As a ThinkPad user, I disagree. I've been using Linux (Fedora + Arch) on my Z13 Gen 1 for three years now and it's been a first-class experience. Everything worked out-of-the-box, with literally zero issues. I can't think of a single thing that I'd want to improve, from a laptop user's perspective. For me, this is the definitive Linux laptop experience.

I had a similarly good experience with my previous laptop, an HP Elite Dragonfly. Only niggle was that not all bits of firmware was upgradable via fwupd, so I had to ocassionally boot into Windows to do the firmware updates. But other than that, I don't recollect any issues with it either.

And I'm sure the laptop experience is equally good on "native" Linux laptops, such as the ones from System76, Slimbook, Tuxedo etc.

So to make a blanket statement like "'the modern experience' is dogshit sliding down a wet stick for laptops", is pretty disingenuous and very disrespectful towards all the developers who've worked so hard on making Linux viable.

It is disingenuous, yet also accurate.

HN mostly agrees:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964519

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42569926

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42122686

I've never used anything but Linux on the 20 or so laptops I've gone through. Suspend can be an issue, fan control can be suboptimal, but the only thing I find intolerable is the touchpad, so I use a mouse. I've had one or two bad laptops, but most were sufficient. If I had a laptop presently, it would be running Linux.

You use it with a mouse... That is telling. Have you considered that people actually want to use the laptop all by itself? Without an external mouse? That's the experience you're supposed to benchmark for.

Yeah, and touchpad behavior in Linux can be configured to a satisfactory degree, but with admittedly excessive fenagling. Modifying dozens of different parameters in a command line interface to get full functionality is silly. The default settings can easily be interpreted as deliberate cruelty.

I am unusually OCD with touchpads though, and have a history of actually smashing them during times of high stress. Why the touchpad isn't taken more seriously in Linux-land is a mystery to me and certainly a point of contention. For all the other benefits of Linux on a laptop, it is something I've always just accepted and been otherwise very grateful for.

Wayland has had 1:1 trackpad gestures as the default for years. I know this because I've been daily-driving Linux (both KDE and GNOME) with a Magic Trackpad for years now, and the experience out-of-box is better than my Mac.

In fact, I think Apple should take a page out of Linux' book and put cursor acceleration in system preferences instead of the terminal. The amount of work that Apple puts into enforcing controversial defaults is mind-boggling.

https://youtu.be/aBEsxTVRsEo?t=95

Holy crap! Good stuff! Thanks.

Just need to get a laptop to try it.

You just linked to three anecdotes. That doesn't prove anything, it just shows that HN users are willing to take a stance one way or the other sometimes.

If you wanted to prove that it's accurate you might include qualitative data, or, gasp, ignore HN since it comprises largely of marketers and not so many engineers.