While clearly anecdotal, my own experience is that things have really not improved all that much over the past seven years. I've been using Linux since 1995, so I remember the bad old days, and things had improved a lot leading up to 2007 when I installed OpenSUSE 10.2 on a Dell D620 with relatively few problems. I recently tried installing Linux on a Dell E5430 (another mainstream business laptop, which is certified to work with Ubuntu) and my experience was not nearly as good:
I'm a big fan of Linux, but things do not seem to have improved over the last seven years. It just feels sloppy and unstable. I'm sure some things have improved, but too much feels unpolished. Maybe I just have bad luck, but I was talking to a guy the other day who has been using Linux since 1996 who had the same impression (he was having problems with disk corruption on a desktop installation).
>I'm a big fan of Linux, but things do not seem to have improved over the last seven years. It just feels sloppy and unstable.
Is this a conclusion completely drawn from your trying to install two versions of Linux on a particular laptop? If so, I'd say it's a lot of generalization for a single data point.
Well, I was installing pretty common distros on a pretty common laptop, and most people would have probably given up after expending many fewer hours than I did, so I think the risk of a random person trying to install Linux and coming away with the impression that Linux doesn't work is pretty high.
Also, it's not just install problems, and not just the problems that I listed in my original post. It's the fact that desktop search doesn't seem to be able to search the contents of my LibreOffice files when it worked just fine in OpenSUSE 10.2 (I've now taken to using "deepgrep" from the command line when I need to search my spreadsheets). It's the fact that task icons on the KDE panel sometimes end up on top of each other. It's the fact that when I leave the computer idle for a little while it tells me that it is locked and a password must be entered, but simply touching any key gets me right in (making the user think the computer is locked and it is safe to walk away from it when it isn't - nasty from a security standpoint). It's the fact that when I ssh into another computer and hit CTRL-D to log out ssh gets stuck and I have to kill it. It's the fact that it sometimes gets stuck when shutting down, so I have to hold the power button down to shut it off (which makes me worry about the possibility of corrupting something). Like I said, it feels sloppy.
When I'm buying a laptop, I keep in mind that I plan to install Linux on it, and plan accordingly. Exactly what I would have to do if I was making a decision to buy Apple or Microsoft.
That a random distro fails to work on a random laptop means that it's Monday. OS X wouldn't have installed at all, and the wrong version of Windows may have failed even harder.
When I'm buying a laptop, I keep in mind that I plan to install Linux on it, and plan accordingly.
You do realize that the laundry list of flaky behavior described in the post are replying to has nothing to do with the hardware (except maybe the shutdown issues), right?
Also, as I stated in my original post this laptop was certified for Ubuntu (I found that out before purchasing), so I did keep in mind that I was going to install Linux on it when purchasing, and I was expecting drivers to not be a problem. You can call me a fool for expecting OpenSUSE to work on it when it was certified for Ubuntu, but there is only so much you can confirm in a advance (and, Ubuntu-derived Mint failed on it).
OS X wouldn't have installed at all, and the wrong version of Windows may have failed even harder.
This misses my point. I realize that Linux manages to accomplish quite a lot without the support from hardware vendors that Windows enjoys. But, between 1995 and 2007 there was a huge amount of improvement in "just works" and polish for Linux. Much to my disappointment, I don't think there has been that kind of improvement between 2007 and 2014. As I said from the beginning, my experience may just be a fluke. Or, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's caused by Novell no longer being behind OpenSUSE. Maybe it is caused by resources being spread across too many distros so none of them get enough polish. Maybe it is caused by a focus on selling enterprise licenses creating a disincentive to fix bugs in free versions. Or, maybe it's all just in my head.
>and there is other weird behavior, like the laptop screen not turning off when the laptop is in a docking station with the lid closed
hardware
>(did not have this problem with OpenSUSE 10.2), and the encrypted partition password prompt being off the screen if an external monitor is plugged in
hardware (questionable: more like how KDE deals with hardware. I don't know KDE, I's suggest switching to something that doesn't do what KDE did.)
I can't see anything that you mentioned what wasn't hardware related. Also, I don't actually know what Ubuntu certification entails, but I agree with you that it isn't meant to guarantee that OpenSUSE and Mint run perfectly.
