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> The windows 11 experience has been great, flawless even. Yes there are some advertisements creeping into it, but they can be turned off, and Ubuntu doesn’t exactly have a clean track record here.

You're treading awfully close to a false equivalence. Ubuntu made this mistake what once? Microsoft is continuing to do and doubling down. Also, it is impossible to turn off all the ads (let alone all the privacy invading "telemetry") in Windows without shelling out $3/month (e.g. video ads in Solitaire). There is a world of difference between the two. Let's not pretend they're anything akin, especially today.

> Can these issues really be fixed? Could Microsoft fix it if they take swing at it?

While power management in Linux is worse, it is also very patchy in Windows. I frequently find my new Windows machine dead as well. I think this is more an issue with the ACPI standard.

> Why can't the Linux community move the needle on these issues, and if they can't why should we want Windows assimilated into that ecosystem?

Pretending that major progress hasn't been made (especially wireless) is simply ignoring reality. With respect to wireless, I think the Windows and Linux situations are comparable. Linux lacks a few drivers but is overall more reliable. Also, I would point out that you're somewhat drawing a false equivalence since Windows makes both the hardware and software in your Surface. You should compare your Surface experience with a System76 machine, that would be a more accurate comparison.

And... Ubuntu is not linux. Ubuntu is one flavor and, being open source, when canonical made a mistake we could all drop their software and use something else. When Microsoft makes mistakes we don't have much choice but to wait/pray they address the situation before it bites us.

> Ubuntu made this mistake what once? Microsoft is continuing to do and doubling down.

Well, my point was not that they were the same, but that Canonical has engaged in behavior I find unsavory in the past (indeed in my opinion far more unsavory than what Microsoft has done with Windows 11, but that's just my opinion), so I can no longer trust them to engage in this behavior in the future.

> Pretending that major progress hasn't been made (especially wireless) is simply ignoring reality.

The reality I live with is that I still can't connect to my University's wireless network using my Ubuntu machine, but it works fine on Windows and MacOS and has for decades.

> Also, I would point out that you're somewhat drawing a false equivalence since Windows makes both the hardware and software in your Surface.

I've owned machines from all manufacturers you could care to list and even when a HW vendor is trying really really hard to offer the fully integrated, seamless experience that Windows and MacOS offer, they still can't get it right. For instance, the Dell machine I have right now is one of them. Dell has been selling Ubuntu computers for 14 years and they can't get their power setting right.

I love Linux. I use it every day. My job wouldn't be possible without it. My passions wouldn't be possible without it. But we need Windows to not be Linux because honestly Windows is still setting the bar in many regards.

IMO, The difference being overlooked here is that the reason windows is so smooth is because it’s cost effective to target it when you’re making hardware.

If MS pivoted to a Linux Kernel, then all that hardware will quickly get better support for it. Hardly anyone does this today because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze (yet).

> then all that hardware will quickly get better support for it

Google has infinite money, a golden membership of Linux foundation, they ship Linux-based OS used by billions of people. Even they can’t support Linux kernel, instead they are supporting many thousands of lines of code of kernel patches for their Android.

I think the reason is Linux architecture. Specifically, the fact Linux insists drivers are compiled into the kernel, instead of providing an ABI for them.

Google has money. Unfortunately it has no HW design expertise. They could do what IBM did in the 80's: create a platform. But it is too much for google. And, taking into account the crap they make, it is better that way.

Sorry, but if you have these kinds of things being done by HW vendors, then it's hard to just blame Linux for PM issues:

http://iam.tj/prototype/enhancements/Windows-acpi_osi.html

Anyway, I've been lucky for system suspend/resume to work just fine on all my workstations over the last 12 years or so. It would be quite annoying otherwise.

If the Linux community had the amount of elbow grease that Microsoft and hardware/software vendors have at their disposal, especially the unsexy issues... we'd be probably writing these comments from our Mars habitats.

If the Linux commnunity could stop with the idea that people who want easy to use software are inferior, and spending their combined developer efforts on making hundreds of new Linux distributions and media players and text editors, there's certainly enough combined elbow grease gone into Linux software over the past decade to fix suspend/resume or audio playing or multiple screens of different DPI. What there isn't is commercial motivation to do so, which isn't Microsoft's fault anymore than it is Apple's fault, a company which has built a pretty good Unix-on-laptop experience.

> What there isn't is commercial motivation to do so

Yes, is what my comment I about. Commercial motivation (aka "pay me") is exactly what we need, and what we don't have.

