This is my issue with Linux, though, despite having a dev VM environment of several distros. There are a metric f*ckton of Linux distros out there and, for every one of them that fixes the problems mentioned in one breath, they break or ignore a whole litany of other things. When I first started with Linux, it was pretty much Red Hat or bust and that was a pain but you knew what you were getting into. Now, it's nearly impossible to know what a lot of the differences are between all the different distros and which one may or may not work for your particular situation. Worse yet, it's now happened to me twice where I've set up a distro, spent the time to get it mostly working, and then, after using it for a few weeks, there's some annoyance or hardware issue that I can't resolve that is resolved in another distro. So I install the next one, get it mostly working, and then run into some other non-trivial annoyance or issue. Repeat, ad nauseam.

Linux, to me, is still very much a tinkerer's OS. If you don't have the time to tinker and get things working and just want to get things done, Linux is not the way to go.

> Worse yet, it's now happened to me twice where I've set up a distro, spent the time to get it mostly working, and then, after using it for a few weeks, there's some annoyance or hardware issue that I can't resolve that is resolved in another distro

A problem should only be unfixable without distro hopping if it requires a newer kernel or some other updated software. Even then, you can usually opt into a newer kernel and fix it in whatever distro you were running. So a rolling release is unlikely to face this issue, or if you check your hardware compatibility before installing.

Generally though, Linux is Linux, and troubleshooting would solve these problems.

>Generally though, Linux is Linux, and troubleshooting would solve these problems.

Sure... but, to me, troubleshooting is tinkering. I don't want to have to troubleshoot my input device because it suddenly changes after an install or kernel update. Yes, I know that I can solve these problems but I don't want to have to do it all the time.

The idea that this is frequent or as arduous as it has been in the past really is an outdated trope.

For the most part it just works. More so than windows in my recent experience.

It's really not. I think you're giving Linux far too much credit. If it really did "just work" and was that easy, you'd see way more computers in the wild using it. It's literally a free alternative that can be installed on any computer. The two biggest barriers to adoption are non-existent with Linux and yet it still has a minuscule user base comparatively. Unless you don't exclude servers, Linux doesn't "just work" for most people.

And I think you're conflating market share with how well something works.

> If it really did "just work" and was that easy, you'd see way more computers in the wild using it.

I encounter a number every day, in software engineering. For non-technical users installing an operating system is beyond what most can comprehend anyway. I'd wager the vast majority of hardware never sees an OS change in its life. Add on that desktop linux is not supported by most games and you've more or less excluded the semi-technical market too. That easily accounts for a small user base regardless of how well it works.

And if you take into account what people use it for - software development largely, in my experience - it seems natural that it has a smaller user base.

> Unless you don't exclude servers, Linux doesn't "just work" for most people.

You haven't really shown that, just a small market share.

I don't understand the point you're making here. You initially said that Linux being arduous is an outdated trope and then admitted that the only people you see using Linux are software engineers and that non-technical users can't even comprehend the install. Who is Linux non-arduous for, then, except technical users and software engineers? Was your argument meant to apply to only the technical users because that wasn't clear, if that's the case.

> You initially said that Linux being arduous is an outdated trope

Yes

> then admitted that the only people you see using Linux are software engineers and that non-technical users can't even comprehend the install

Any install, you don't see them installing windows either. I'm not sure my mother (for instance) really comprehends what an operating system is as a separate entity to "the computer".

> Was your argument meant to apply to only the technical users because that wasn't clear, if that's the case.

My argument, as stated, was that it works fine and the trope that you'll spend your life fiddling with it is outdated. This has absolutely f*ck all to do with how many people use it, as that number is affected by a lot of other factors.

You'll find elsewhere on this page I've talked about messing around with xrandr to get DPI-related stuff looking good on Xfce. And yes, I had to spend some time figuring that out, an evening of my life gone.

I had to spend a comparable amount of time recently trying to figure out how to get my bluetooth keyboard working properly when attached to OS X, and ended up creating a custom keymap for it. And since Catalina my macbook pro has spontaneously rebooted a bunch of times while asleep.

Windows has been a complete bastard with its update packages lately, and it took days of effort to update the four PCs in our house to Windows 10 1903, for no known reason, having got stuck on an older version that was going out of support and started throwing up warnings about being out of date. I'm still not sure how I fixed that, having tried a whole bunch of different methods over the course of several days. Incidentally the old version it got stuck on only had partial support for HDR which explains a load of other weirdness I was seeing on one of the machines.

