Not in my experience. Even Ubuntu has compatibility problems. The best way is to find a laptop (or desktop) that is preinstalled with Linux, or that you know is definitely compatible.
Anything Lenovo is perfect. Many of the linux distro's are developed on Lenovo compatible boards (I seem to remember reading that but I can't find a link at the moment). I can confirm that my Lenovo stuff runs perfectly, and in fact far better than on Windows, which it was delivered with.
I know Canonical work with Lenovo, so anything Ubuntu based has a good chance of running with no problems.
Yep. I am also running several Lenovo ThinkCentre's for some desktop stuff and they run without any flaws, its not just the Lenovo laptops. Takes a few minutes to locate linux drivers for some hardware if you are running more bare bones distro's but that is only needed once during the build of the system. I've done it often enough to make the process quite easy now.
I think finding the drivers is the main problem. I decided it was easier to find compatible hardware. I believe this is one of the main problems with Linux.
This is good approach. Find hardware that Linux has built-in support. Not buy random hardware and then try to find the drivers.
Me either. As to the OP question - I certainly hope not. I only have DTs at this point and other than maybe forcing myself to replace my ancient cellphone with something dumb, hopefully it stays that way.
There are too many small teams of developers working on their own personal projects that account for the vast number of distros available to people. While this has resulted in all kinds of unique distros to choose from, you typically end up getting a distro that, especially depending on the hardware it's installed on, contains a number of infuriating bugs. Maybe if they collaborated into larger teams to create fewer distros, we'd have a more professional final product that works more reliably on a wider array of hardware, rather than something that usually has a "hobbyist" look and feel to it. BTW, I predict Linux will never secure a future on the desktop, at least if it continues its status quo development trends.
@wat0114 I wonder whether at some point Linux might be in some way swallowed up by M$ and/or Apple. DO you think that might happen?
Honestly I've never given that any thought. I suppose it could happen, and I wouldn't be entirely surprised by it, but I've no idea if that's even being considered by the Tech giants. I'd love to see Linux succeed far beyond where they're at now. I just can't see it happening unless it gets out of its stagnant, non-innovative position.
I've been saying this for years as have a lot of other folks but I guess the ego driven devs care not to notice. Regarding compatibility, I test distros as part of a service I perform for another site. I use an ancient Samsung RV415 with a garbage level Atom processor, a mildly ancient Toshiba Portege with a low end i5 and a brand new LG Gram with a high end i5. Apart from the obvious differences in speed and resolution I have not yet found a distro that will not perform every day functions on any of these machines. Perhaps I'm just lucky.
I have great respect for Igor but care needs to be taken especially by prospective new migrants to Linux when basing distro choice on pure technical reviews. Yes there might by some issues, there usually is, but are these likely to impact on what you/they the user needs for their every day life? The same goes for Distrowatch 'rankings' with many of the better options being towards the bottom. Considering how easy it is to run basic functions from a live session I suggest this is the better way to make an individual choice rather than on reviews or YouTube videos.
Not related to the main topic of this thread but the new Samsung folding phone will IMO kill of the standard tablet for good.
Linux kernel and libraries such as Gnu libc have publicly available code on FOSS licenses. These licenses can't be legally revoked. RedHat is bought by IBM, so another big company is backing up Linux development and protecting from MS influence.
Caught this post out of nowhere but I'd like to say this: no. Linux, as it is now, is a FOSS product. Meaning all code is licensed under the GPL. Even if, let's assume a very bizarre scenario, Microsoft buys the entire Linux Foundation to make the Linux Kernel their own, they wouldn't be able to do pretty much anything since the already present code is licensed under the GPL anyways. I'd assume they would have to start over, really. And if they start using the Kernel for whatever product they make, it's a good thing for all of us since they can't distribute the Kernel (edited or not) and whatever changes they make to the Kernel (that are not private patches) need to be FOSS as well. The GPL license protects the code and the users. And even if we assume a much more bizarre scenario where we suddenly lose Linux entirely, whatever was made prior to this loss is still GPL and there are literally hundreds of thousands of developers interested in keeping it opensource and they could pick up where it was left of and keep working on that. I don't think anything bad can happen to Linux and FOSS software in general.
Probably not, as the others have said. However, I can see them colluding with other huge tech companies, such as Google, to spread propaganda against Linux to lead people to believe things like the idea that it has no future on the desktop, so that they can maintain their monopoly and control. Kind of like the campaign MS waged against OpenOffice/LibreOffice some time ago, except now the Internet misinformation machine has reached a whole new level. Maybe a conspiracy theory?
As long as Linux is still fragmented they don't really need bad PR towards us. Thousands of distros, hundreds of package managers, bleeding-edge vs stable distros, complicated sound system, slow GPU driver development, GNOME braking stuff for every DE that uses it as a base. We're still a joke on the desktop despite VALVe's efforts with Proton, Steam on Linux, SteamOS, etc. We're still on 0.8%. To me it's clear the problem with Linux on the desktop has never been games, but an OS base that is fragmented and, let's face it, requires too much from the users. It's not that "not having games didn't bring people to Linux" - Linux didn't bring people to Linux. Next week's announcement on distrowatch: We've tested the next 5 new distros that came out this week! All using different standards for almost everything, because screw standards, developers' egoes need to be kept in check amirite.
You can't play games on Linux, so that rules out most home users from the newest generation, and it's just getting worse and worse from here
Not only you already have (I think) half Steam's library already native on Linux, you can play most Windows games with Proton which is a forked WINE from VALVe. Of course you can play games on Linux. Now more than ever.
If you're a die hard Linux fan. That's just another reason Linux will never make the majors - we are always looking for ways to make MS apps work on Linux.
