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You missed the point. You typically don't have to compile anything for your sound card, assuming you even have one anyone considering that motherboards have had integrated sound forever now.

So the benefit of Linux is that motherboards have changed? That seems...antithetical.

GPU and wifi drivers were problematic in the same era as the sound card drivers were, and really aren't anymore unless you have a nvidia card and refuse to use closed source for drivers moral reasons. Were seperate sound cards to have remained a big thing, it's likely they would have been resolved too.

Ive only got ten years under my belt, but I don't think I have ever had to compile a driver! perhaps a few times in Arch, although it would be an AUR thing and hardly and intensive manual process. But certainly not in debian-based stuff. I dont even understand what it would be like to have the bad experiences people do with it.

I can only assume its hardware disparity. I never have much money so I always get older cheaper hardware I can afford, where support has most likely had time to mature. Perhaps people with these negative impressions of Linux are trying to install distros on newer, bleeding edge stuff?

I am not going to defend the Linux Desktop as there are many legitimate reasons to criticize it ( though the laptop I use the most does run Manjaro ). I must say though that suggesting the average Linux user has to compile their sound card drivers is pretty out of touch with even remotely recent Linux offerings. At this point, Linux is far more likely to support your hardware out of the box than either MacOS or Windows—-especially for older hardware. I am far more likely to be hunting around the web for Windows drivers or even totally unable to install Windows on my hardware than I am to have to do any hardware configuration at all on Linux. And I have considered putting Linux on a old iMac because Apple no longer supports the latest OS on it and this has started to become a compatibility hassle. In many ways, Linux requires less futzing around than the competition.

One area where I am dramatically wrong about this is with regards to high performance video drivers though that is improving. Even there though, a distro like Manjaro will likely work perfectly out of the box. To get performance a gamer wants might require a fair bit more knowledge but that said gamers tend to spend quite a bit of time managing and tuning things even on Windows.

Honestly that's because of hardware suppliers. Don't buy hardware without Linux support and this problem goes away. Windows, through sheer market power and mindshare, has created a situation where most hardware just works on Windows. This is not a rational expectation for other OSes. Trying to run Linux on a random Windows laptop is more or less like trying to run OS X on it. If it doesn't work that's on you

So far, my best experience has been on a LaptopsForLinux laptop. Every feature I expect to work on a laptop works (which is surprising when you're using Linux). I did try and buy another "made for Linux"-type laptop, which was some Entroware model, but I remember experiencing a lack of Hibernate and poor battery life.

I also tried a Dell XPS, but there were some BIOS problems, the keyboard layout was awful (which is not a Linux problem), and Hibernate was spotty at best.

Bad keyboard layout was also a problem with the Entroware.

Hibernate works perfectly on my LaptopsForLinux model. :+1: I just wish there was a keyboard protector in case I spill coffee on it.

Maybe laptop nirvana will finally be reached with the Framework when it finally reaches these shores. [EDIT] It has arrived.

https://us.starlabs.systems/

Comparing the experience of porting an OS to hardware that did not ship with it to an OS that comes with the hardware is arguing in bad faith.

I have personally ported Linux to many devices the manufacturer never intended it to run on and I even have code in the kernel. I can generally make Linux run on anything by compiling a custom kernel or drivers with maybe a custom patch or two.

I love having that freedom but that freedom is too often confused as the default end user experience of someone that goes to a store and buys a computer that ships with Linux.

When comparing Linux vs Windows or MacOS for end users then talking about porting to unsupported hardware is silly. If you want to run MacOS on unsupported hardware it will take some hacking too.

I have helped hundreds move to Linux many of whom are elderly and non technical. I have them go buy a computer that ships with Linux and is supported so they never need to open a terminal and everything just works. Dell, System76, and Purism all have fantastic offerings here and I do not know of anyone who has switched back.

Yes and no.

I've found numerous times Ubuntu just doesn't want to work. Ether Wifi or Bluetooth is broken.

Fedora seems to be a bit better, it's my daily driver on my old lightweight laptop. My big gaming PC runs Windows.

I make music and play games with it, no matter what the FOSS community wants to think , Linux doesn't come close in these aspects.

Each OS does different things well. Linux is very good for running on older hardware, or small computers like a PI.

Windows is exceptional at gaming and game development ( really any C# dev). Visual Studio is the greatest IDE ever made. If I had to write C# in note pad I'd give up coding.

Mac OS is best for creatives. Logic Pro is only 200$ , and easily replaces an entire studio. With Logic and a 300$ mic you can make something very nice. Your also forced to own a Mac if you want to make iPhone apps.

The music creation ecosystem on IOS is miles ahead of Android. It's at the point where I'm considering am iPhone in addition to my iPad for on the go music creation.

At the same time, as a phone, my Pixel 6 is everything I could ever want. Automatically letting me screen calls saved me hours per months.

I'll forever love Linux for giving a stable NodeJS dev environment when Windows wouldn't. Without desktop Linux I would of never been able to develop the apps which got me my first job. But you need to be open to hopping in the terminal.

> Windows is exceptional at gaming and game development ( really any C# dev). Visual Studio is the greatest IDE ever made. If I had to write C# in note pad I'd give up coding.

Have you tried out Rider? https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/

It's one of the JetBrains commercial IDEs, but since i got the Ultimate package of their products for Java development and some other stuff, i also tried out Rider and found it to be pretty pleasant for everything from web development, to game development (with Unity in particular, though Godot also works obviously, as would other engines like Stride, or NeoAxis or whatever).