> If the Linux commnunity could stop with the idea that people who want easy to use software are inferior

You must be confusing the Linux community with the Linux subreddit or ricing forums. Or you have lost checked the community vibes some 17 years ago. There's certainly no such thing happening broadly today. We want easy to use software, because that means we can get our parents and grandparents off of Windows.

> there's certainly enough combined elbow grease gone into Linux software over the past decade to fix suspend/resume or audio playing or multiple screens of different DPI

No, definitely not enough. There's no fundamental reason (beyond X11 weirdness - which may get replaced by a heavily reworked Wayland in this hypothetical scenario - but I digress) why suspend, audio, multi-monitor and power modes cannot work on Linux as well as they do on Windows. Suspend, multi-monitor and power modes are things that frequently rely on quirky hardware modes and there's no substitute to fixing that other than documentation and manpower.

Audio is better - pipewire seems to be the bringer of much-needed change, and I can actually connect to a Bluetooth headset in A2DP mode almost reliably. This was unthinkable a decade ago.

> and spending their combined developer efforts on making hundreds of new Linux distributions and media players and text editors

1) Explain how the development of new text editors seems to be talking up a significant chunk of available volunteer manpower? Even Emacs and vim couldn't possibly take up such a large chunk of the available manpower, since they are hard to even use and let alone hack on.

2) "hundreds of Linux distributions" is a myth and has been one for a very long time. The fact of the matter is that nearly every new user only needs to try three major distros: Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Fedora. If they are very picky, add another four to the list. If they don't care, pick one for them and they won't complain.

3) not enough "combined developer efforts" is the problem - and could be solved with funding for specific goals, like the Asahi Linux project did to get Linux working on M1 silicon.

> "Explain how the development of new text editors seems to be talking up a significant chunk of available volunteer manpower? Even Emacs and vim couldn't possibly take up such a large chunk of the available manpower, since they are hard to even use and let alone hack on."

Kate? Kwrite? Kakoune? NeoVim? Featherpad? Gobby? Yudit? aoeui? Searching Ubuntu package descriptions for 'text editor' finds 98 of them. ( https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=bionic&searchon=all... ) Then consider all related things on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_editors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_word_processors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-code_editor

These aren't springing out of nowhere, these are all massive amounts of duplicated human effort reinventing wheels over and over.

> "2) "hundreds of Linux distributions" is a myth and has been one for a very long time. The fact of the matter is that nearly every new user only needs to try three major distros"

Distrowatch tracks at least 276 different distributions and those are likely only a subset of all that have ever been created and released. It's bad enough to consider the duplication of effort, even worse if you only three matter.

https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

All that wheel reinvention while important things were just crying out for available effort, right?

> "There's certainly no such thing happening broadly today. We want easy to use software, because that means we can get our parents and grandparents off of Windows."

Even while denying it, your own example is that easy to use software is for people who can't use computers. It's not for the likes of you. It's like a construction company that thinks power tools are for grandmas and handtools are for workers, it makes no sense at all.

This comment made my night, haha!

> The windows 11 experience has been great, flawless even. Yes there are some advertisements creeping into it, but they can be turned off, and Ubuntu doesn’t exactly have a clean track record here.

These are choices someone once made, and not technical decisions anyway. Windows could become a Linux, BSD, or Plan9 distro and they could make the exact same choices.

I don't know what the current state is, but the last time I tried pre-installed Windows that came with my laptop it kept bugging me about Edge when I was using Firefox. I thought that was rather rude – I'm doing work, don't bug me with pointless nonsense – so I replaced Windows with Linux and that was all of my 20 minutes of Windows 10 experience. I was not impressed.

But again, these are not technical issues. I don't really care what kernel my system is running; I care about not having my work interrupted with spam built in to the system.

I have the exact same power issues with my Dell XPS laptop running Windows 10, and a few more. I think my favorite is when I have to restart the computer before it will shut down.

Point is, Windows is no guarantee of a functioning system.

Sure it's not. But over 20 years and more technology I'd like to admit, the number of times I've had to deal with these issues on my Windows machines I can count on one hand. On my Linux machines.... well, I'm going to need more limbs.

At least Linux don't wipes out your data when you do an update.

Or maybe windows issues just fly under your radar, but the linux ones don't.

For example, just yesterday, I was figuring out why Quick Settings in Windows 11 do not show up on a machine upgraded from Windows 10 (without that, you have to go to Settings app to connect to wifi or turn on/off a vpn). Turns out, if you disabled Action Center in Windows 10, then there's no Quick Settings in Windows 11 for you and no way to enable it back, save for manually editing registry.

