Ugh. Like, literally every time someone talks about having problems with Linux this exact same sentence is said in response.
I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various devices and I still constantly run into issues. Constantly. It's great that you have zero issues, but please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.
Because 20 years ago using Linux meant that I had to deal with configuring ALSA, NDISWrapper, GRUB, CUPS, etc. whereas last night it took me less than 15 minutes to install Mint on a late-model ultrabook and have everything working perfectly. It's a real phenomenon.
Some vendors are better than others at Linux support. I would suggest sticking to Lenovo or Dell if you'd like a smooth experience.
I think its just a bit of a crapshoot with hardware. I'm running Mint right now and I love it, but hardware support isn't perfect:
- My AMD zen4 CPU still isn't fully supported by Mint's shipping kernel (5.15.0-56). It works today (including sleep states). But it took a month or two to get a kernel which supported sleep states correctly. And I still can't see CPU or motherboard temperatures.
- My keyboard and mouse don't work over bluetooth. I think its the vendors' fault, but I bet they'd both work fine work on macos or windows.
- My speakers randomly get all garbled and weird sometimes. I've figured out running `sudo killall pulseaudio` fixes it (until next time).
- I like using Apple's "magic touchpad". But the driver is nowhere near as good as Apple's. Sensitivity is all wrong in linux. It registers accidental light touches as clicks sometimes, and it just feels janky. And application support for smooth scrolling is all over the place - some apps support it perfectly and others (Firefox, IntelliJ) interpret any tiny single pixel scroll on the touchpad as a multi-line scroll. I've reverted to using a traditional mouse.
That said, some things have been a delight. My old AMD 480 graphics card worked perfectly out of the box, with no configuration required. When I upgraded out my motherboard and CPU a few months ago, the computer booted just fine with no reconfiguration or anything. It just took it all in stride. (I've still never seen windows handle that so well.)
I'm not surprised some people have no problems with desktop linux. But YMMV.
> I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various devices and I still constantly run into issues. Constantly. It's great that you have zero issues, but please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.
While I find this true on Linux, I find it more true on Windows and OS X nowadays.
The difference is that with Linux, there is probably a workaround. If I have an issue with Windows or OS X (nee macOS) and it's not affecting a million people, I'm simply screwed.
What would you want them to do differently? They believe things have improved over time and want to share that information. I think it’s helpful but you seem to think it’s tiring or that they just shouldn’t?
If they think there has been a step change improvement in the linux experience then they should make that a falsifiable claim by specifying when it happened themselves.
Ugh. Like, literally every time someone talks about having problems with Linux this exact same sentence is said in response.
I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various devices and I still constantly run into issues. Constantly. It's great that you have zero issues, but please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.