They have some pretty nice features for Unity, like giving you hints about methods which are slow and are used every tick, or maybe alternative methods that could be a better fit in some cases: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/dotnet-unity/

Now, some people say that Rider's a bit sluggish like some other JetBrains products, but in my experience it's pretty close to Visual Studio (faster startup, slower when indexing project, faster for many code hints, slower for autocomplete), though maybe because of me enjoying messing around with the memory limits and usually increasing them slightly.

Nonetheless, for enterprise projects, i'd probably just continue using Visual Studio for consistency's sake. Heck, last i checked, Visual Studio even had plugins for supporting Python and other languages, which was interesting to behold. Apart from that, i'm not really aware of many other IDEs for .NET/C# out there, maybe MonoDevelop which is free, but also kind of abandoned: https://www.monodevelop.com/

Just figured that i'd mention JetBrains products in the first place, because they're my toolbox nowadays for which i reach whenever i want to do some development with the IDE helping me out regardless of whatever tech stack i'm dealing with (at least the common ones), so it has largely replaced Visual Studio for me. Though i still reach for Visual Studio Code for more rapid/lightweight editing of scripts, confguration files and such (or other text editors for when an IDE isn't necessary).

I actually really like Android Studio, which is of course a Jet Brains product.

Visual Studio is going to be the best supported IDE for C#. I'm fine with having a Windows PC for that.

I still Dual boot on my old laptop

Ha, that's amusing, because at the same time i hate Android Studio with a passion - it seems like the worst JetBrains product by far, though maybe because Android isn't a particularly nice platform to develop for.

Admittedly, most of my complaints there would be about the different Android SDK versions and how sluggish and slow everything feels at times, as well as about how Android seems to have a stripped down JDK inside of it, which causes weirdness with certain libraries, as opposed to just having something like OpenJDK.

But hey, whatever works for you! I don't really think that there are that many (if any) alternatives for Android development, to be honest.

You can still use Eclipse for Android dev, or just run your own builds with cli tools.

I'll agree Android dev is pretty frustrating, it's much better than it was just a few years ago, but it's still nowhere close to iOS. iOS users also tend to be much more willing to pay money, so there's that.

Heh, i'd say that Eclipse is universally even more horrible, because while Android Studio feels sluggish for Android development and other JetBrains products are generally pretty good, Eclipse has been slow, laggy and even buggy for me in every single one of its forms - be it using it for Java, PHP, or even more obscure tools like 4EM for enterprise modelling or EMF for model driven development.

It excels at having a large plugin ecosystem, moreso than JetBrains products have (probably close to what Visual Studio Code has, just look at https://marketplace.eclipse.org/category/categories/programm...) and being a common base for a variety of other tools out there, due to its modular nature, but there are plenty of disadvantages to that approach (loose coupling that ends up being brittle and worse runtime performance come to mind) and the workspaces concept feels shoehorned on.

That said, some out there swear by it and admittedly the customized versions of it, like Spring Tool Suite (STS), provide a lot of value to them and numerous other people, so everyone should probably just use what fits their needs. For Android in particular, however, i haven't found an IDE that's as pleasant to use as for other languages. Oh well, high expectations be damned~

Preaching to the choir!

I legit quit a job since they wanted me to use Eclipse.

Just created an account on HN to say that all the JetBrains Products I used are outstanding! I switched from Atom to VS Code and since nearly 4 years I have a IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate subscription which is worth every penny.

By the way: JetBrains is also working on a more lightwheight editor called Fleet which seems to be comparable with VS Code, at least visually. There's already a product page for that at https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/

Ubuntu is the only distro where my Bluetooth headphones reliably connected and auto-switched to stereo audio (not headset) mode. It's gotten a lot better, though perhaps only with quality hardware.

As far as WiFi is concerned, I'm more likely than not to blame the crap connection on the access point. I've had great success replacing rubbish APs with something basic but good, but for work I want wires if at all reasonable.

I've been using GNU/Linux on the desktop for about 10 years now, must have used at least 10 different distributions, and I've never had to compile my own driver for anything. WiFi, Ethernet, sound, graphics, etc., pretty much just works. I don't use Bluetooth, so I can't say about that, but it's my understanding that Bluetooth gremlins are common everywhere.

For the past several years I've been recycling Windows 7 and up laptops by giving them a second life with GNU/Linux, and everything Just Works most of the time, including sound, videocard, power management, etc. The only thing I've had occasionally not working is the volume and brightness buttons, but they work most of the time as well.

When my partner's Windows 8 laptop shit itself after an unconsentual upgrade, I installed Ubuntu on it, and it worked just fine out of the box, for years. This person is not a computer nerd by any means.

I'm not saying your experience is not valid, but it is the complete opposite of mine.

Echoing the commenters pointing out that you leaned into the irrationally.

Separately:

> If you want normal people to use Linux you should never, ever, ever ask them to even use a terminal

What about Alexa or Siri? Would it be acceptable to ask them to use a voice-activated digital assistant to accomplish what people use the command-line for? What about a text-activated one, without the voice recognition problems?

I was going to say that I have not compiled a driver in years but I remember that I did compile a driver in 2020. It was to add support for a Xbox controller so that I could use it to play Steam games on my laptop. It was pretty straight-forward but I did have to run a compiler ( maybe via a script - I cannot remember ). I am not sure how easy it is to use an Xbox controller with Mac or Windows.

I am not a big gamer on any platform. In fact, I was using my son’s Steam account. He uses Windows himself but I was running it on Linux. I only played a few titles but they all played pretty well given that it was on an older laptop. Steam itself installed from the standard Manjaro repository but I did have to compile a driver for the controller.