In the absence of justification for refining the desktop UI, UI vendors have developed another excuse to change shit on people: the mistaken impression that more tablety UIs are more progressive and easier to use on the desktop. Which is false on its face, given the different ergonomic constraints between a desktop PC and a tablet.
What keeps holding me back are dumb things like video driver support, peripheral support for things I use, and general awkwardness with the whole plug/unplug state of affairs that is de rigueur in the laptop space.
Has any of this changed?
Why isn't there a top-tier platform company (or nimble upstart) out there taking the lead and making a machine that has 100% driver support under Linux?
I am holding out hope that the Piston might get us there, but I'm not holding my breath.
How about a Chromebook? They run Linux, and pointedly don't run Windows, so you know the hardware will work under Linux.
I haven't used it or other laptops enough to say how good it really is (but hibernate etc. works, the screen and keyboard are nice compared to other ultrabooks I tried; it's light and clean). The trackpad is annoying though but I think I'll always prefer a mouse.
Battery life is good, the price is great, and the support has always been amazing.
Providing you stick to Intel (eg no Nvidia graphics) then the Thinkpad T series (and probably most others) work very well under Linux. Occasionally there are issues but Lenovo do fix them (eg BIOS updates). Of course Lenovo won't sell you one without Windows!
The only thing that hasn't been supported in my last two Thinkpads (T430s and T61) has been the fingerprint reader. More accurately it is supported in dumb mode, but not in smart mode as it is under Windows. That is largely the fault of the company that makes the reader, although they have been bought by Apple so who knows what happens next.
The biggest problem IMO is the graphics. On my laptop (a Dell XPS I purchased in 2011) the OSs I installed (Fedora and Ubuntu) couldn't render anything serious. If I wanted to watch a TV-HD release, the screen would flicker; if I wanted to make a 3D plot in Mathematica, it wouldn't show; if I wanted to play a simple, lightweight game like Teeworlds, it wouldn't run. I had to use Bumblebee to get around it, but graphics still lagged.
Some of these problems are common enough that you can just google up a solution, but you shouldn't have to do that in the first place. I really like the idea of a Linux desktop, but it's just not going to happen anytime in the near future.
check: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/h...
( after installing bumblebee and primus, please remember to add your user to 'bumblebee' and 'video' groups, before reboot)
KDE is still a messy shit but doesn't crash much any more ;). It can display a wicked Mandelbrot as background but can't auto add wallpapers in ~/Pictures. Reports about v4.10 desktop indexing being 'sane' and 'reasonable' are wholly untrue.
sound works over HDMI cable but occasionally goes quiet (relogin). flicker is an xorg feature which is not going away :( Sound is still subpar compared to maxx drivers under windows. So much for 'Open-source Desktop'