don't talk about it, as it's not a suitable environment for a lot of people.
Same: I was already using Debian 1.1 (1.1, not 11) on the desktop or something like that.
But why not talk about it? I switched both my wife (she's very OK with tech) and my mother-in-law (she's not good with tech) to desktop Linux.
If my mother-in-law can use Linux, everybody can. Most people nowadays only need one app: a browser and Linux is totally for that use case, which is about 99% of all users' out there's usecase.
I felt taken back before mid-2000 reading this comment. I mean it's been easily 15 years since those very basic things really just works on all the major Linux distributions.
I recently tried Linux Mint, initially Cinnamon, then installed KDE Plasma. In the former fractional scaling was badly broken. In the latter, I couldn't control screen brightness.
Overall almost everything worked but not all things. And I'm used to working through technical hiccups and being patient. But ultimately there's no guarantee "Linux" will be fully functional on your unique hardware setup, and it's still challenging to choose distribution, windows manager, desktop environment, etc and there's no way to know which combo is best for your hardware without a lot of time consuming trial and error.
Sorry to be a downer but a cloud instructor is still a techie. I'd be way more impressed with a lawyer or an accountant using it but I've never seen one so far.
fwiw; I worked in a company that was kind of a Linux pioneer back in the 90s. We ran Linux for everyone. The accountant ran a VM for his accouting software, but except that everything was Linux. And once set up, it worked very well, for techies and non-technical alike.
If you get past installation and initial setup, using Linux in a desktop role isn't really challenging if you've got access to support.
