[vimredo]

For Linux to gain 5% marketshare, I really doubt it "barely works" on a "limited set of hardware that it was designed for". It can run headless on basically anything better than a Pentium, and it mostly just works on average hardware (except fingerprint sensors and Nvidia). I've had no problem with Linux on all my hardware, and I have a feeling the last time you looked at it was 2013.

[ruszki]

Linux didn’t work reliably on my laptops in the past 10 years. And I mean basic things, like booting up, or showing a desktop without serious glitches. And all the time problems were non deterministic, and printing just generic unhelpful “something is wrong” errors, if there were any. I try it every year, whether the situation is better, and in the past 25 years, the answer is that barely. Yes, you can have terminal with very basic settings almost every time, but if you want anything more, even just like proper resolution, then it’s still a lottery. The interesting thing is that before that I was luckier, I could hack Linux to many things (I would definitely not say “install”).

And of course like in the past decades any time, you can always use Linux in VMs. Very reliably. So I stick to that.

[fsflover]

> Linux didn’t work reliably on my laptops in the past 10 years. And I mean basic things, like booting up, or showing a desktop

Which laptops? Do they all have Nvidia graphics? This is really vague. Your comment is not helpful, and it just looks like usual Linux bashing from people who don't know what they're talking about.

[HumblyTossed]

Works reliably on mine. Windows 11 on the other hand, feels beta.

[bboygravity]

> I have a feeling the last time you looked at it was 2013.

I literally looked at it last week. Spent multiple days on it. Tried Mint and Zorin (full install, not just live).

This is on a brand new Lenovo p16s Gen 4 with AMD (no nvidia). That laptop didn't even exist before this year.

List of problems I encountered:

-- Multi touch not working (fixed by switching from Mint to Zorin, upgrading mainline kernel in Mint did not help).

-- External monitor not working (had to install display link drivers by going into terminal and running scripts and all of that other classic Linux usability) .

-- Hardware video acceleration not working (scrolling super slow, maps super slow, entire system super slow). Had to install AMD display drivers for that separately. Upgrading mainline kernel worked for Mint, but not for Zorin. Installing AMD drivers in Zorin involved downloading the drivers, !editting an install script that is part of the drivers! and then having an LLM guide me through the rest of the extremely elaborate process of installing the driver.

-- And to top it off, my classic pet peeve: there's no way to configure something as basic as scroll-lines (mouse scrollwheel speed) through a GUI in ANY of the distros. It involves installing imwheel, !writing a script!, setting the script to run on boot and then rebooting (and/or restarting the script).

So no. There's definitely no "it just works". Not even on a laptop that is supposed to have official HW vendor support for Ubuntu.

Also, I only ran it for like a day. I'm sure that I'll run into tons of other issues if I use it a bit longer.

Good for you and lucky you that you got it to work. But for most of us Linux is "nice try, but it's not finished yet" .

[fsflover]

> That laptop didn't even exist before this year.

Here's your problem. The hardware wasn't designed to run Linux and you gave Linux no time to fix the related problems. Try older hardware or wait.

[hdjsbsbzbsbsb]

Running as a user where things need to work is not the same as being headless wherrle all you need is CLI access, disk and network ...

My lenovo p14s is a great linux laptop unless you want it to sleep (which it does!) It even wakes up! But 50% of the time the trackpad does not wake up properly ... Making hard to be used as a laptop that I can get things done on

[pjmlp]

Besides working with it on servers on regular basis, and having had enough with it on desktops and laptops since 1995, last year I managed to get a NUC, where Ubuntu, Red-Hat and SuSE weren't able to boot from the internal SSD or get along with UEFI, only booting from the external drive worked.

So yeah no problem, and yes I know should have gone to the usual forums asking everyone and their dog if someone before me had ever succeeded installing Linux on this brick.

[anthk]

I have different opinions. Try my NUC. Reinstall Windows 10 on it; you won't get audio support unless you get especial audio drivers from a shady download URL (usually used from pirating services) linked from the OEM vendors. Windows Update won't help. Neither SDI Tool Origin.

GNU/Linux works, HDMI output et all.

[knowitnone2]

then don't use it. Linux needs less people like you