The thing is, you buy a mac with preinstalled OS X, and you buy a PC with preinstalled Windows so it just works, because someone else already tested it so it works. If you would buy a PC with preinstalled Linux it would most probably also just work.

Yes, and one of my earlier machines "just worked" and no doubt that was in part because it has Linux pre-installed.

And what you say is one of the main reasons that being able to buy a machine with Linux pre-installed is such a big deal, and potentially a milestone. It's a minor miracle that Linux is getting the market penetration it does given the near total lack of pre-installed machines.

But it's chicken and egg. Here I am being driven to use Windows when I need wireless connectivity because I can't get the Ubuntu wireless system to work. It's at the point where I browse on the Windows machine, and putty into an Ubuntu machine to do my real work - not a good solution long term. I need to get the wireless working.

But where do I start? I've already spent 2 hours searching around, reading forum postings, reading blogs, trying to find out what's going on, and it's clear that I need to learn a lot more before I can start to understand the problems. Quite simply, it's not a cost-effective option, because I don't want to become a Linux internals expert. With the money I could make during the time I spend sorting this out I could easily just have bought a Mac. Which is a shame.

In a sense this is not a complaint - this is a fleshing out of the current situation with respect to installing Linux on a laptop. It would be nice to play a small part in helping to get it sorted.

When you say "linux" are you referring to the latest Ubuntu release or the /. & HN unpragmatic suggestions to use other distros out of some sort of nerd's protest? I'd be curious if you popped in a Ubuntu live cd or flash drive using 13.10 if your wireless would work.

Personally for me, Ubuntu is used for desktops and servers (one of few options if you want optional paid support, and Ubuntu is slick). Apple for new hardware/laptops, with the introduction of Windows8 I don't see any problem with that. Nothing wrong with Apple or OSX, top notch quality, can't be beat at this point. I would still put a copy of Windows7 on a machine used primarily for gaming though (nothing really wrong with Win7 either, IMO best GUI interface conceived).

The point is, with that money you could have bought a PC with preinstalled Linux on it too ;)

No store anywhere near me has a PC with Linux pre-installed. I don't know how I would go about finding one in which I would have any confidence at all. Without a local store, how would I get potential problems sorted? Without a local store, any problems would land me in the same situation I'm in now.

See the dilemma?

For example, I'm on an Ubuntu machine now, and I've recently tried to upgrade it, but apparently it's too far out of date. I've tried to install some software, but it can't find the necessary site that has the package. So now what? I have nowhere to go apart from the internet, and suddenly I am once again having to learn stuff that I really don't want to have to know.

Again, this isn't a complaint, it's an attempt to help define and clarify the problems faced in getting Ubuntu (and other distros) more widely adopted, something I would love to see.

I have a two year old Gazelle Professional from System76. Everything worked out of the box, and in the one case I had an issue (related to reinstalling the OS from a thumb drive), the System76 tech support was absolutely fantastic. Got a direct line to someone who knew all about Linux internals and was able to fix my problem before I could finish articulating it. And for less than the price of a Macbook Pro, I got an i7 processor, two hard drives (Ubuntu preinstalled on a 128GB SSD + a 500GB HD for storage), a beautiful 1080p matte screen, a nice graphics card, and 16GB of RAM. Like I said, this was two years ago and it's still better than most laptops you can get in the price range. The only downside is that the thing is like 6 pounds and sucks up power, but as desktop replacements go I think it would be hard to find better. So the options are there, just not in retail stores yet.

Unfortunately, they seem to have cut the price and removed the discrete graphics card option from the current Gazelle Professional. I guess that makes sense given the state of Linux gaming, but being able to run CUDA on a $1200 laptop was pretty awesome :(

When I bought a System76 computer around the same time-- the low end model for my wife and kids--Ubuntu crashed during setup and never recovered. Fortunately I am savvy enough to be able to do a fresh install. Fortunately, everything did work "out of the box" when I did a fresh install. But average computer user... that just doesn't work.