In my experience, most windows users would not consider the above as an issue they had to deal... in windows. But in Ubuntu, they definitely would. Maybe it is the difference between familiar and unfamiliar territory.

Linux, or Ubuntu?

Linux. I've had machines with Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, Suse, Mint, and Fedora as well as some more specialized operating systems for particular specialty hardware. Actually Suse was my intro to Linux.

I haven't used ubuntu on any box I personally use in a while, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like it's the only distro all the "X didn't work on linux for me" complaints seem to be about. Experiences dealing with it on projects locked into e.g. proprietary Nvidia SDKs or whatever have involved a lot of head-scratching about what they consider "sane defaults" and headaches around package compatibility. All things considered I'm starting to think Ubuntu specifically has kinda jumped the shark as a distro

For what it's worth, I haven't had serious ACPI issues on Arch on any device for about a decade. Might be worth seeing what else is out there, if these sorts of pain points are cropping up for you a lot. Rolling-release also has the advantage of never having to fully reinstall the OS unless you really go and break something. I've had bad luck with in-distro upgrades breaking horribly whether it's debian or fedora or what have you, but rolling-release installs have lasted me... I think the longest one was 12 years? An old webserver that finally lost too many hardware components to function after a lifetime of heavy use. I've heard good things about NixOS from friends, though I'm a little leery of "immutable configs". I'm not trying to be a snob here, but Ubuntu ain't the only game in town, and it sounds like a lot of people try it and decide linux just doesn't work, so I haven't recommended it to anyone in years, and I should probably start actively steering them off it

Of course, another salient possibility is that as the most famous linux distro, it's what people who've installed linux without any real intention to use it - or perhaps more charitably without understanding that unfamiliarity is a real switching cost and give up immediately - have tried

What you seem to envision is Microsoft strictly becoming a Linux distro and throwing away all their external display management code, for example. I don't think that's ever going to happen. I don't think Microsoft will ever join an existing user interface; they'll bring over their own.

What seems to be happening is that Microsoft is laying the groundwork, ever so slowly, to sit their user interface on top of Linux, without sacrificing any backward compatibility or loss of functionality.

The success of Android and Chrome OS shows that it is possible to fix these issues if you completely disregard the existing community. I would expect a Microsoft Linux to be as solid as Windows with several custom components. The existing Linux desktop is a fun toy, but as you noted its quality is still exactly where it was 20 years ago - up shit creek.

> I will pick up the laptop and it will often be dead despite hibernating

You have to change the default sleep state from 's2idle' to 'deep'. I can't remember what config file I changed to make that permanent since I did it so long ago, but it should be a quick Google away.

I did that and then which config file you had to change got Potteringed a couple of times, and eventually I just gave up on keeping up.

Well it's really just a command, so if you've given up finding the "proper" spot, you could make it an @reboot cron job.

And how long before cron is deprecated in favour of some new thing?

Probably never? Even in the unlikely case a cron doesn't get installed by default you could just install it.

I was reading that the power management story was good on Pop! OS. Maybe that is an option for you.

MS doesn't want to fix Linux, it just wants its devs to buy Windows computers. Most Linux users these days are web developers who use MacOS. MS wants that market. It could care less about Linux as an OS or ecosystem.

> Linux has trouble with external and multiple displays, trouble with power management, trouble with wireless on and on.

What version of Ubuntu were you using, out of curiosity? The issues may have been fixed now.

As a personal anecdote, I have never had problems with multiple displays on Fedora 34. It was just plug and play with Nouveau. Although I am still trying to figure out how to enable Hibernation in GNOME: I personally use the feature a lot.

Variable DPI is still an issue though? I haven’t figured out a way to have things seamless and nice with both a 4K screen and a 19” 720p at the same time.

Multi-monitor high-DPI will probably never work well in Xorg, but most Wayland compositors support it just fine. I switched to Sway a few months back and it's great. Unlike in Windows, when a window straddles a high-DPI and lo-DPI monitor, it's not big on one monitor or small on the other. It stays the same virtual size on both and the window contents quietly re-renders itself in high or low DPI when it's dragged between them.

Support for multi-DPI monitors is Wayland-only; nobody is going to retrofit that into Xorg.

So if you are using distro that uses X11 by default, it will not work. If you use distro that uses Wayland by default, it works out of the box.

OpenSuse with KDE has power management that's as good as windows.