Never heard of the company, but based on the specs of laptops being offered from the website, I'd hazard a guess that the discrete GPU is probably the source of many of your woes. Linux has always been a second-class citizen for video cards, particularly since NVIDIA's binary blobs fly in the face of the FOSS spirit.
If she doesn't do intense graphical editing or gaming, an integrated GPU from Intel would probably run much better on Linux.
FWIW (and I hate countering anecdotal evidence with more anecdotal evidence), I've got a Dell XPS 13 running Fedora and it will run days/weeks without a problem. I reboot it maybe once a month in order to apply the latest kernel, and that's about it.
I am not sure whether the parent was using the nouveau drivers or the NVIDIA blobs. It's besides the point either way: GPU's on Linux are notoriously finicky, no matter your stack.
The recommendation to go with an integrated GPU is strictly pragmatic. I personally am a tinkerer and am willing to live with a little bit of pain as far as functionality or configuration for ideological reasons if it means supporting a FOSS distribution. But I can't make that same assumption for the parent's wife, and if she wants something that "just works" because she's unwilling to tolerate that level of pain, then an integrated GPU might be the way to go.
Everybody on the below thread is having a tertiary argument thinking I have something to say about GPUs and their drivers. I could not care less.
Also, You want to lay down all the graphics options when Linus did that and _not_ pick Nvidia? Cool, go play zork. I understand what the situation was, but don't deny who was actually delivering on graphics performance either.
Today however, it's genuinely refreshing to see AMD's driver efforts and overall offering as a company.
Making the wrong consumer choice here matters, because it can take you from a good, functioning PC to one that works far less effectively.
You're right in that you shouldn't have to give a fuck, that they should all - in support terms - be drop in replacements allowing you to balance up cost vs. performance, but the Linux team have tried awfully hard to make it that way without being able to reach a compromise with GPU producers.
In the meantime, Linux gives you a choice of external GPUs at varying levels of freedom and support. That's more than nvidia gives you.
Again: Today however, it's genuinely refreshing to see AMD's driver efforts and overall offering as a company.
For the record, I had a really bad time with Nvidia hardware and their drivers on Linux, and the whole Optimus thing that they pushed 5-ish years ago.
Never had a problem with Intel graphics, except that power management (RC6) support in Sandy Bridge chips took a while to mature.
> and this is really bad advice
I think that's a huge stretch. Disagree all you like from your own experience, but I believe that the statement "Intel drivers work more smoothly than the proprietary Nvidia drivers" matches the current consensus.
Oh you have a problem? Stop doing this thing I don't like.
Yay everyone, we did it.
Nvidia: run a special process to fetch one of a limited set of binary blobs from a single vendor, shim them into the kernel and cross one's fingers that this combination of binaries will work. Then go through it all again at the next kernel update. Yes, Ubuntu and co. have scripts to do this, but it's all a big hack.
Intel: the drivers' already there, included in the kernel; there's very little to go wrong.
My current system has Intel graphics; if I did end up stuck with nvidia hardware, I'd try the noveau driver, and failing that I'd use vesa. Installing third-party driver binaries isn't worth the hassle.
Yes, Ubuntu and co. have scripts to do this, but it's all a big hack.
Most manufacturers simply don't have the financial incentive to put in time and labour towards supporting Linux.
Your comment would be more interesting and sound less like a troll without this.
What are the "things" you're talking about and how do they "break"?
What are the ways Ubuntu is at the standard of 15 year old versions of Windows or OSX?
AIUI Linux is actually pretty well-known for its stability. On desktop I never reboot (Xubuntu) unless there's an update that requires it, and even then it's usually several days later, due to having so much running I don't want to close.
If it "sucked" and was so buggy it required rebooting every two days then I think we'd hear more about it from its tens of millions of users, not all of whom are "your geeky Linux user", as you put it.
> My wife doesn't care what window manager is chosen
I don't care about window managers either. I don't have any of the problems you're talking about.
> little annoying bugs
For example? Actual bugs, or just things you personally don't happen to like or that don't behave like Windows?
I recently bought a Dell Precision 5520 (a bumped up XPS 15 with Kaby Lake basically) and I have to say that the Ubuntu it shipped with worked pretty flawlessly- I had absolutely no issues at all it's shocking to me how well it ran and all the niggling things I expected to pose problems worked as flawless or even better than the last time I run them on windows. (Wifi/Trackpad/Battery and indicators)
The only issue I had was the Thunderbolt 3 dock I bought with it, for some reason the USB ports didn't work. But after I installed archlinux with a more modern kernel even that went away.
I would say that my laptop is almost better supported than my old Thinkpad. And that thing was damn near flawless already.
Linux on the desktop is improving, and I think Canonical was and continues to be a huge driver of that- Ubuntu is the OS that is the target platform for a lot of these Linux supporting devices and Canonical has a lot of responsibility in that area.
We might do well to appreciate that. Even if we don't like things like systemd/mir/whatever
However, I've really like using Ubuntu on an XPS 13 from Dell.
To what extent could this be related to using hardware from piss-ant vendors who are trying to cobble something together from whatever Clevo has for sale?
I cannot use the UI in OS X (my brain cannot adapt to it somehow), but have to use MS Windows 8 machines for work, and am always surprised by how inefficient their UI is, considering how much money has been poured into it.
I find that hard to believe. I have a crapbook pro they gave me for work and I have to reboot it every few days because it becomes unresponsive.
In terms of quality I would put it about 10-15 years behind Mac OSX or Windows. I almost never have to reboot my Mac because something broke, and when I use modern Windows machines I also seldom have to reboot them.
So my message to Canonical is to make something that doesn't suck. My wife doesn't care what window manager is chosen, just pick one and stick with it until it works. And test the crap out of it. test, test, test... Find bugs and fix them. Your geeky Linux user doesn't care about little annoying bugs, but less technical users really do.