I understand that frustration, and in the past I considered going back to windows. The thing is, for me at least, when I have a problem on my linux box there is a vast community that seems eager to help. Usually someone else has had my problem and already outlined the fix. When I have problems with drivers on a windows machine the answer is almost always re-install windows. For me that is less then ideal.

I haven't found that to be the case. We build machines, reinstall OSes, upgrade OSes; by and large wireless 'just works' in these cases with Windows. The pre-install is not a special case here.

Actually, that's not true. Wireless on Windows 8--depending on machine configuration--can be abysmal. My wife and I both own high-end HP machines, and the wireless chips in them haven't been worth shit. Apparently an update coming as part of Windows 8.1 will remedy a lot of the wireless issues people have been having, but really? Even a big corporation for whom this stuff is their bread-and-butter can't get it right. Hopefully 8.1 does resolve our issues: constant disconnects--in spite of our Android tablets and phones continuing to stay connected and enjoy solid unflagging bandwidth, and having to disable and then re-enable the chip to get it to see the wireless network again and reconnect. That said, I'm not holding my breath. In my experience, I'd say Linux has recently become better than Windows in a lot of ways, and Mac OS is even better. On the other hand, with Mac OS you get applications which crash all the time (even if the OS doesn't). So pick your poison...

You said your machine is brand new -- is there a 802.11ac draft chip in it by any chance?

F/OSS drivers tend to lag behind, in my experience; for "brand new" machines running x86 I've always found myself just using ndiswrapper with the Windows drivers.

I think there are a variety of factors behind this, such as 802.11ac not yet being standardized, chips designed to have firmware loaded from the host machine (so that it can be updated later if the standard changed), and the FCC/CRTC/regulatory bodies in each region of the world (preventing you from having pure F/OSS drivers if said drivers could be modified to allow the hardware to work outside of the e.g. frequencies legally allowed in your region).

The specific chip set question has been mentioned elsewhere. How can I find out what chip set I have?

On Ubuntu:

    sudo lshw

In general, usually one of:

    sudo lspci
    sudo lsusb

Although you will usually want to look up the raw PCI/USB IDs rather than rely on the strings provided by your operating system.

Note that this only works if your system actually can find the PCI/USB IDs for your hardware in its database (adding entries to the list is easier than actually writing drivers for devices, so the probability of this working is relatively high but not 100%). If your hardware is completely unrecognized though, this won't work.

Of course, this may not tell you the exact chipset -- usually, for that, you'll have to look at the chip itself and read the markings off of it. You probably don't want to pull your laptop apart to find that out, but if it's a popular laptop, you can often find out what other people have found inside by looking on sites like iFixit.

Having been a tech support agent for a number of windows releases I can assure you that is definitely not the case.

huh, I've been using Ubuntu, Gentoo and Arch and I never have had any problems. You usually just have to ensure your wireless card has a linux driver. It was like $30 for me to just buy a wireless card that was supported. If you think about it.. Windows = $200, wireless card = $30, clearly the wireless card is cheaper.

I even went and installed it on my girlfriends laptop and it works fine.

I'm pleased you didn't have a problem. In my case, the laptop has been supplied by my institution, so I didn't have the luxury of doing the research on which card it has, and whether there is a Linux driver for it.

Your response is a common one. To me it sounds like you've just said: "Well, if you'd done something different then you wouldn't have problems." That may be true, but it's unhelpful for me.

Im guessing you have a Broadcom chip (it's very common and usually doesn't support linux), I think Ubuntu/the Linux community needs to focus on that. If the wireless hurdle can be overcome Linux would be much more common.

When I installed arch for my sister, the laptop had a broadcom chip. It kind of worked, but with very low signal strength. But the AUR had a package that fixed it, now it works perfectly...

Company I work for puts Windows XP on laptops designed for Windows Vista and Windows 7.

If you think Linux has issues, try using these laptops. Lots of issues with getting out of standby, stability, using external monitors, etc.

Fortunately we're now moving to Windows 7 so at least using a combination that is supposed to work together.

Generally, out-of-the-box Linux driver support is more complete that Windows. Printers, network cards, and other devices that require driver downloads to run on Windows just work on Linux.