- when using external display, video tearing would be visible either on internal or external display
- Xorg doesn't really support different scaling for different displays, and Wayland has other issues
- battery life is shorter than on Windows
- graphics performance is worse, at least in Firefox/Chrome (smooth animations on Windows would be choppy on Linux)
- touchpad is not great on Windows, but it's even worse on Linux (even after fiddling with settings, and trying many solutions, using it on Windows feels better)
Battery life was stupid on Windows (~3-4 hours max, while Linux did 7-8 with moderate load). Somehow on Windows the fan would always be running even without any significant activity in Resource Monitor.
I remember playing 4K videos on Linux (Firefox though, and I only tested YouTube) without any trouble (with monitor disconnected though, due to what you described earlier).
Touchpad would work sweet on Linux but needed some tweaking on Windows (otherwise it'd 2-finger scroll too fast sometimes).
My experience is different from yours. With Wayland I had smoother graphics than xorg.
That isn't true. The X1 Carbon from 2019 didn't have a working microphone driver for over a year.
If you care about Linux you should only buy a machine with Linux preinstalled and officially supported.
Sure, these are two devices I have recently used with Linux that work out of the box:
Dell XPS 13
ThinkPad T14s
Or more generally, you can extend that to any ThinkPad or Dell device without a dedicated graphics card and you will have a good Linux experience. OP somehow has issues on XPS 13, probably due to meddling with too many things. My XPS 13 (9360) has everything working out of the box with Ubuntu 20.04
A very good idea if you want to confirm just before placing an order is to google "<laptop name> Arch Linux wiki" which will take you to the Arch wiki page for that device. There you can see if there are any known compatibility issues.
The Ubuntu certified devices page is pretty good as well.
> Apple sells you the whole package: take it or leave it.
For Linux Dell and Lenovo do that too (in most regions these days).
From what I understand from the blog post, the author is expecting Linux and the software to behave the same as macOS. That is just comparing apples and oranges. If you want a system that you are used to, you should probably stick to that. As in, if macOS works for you, I see no reason you should switch to Linux. I used a Mac for ~5 years before finally giving up because I just hated the window management (among other things). But hey, that does not need to apply to everyone.