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.