So to me this idea that Linux on the desktop is a pain in the arse to keep running properly but other systems are not just doesn't ring true.

They've all cost me time and effort lately. Probably the least troublesome system we have in the house is a laptop running Linux Mint that we use to order pizza in the living room... Or my old ARM chromebook I suppose, but that's in well deserved retirement now.

>It's literally a free alternative that can be installed on any computer.

Practically nobody installs operating systems on their computer. The computer they bought comes with one and it never changes. The stability of Linux isn't the problem here.

Ok but even if I, hypothetically, conceded that point, all it would take to make my point is 1 piece of hardware or software that didn't work as intended. Wacom tablets, for example, do not have drivers that can be installed from Wacom. Yes, there is an Open Source project for those but most users wouldn't know or have the technical capability to install that past what's been contributed to the kernel.

For technical users, Linux is fine but it still needs some tinkering. Technical users are more comfortable with tinkering so it's probably not a big deal and "just works" for them but that's a very liberal definition of "just works", imo.

From the Linux Wacom project

>Our drivers are pre-installed in many major distribution... Oftentimes, you can simply plug in your tablet and start working.

I understand it's just an example though. Yes you can sometimes buy some strange hardware that won't automatically work. This happens in Windows too, and installing a package does not require more technical capability than installing something on Windows.

>them but that's a very liberal definition of "just works", imo.

Anyone that's managing to install Linux on their computer has the knowledge necessary to make it " just work." Anybody that buys a computer with Linux on it should expect it to just work.

>Anyone that's managing to install Linux on their computer has the knowledge necessary to make it " just work."

I disagree wholeheartedly. Linux is easy to install. It's not easy to write a driver for a piece of hardware. It's not even easy sometimes to install a driver that someone else wrote.

Case in point: the state of VR on Linux right now. It works for a lot of people that can dork around with setting things up. It's not, in any way, shape, or form, ready for use by people.

Edit: The Wacom example still supports my point anyways. The drivers that you say are included are from the project page. They are not official Wacom drivers and, as such, are missing functionality for some tablets.

> Linux, to me, is still very much a tinkerer's OS. If you don't have the time to tinker and get things working and just want to get things done, Linux is not the way to go.

Completely disagree with you. There are many fully featured desktop environments that are as feature rich as Windows or OSX. Cinnamon, elementary OS, Pop_OS are just three off the top of my head. And hardware support has gotten amazing since 2012 and onwards.

I use a flavor of linux on a few chromebooks and have used it on several laptops from brands like Apple, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, MSI as my primary OS since 2012 and haven't had any notable hardware issues. Things simply work out of the box.

Can you be more specific about what issues you experienced? When was it that you had these issues? I am having a hard time believing you, because my personal experience has been so positive.

This reads like every forum post where someone has asked "how's X distro work on Y laptop", and then people respond with something like the following:

"Runs great! No issues. Suspend/resume are wonky but I'm able to get by. Bluetooth doesn't work reliably but who needs that? Wifi is slower than in Windows."

This is also my experience, recently, with investigating laptops to switch to from my MBP2015. The average person does not give a single shit about this stuff. They expect it to either work, or they'll go where it does. Pop!_OS is certainly a step in the right direction, but it is in no way a true competitor to the ecosystems found on Windows/macOS.

I've run Linux/FreeBSD on and off since 2002ish, too, so I don't feel off in saying this.

There is almost no laptop out there that "just works" with Linux. You might get lucky, and the stars align when you do an install/buy a pre-set Linux laptop from System76/Dell, and then it works, but this isn't always the case for people.

On a Mac? Keyboard issues aside, things "just work" most of the time. I can run a Mac and ship actual products to people, or I can run some open source cobbled together setup and spend my time trying to make it work instead.

You only live once, so you should only do the latter for ideological reasons.

> This reads like every forum post where someone has asked "how's X distro work on Y laptop", and then people respond with something like the following: "Runs great! No issues. Suspend/resume are wonky but I'm able to get by. Bluetooth doesn't work reliably but who needs that? Wifi is slower than in Windows."