And, none of that is from the post you replied to; it is from my first post two levels up. The post you replied to is the one where I pointed out that my claim that it feels "sloppy" is based not merely on a few failed installs but also on a whole lot of bugs that have nothing to do with the hardware. Why you would reply to that and imply that it was my fault for not researching the hardware I was purchasing is a mystery to me. Your post would have made some sense (if you ignore the fact that I already stated that the hardware was certified for Ubuntu) in response to my first post, but seems really odd where you chose to put it.
> I can't see anything that you mentioned what wasn't hardware related.
I listed five bugs that have nothing to do with hardware, and you didn't address any of them. I really think you replied to the wrong post.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7458973
They're also almost entirely bugs in things that aren't linux, but applications that run on linux. I don't have any of those problems, because I use different applications. It would be more logical to blame bugs in IE on Windows.
My Linux boxen always "just work". Then again I use Slackware without a DE. I think a lot of people mean by "just work", "just works" and looks pretty and is approachable by my mom. Well, you can't get that under Linux, and as long as the Linux software stack is developed by different groups working at different organizations without a Gates or Jobs to crack the whip, you may never be able to. But I didn't put Linux on my machine to have an off-brand Mac, I put Linux on my machine because it's more robust and functional and stays out of my way when I need it to.
This is definitely the frustrating thing about anecdata about linux. The expectation that it work on absolutely every device perfectly is one that nothing could possibly pass, and even windows (without the OEM disc) probably doesn't pass without installing a bunch of crappy drivers from the OEM's hard to use website via sneakernet. The last time I clean installed windows on my laptop it didn't even have a compatible ethernet driver.
If you know you're going to use linux, look up the laptop you're buying. But as a general rule I find if it's Intel all the way down it tends to work well (so ultrabooks work particularly well).
I have installed Ubuntu on an endless sequence of random laptops without trouble. You may have better luck with these popular "desktop" distros like Ubuntu since they get a lot of testing on typical consumer hardware.
But for everyone else I think that's enough data because that's how a user gets to use linux: given a laptop, pick random distro, try, if success: :) else: end. Unless we have linux laptops widely available.
>But for everyone else I think that's enough data because that's how a user gets to use linux: given a laptop, pick random distro, try, if success: :) else: end.
That works for me a vast majority of the time, and isn't a standard that either Windows or Macs are held to.
Buy a ZaReason or System76 laptop with Linux preinstalled and support, then compare the experiences if you want to call Linux sloppy. You wouldn't dismiss Android because you had a hard time installing it on your iPhone, or if you do, iOS should likewise be judged due to the difficulty in installing it on a Nexus.
> But for everyone else I think that's enough data
Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure saying that would be "enough data" for someone, but it shouldn't be. Because, in fact, things have improved. It's pretty common to see that something doesn't work (both on Linux and Windows), but it's almost always can be fixed both on Linux and Windows. But what surprised me is the fact that everything just works out of the box (I mean in sense of hardware support) now on Linux more often than on Windows. It wasn't like that not so long time ago. There are few quite common problems (UEFI stuff, Nvidia drivers) that are quite "linux-specific", but range of supported right out of the box devices improved dramatically.
I tried Ubuntu several years ago, and really didn't think it lived up to all of the hype. I encountered a lot of obvious bugs (perhaps because I was using the 64-bit version, which was probably somewhat unusual at the time) and the admin tools seemed weak. Add to that some of the weird stuff that Canonical has been doing lately (privacy issues around their desktop search, Unity, Mir), and I'm just not too eager to go in the Ubuntu direction. If I hadn't gotten OpenSUSE 12.3 (mostly) working, Ubuntu would have been my next step.
When it comes to installability and compatibility nothing beats Ubuntu. I have installed Ubuntu on about 10 machines (desktops + laptops) in the past couple of years. Always worked out of the box.
OpenSUSE 13.1 was a disaster: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=835277#c31
Mint 16's installer had problems: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=153379&p=80...
OpenSUSE 12.3 worked, but I had to mess around to get WiFi working: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=835277#c33 and the touchpad still has issues: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=869722 and there is other weird behavior, like the laptop screen not turning off when the laptop is in a docking station with the lid closed (did not have this problem with OpenSUSE 10.2), and the encrypted partition password prompt being off the screen if an external monitor is plugged in: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=862961
I'm a big fan of Linux, but things do not seem to have improved over the last seven years. It just feels sloppy and unstable. I'm sure some things have improved, but too much feels unpolished. Maybe I just have bad luck, but I was talking to a guy the other day who has been using Linux since 1996 who had the same impression (he was having problems with disk corruption on a desktop installation).