> I loved never having to scour the web for drivers on the manufacturer support websites
That hasn't been a thing on Windows for 10+ years, so glad you got ~5 years out of that.
> Nearly everything worked out of the box, even when it was brand new
I remember the olden days when hardware wouldn't work on Linux, then eventually someone would make a driver for it. These days, it's arguably worse. Nobody writes drivers for modern hardware without the aid of the manufacturer. So some hardware, including virtually all "Amazon's Choice" USB wifi adapters on Amazon, don't work on Linux without hacky unofficial drivers on github, which haven't been upstreamed or vetted for backdoors. (Plus you get to compile and load them into your kernel yourself, which is beyond the ability of most users)
That hasn't been a thing on Windows for 10+ years, so glad you got ~5 years out of that.
> Nearly everything worked out of the box, even when it was brand new
I remember the olden days when hardware wouldn't work on Linux, then eventually someone would make a driver for it. These days, it's arguably worse. Nobody writes drivers for modern hardware without the aid of the manufacturer. So some hardware, including virtually all "Amazon's Choice" USB wifi adapters on Amazon, don't work on Linux without hacky unofficial drivers on github, which haven't been upstreamed or vetted for backdoors. (Plus you get to compile and load them into your kernel yourself, which is beyond the ability of most users)