this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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they're very correct. Last month I tried out Zorin (which was recommended by one of the linux communities here) and sound didn't even work properly. I plan on writing up a full doc for the linux community on the problems a staff software engineer had with a basic no-frills install (I'm trying to find a distro for my wife), but Linux is absolutely not ready for the general populace.
Any system that doesn't ship with the machine won't be friendly to the end user.
And on pc, linux always has to work with (or against) hardware designed specifically for that other os. Including ignoring established standards, because why not. It's honestly a miracle that it works as well as it does.
then why is every linux advocate stating that all that matters is picking your distro? If the system needs to have the OS preinstalled then the distro doesn't matter at all. Yet that still really isn't the problem. Installing an OS from a flash drive (distros are just as easy to install as windows is and people have been installing windows fine from hard media for decades) is a different realm of troubleshooting than driver issues. Either linux is ready for people to start installing any distro on their gaming rig to migrate off of Windows or it's not. And it clearly isn't.
Because linux users are people familiar with computers. The general public can barely use windows, they can't realistically install an operating system. If you think people can install windows, I'm afraid that's quite unlikely.
You're clearly surrounded by tech savvy users. Don't confuse them with regular users. They have nothing in common.
Basically any recommendation always has to come with the additional note for rich people: "If you want an optimal experience buy a Tuxedo, System76 or Slimbook Laptop" (that said, Slimbook offers a laptop for as low as 600β¬). Because even if they screw it up there is a hotline to ask.
For anyone else⦠well, it has to be an older system. The problem isn't necessarily Linux, but the lack of hardware vendors supporting it so the community has to do it themselves. However this obviously doesn't matter for end users, they just want it to work.
tl;dr Either buy yourself a good experience, or find sth. like a "Linux install party" or hackerspace with regular open days (also often offering said install parties). If you aren't an expert, do not move to Linux alone since there's always something unexpected that can happen.
Sound is almost always the sticking point for me in Linux installs.
But as I said in another comment, this doesn't actually matter for the general populace because they don't install OSes. The only situation where they'd use Linux is if they can buy a Linux PC ready to go, so config issues like this miss the forest for the trees.
sure, but then you're alienating an entire userbase that can install an OS (which is just a flash drive and hitting a few keys during startup), but absolutely does not have the willpower to sit and figure out configuration on their new OS that absolutely does not work out of the box. Shit, I have enough to deal with in my daily life, I don't want to be debugging driver issues. I haven't had driver issues in windows or mac for over a decade, yet it's the very first thing you encounter on a new distro install.
Non-computers people have been using Ubuntu for a decade. It's far from perfect, but I'd refrain from basing judgement on a niche platform