I ran Manjaro Linux as my daily driver a few years ago but slowly phased it out for Windows for some reason, and I’m finally back using Linux (currently Linux Mint). I gotta say, I don’t know why I ever switched back to Windows. There’s just so much freedom Linux gives you right off the bat that Windows is just plain stubborn about. The final straw for me was a couple weeks ago when Microsoft added a Copilot (Bing AI) Shortcut to my Windows 11 taskbar. They’d already added ads to my start menu and preinstalled a bunch of garbage that should be opt-in, not opt-out, so I was just fed up with it at that point. Plus, Linux is so much more customizable. Been running Mint for about a week and a half now, and honestly, I don’t think I’ll be using Windows much anymore.
I used to be a Windows system developer, think device drivers etc. for what, 20 years? I switched to Linux 18 years ago and never looked back - the whole dev experience is a lot more pleasant, more control, reasonable tools and software installation, proper customization etc.
I believe you didn’t have a Linux problem, you had a problem with hardware manufacturers being fussy about enabling development of proper support for their hardware. Why not look into hardware that is actually readily compatible with Linux? Tuxedo Computers are often recommend, I used to run a Clevo and had a great experience as well.
Which is a Linux problem at the end of the day, unfortunately.
My current laptop is also “Linux certified”, whatever that means. I cannot say that linux does not work on my laptop because that is not true. It works. Bluetooth works, touchpad works, like 95% of the time. In that 95% I love linux. However, when the remaining 5% hits, that is freaking annoying. And you can bet the bluetooth issue hits in the middle of an online meeting, and not when you just listen to music. 4K monitors are around since ~2013, still, no user friendly solution for fractional scaling, and the list goes on.
My main problem is that, this 95% was always 95% for me. I have been trying to switch to linux since 2011. I spend 3-15 month on linux and switch back to windows for a year or two. As I see, linux desktop just runs after the desktop market and it is 2-10 years behind. I know that is mostly because of the HW vendors. But knowing this does not make me feel better when my productivity decreases due to these issues.
Honestly? Because I don’t believe that 95% is significantly higher on those laptops and I just don’t have ~1500EUR for an experiment like this.
Windows + WSL2 works great. I use a Windows distro, if you will. All the issues I had with my native linux install are gone, and I can still use linux comfortably while working. This is the reality from my point of view.
Hm, I never had any hardware issues in the last ~10 years, but don’t get me wrong, I hear you. I absolutely believe that it is possible to find a combination of HW and SW that will simply not work for a particular use case, and if my productivity would be threatened, I’d also switch in a heartbeat. In fact, I’ve gotten so used to the customizations Linux offered me that I can’t even imagine working on another Linux system without my setup and dotfiles - a different kind of vendor lock-in, if you will.
Anyway, just wanted to put a brand out there that offers some guarantees when it comes to hardware support, in case you (and others) might not be aware of such vendors.