I am not sure what you are talking about. I didn't mention a single suspend/resume/bluetooth or wifi problem. I mentioned the following brands: Apple, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, MSI

And laptops from these brands that I purchased and used worked out of the box. You are free to not believe me, but you shouldn't put words in my mouth. I am typing this on a Dell Latitude E7450 and there are no issues with this laptop whatsoever. Suspend/sleep works flawlessly, no audio issues, no wifi issues, bluetooth works flawlessly, everything worked out of the box on manjaro linux.

Also I use my Lenovo X1 carbon with manjaro linux to develop software for a fortune 500/inc 500 corporation 8 hours a day and have been doing it for close to a year without a single issue.

My work gave me the latest fully loaded macbook pro but I returned it because I hate the keyboard (it's unreliable as hell and has no travel distance and feels awful) and the touchbar is an abomination. The keyboard is one of the single most important things on a laptop and if the keyboard experience is lacking, the whole experience sucks. I am very happy with x1 carbon latest gen and manjaro linux and my setup destroys the macbooks other devs use when it comes to things like running unit tests.

Can you elaborate? What was the point you were trying to make?

>This reads like every forum post where someone has asked "how's X distro work on Y laptop"

This is exactly how I felt reading that response. Yes, I'll admit that I don't have experience with every distro that's out there so there may be situations that are as the parent comment described. However, I've been using Linux on servers for 10+ years and still find desktop Linux to be a pain in the ass with the exact caveats that you're describing, regardless of the flavor I've used.

When was the last time you tried to seriously use linux? Server linux and linux on personal computing devices are not the same thing at all so not sure why you brought that up. In reality most of the hardware related pain points disappeared in 2012'ish and now there are many user friendly distros that just work out of the box. My grandma uses linux.

> You don't know what you're talking about. Please exit the conversation.

First of all, stop with the personal attacks and inflammatory baits. Take them to reddit please. Read over these: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> They're the Linux kernel except the desktop versions have a window manager running on top of them that handles the GUI which typically isn't found on a server.

Bingo! Servers are designed to run rock solid stable distributions with the minimum amount of software necessary to get the job done. Desktop distributions come with a desktop environment that allow the users to do things like pick a wifi network or change audio volume. At work we use alpine linux docker images which do not come with even a text editor. They are two very unique use cases. No one sane runs web servers with a full blown Ubuntu desktop distribution because the overhead would be insane. This is one of the reasons why linux servers are so common, and dominate the market share, because they don't have to run full blown desktop environments that'll never be used.

Comparing desktop linux distributions to linux servers is like comparing a ferrari to a honda civic, because both of them are internal combustion engine cars.

And I'm having a hard time believing you because the hardware support for the MacBook trackpad has been abysmal on Linux in multiple flavors. Someone else in this thread mentioned support for mouse scroll speed and that's definitely one that I've run into and had to use workarounds to get to a comfortable place. I also need to use a Wacom tablet that should have 100% support on Linux because it's at least 8 years old that doesn't work properly as an input device. I've had issues with support for wireless cards, peripherals like printers, and even support for things that worked at one point in one flavor that didn't work in another.

I'm glad that you've had a great experience but I can assure you that it's less common than you're making it out to be. And this doesn't even begin to get into the issues that aren't really the fault of any one Linux distro (software availability, for example) but that are just a side-effect of Linux not being a popular desktop OS, regardless of the flavor. Linux can be used as a primary driver in certain cases and I'm sure that some of those cases also happened without any kind of hardware issues. I just don't think that's common nor do I think it's enough to recommend it as a primary driver for anyone that's not a tinkerer.

You should try a modern distribution like cinnamon. I too have a wacom tablet and it works out of the box without requiring any driver installation whatsoever.

I concur. Manjaro solves a lot of the problems of the Linux desktop, and brings with it the great Arch community.

And for keybindings, you're probably better off figuring out how xmodmap works.

It's not pretty. But honestly, if you want pretty when it comes to keybinding, nothing beats a good keyboard. Like the UHKB, Ergo Dox, anything supported by QMK basically.

Look into "kmonad", it is designed to bring the features of the QMK fireware to any keyboard on a Linux system. It is better than xmodmap IMHO.

Is there good documentation/tutorials on setting up xmodmap? It seems like that's a road I'll need to go down at least a bit.