I get suspicious when everything just works on a laptop.
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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I never had anything NOT work on a laptop. I installed Linux on 5 of them.
These days, that's pleasantly true :)
15 years ago was a different story. You'd have about a 50/50 shot of your trackpad working, one in three that your WiFi would work, and if you were hoping for a working webcam, you should just forget about it.
So even in modern times when you do an install and everything mostly just works, it still feels suspiciously miraculous.
These are the kinds of things that remind us how far we've come :)
I have a kink for installing Linux on Macs. The only thing I ever have trouble with is wifi, particularly on my 2011 MacBook Pro.
Oh, and the trackpad gets significantly shitter, but that's just life.
I installed endeavouros on my 2015 pro and nothing made the WiFi work. Reinstalled macOS.
After a few days I thought screw it, Iβll try other distros. Popos just boots and works out of the box β¦.
I kinda wish I hadn't sold my 2015 MBP Pro when I got my M2 Air. I wasn't messing about with Linux then, but with hindsight it would have been an excellent machine. I had it running Ventura (I think it was) via OCLP, which was great, but the fans were basically constant. Turns out that it was likely just macOS/OCLP.
Currently running Kubuntu off a thumb drive plugged into my 2011 MBP and I honestly don't think I've heard the fan on it. Running Ventura on the same machine was like trying to work next to a jet engine.
I'm currently still running macOS Monterey on a 2016 Macbook Pro which I use as my general purpose desktop. I'm considering going to Linux on it :)
I have other Linux machines already so this isn't a new foray - would just be interesting to see how it performs. Battery would be way worse I know, but this laptop serves basically as a permanent desktop anyway, so that's very much not a concern.
If anything, Windows 11 is the OS where things don't work off of a fresh install (assuming it's a self-built PC). It requires an internet connection during regular setup yet the ethernet/wifi drivers simply didn't work. I had to cheat startup and install drivers through USB.
Bazzite on the other hand, worked instantly. The only thing needed was to set the right sound output.
I bought a media center pc around 2000 and installed Ubuntu. The only thing that didn't work out of the box was sound through HDMI. Figured it out the same day.
It's wilder when it works in the installer, but not on first boot.
I have altered the drivers, pray I do not alter them further.
Ah yes, the 'Arch Linux' experience. To be fair, your machine boots really really fast when you don't read the install guide carefully enough and fail to put a network stack on. Valuable learning opportunity.
I have yet to be brave enough to try. I'm not sure my ego can handle how bad I'll fuck it up.
To be fair, their installation page is excellent, but it does require close reading. Where I'd messed up was the "install essential packages" section, where it just says to "consider installing" stuff which is essential really - firmware, network stack, a text editor. If you're able to access the internet and adjust configuration files, then you can install everything else you need.
Their suggested disk partitioning has a gigabyte for efi, which is twice what I'd recommend, and includes a swap partition, which I would not create. A swap file is just as good, and more flexible. Otherwise yeah, if you can install Arch, you can probably do all the Linux maintenance you'll ever need to do, and it's not that difficult - practise in a VM if you want - and will make you much more skilled and confident.
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So, are you trying to say it's the year of the Linux desktop?
Lemme have a seizure real quick
Regarding the title,
If you've enough distros then you must've encountered the scenario where the driver worked in installer but did not in the final installation
Lol yea, I was wondering if anyone was going to catch that, but at least then it was usually a "Why didn't you just install itβ½" rather than a 6 hour marathon of patches and drivers compiled from source or some shit LMAO
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So Linux Mint then!
I'm actually having a better time of it after switching to Bazzite. I had a bunch of strange little issues on Mint that seem to be gone after switching. I switched as a hail Mary for an issue where 3D Games would freeze randomly, and that seems to be gone too thankfully
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This is what I think is holding back Linux adoption for end user devices. Only a handful of hardware suppliers cater for Linux directly, the rest are supported by the Linux community developing drivers where needed which will always be a cat and mouse situation.
I believe as adoption rate begins to intensify, hardware companies will take more notice and Linux adoption will increase exponentially. I think we are already beginning to see this starting.
This isn't only an issue with Linux, it's an issue within the whole technology industry. Simple things like Wi-Fi cards and the like, should be all standardized.
Hardware shouldn't be catered to any particular os.
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Yup. Big fan of [distro]. Never had a problem running [distro]. I CHOOSE to open [distro]'s terminal because its so perfect i don't ever NEED to.
I run Ironman btw.
Fuck [distro] and its fanboys. [Distro 2] is clearly superior.
Fuck [distro], fuck [distro 2], you plebians haven't breathed until you've rolled your own Linux From Scratch
/j
Sheeeeeeeeit. I remember when that wasnβt even the case with Windows. Iβm old, though.
That's still not the case with windows for me. The headphone jack doesn't work. I did go as far as to reinstall OS from scratch.
It's not uninstalled drivers because they work for thr first 5 minutes after boot.
Getting sound to work is easier in linux than in windows for my pc. That's just uncanny to think about.
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See, this is why I like Linux Mint. I've gotten lazy in my old age and just want things to function.
Funnily enough, me with Alpine Linux
I threw it at my laptop and it just worked without a hitch
This was my experience with Ubuntu, my beloved. :)
Ubuntu catches some well earned flak, but afaik it was the first distro to have an effortless Gui setup wizard that "just worked."
I remember using one of their ubiquitous install CD back in the mid 00s to bring an old laptop back to life, and literally changing my life.
I keep reading this, but why?
Edit: The flak
Couple reasons people dislike Ubuntu/Canonical. 1) they're just popular, but also they went their own way with the Unity UI hoping to score a BMW touchscreen contract, they went their own way with snaps which are much worse than flatpak, they added ads for "Ubuntu Pro" in the distro (notably in the terminal).
I think they have a reputation for going off and doing their own thing rather than working with existing solutions.
I'm having a hard time understanding the criticism on them working with companies, or developing tech towards it, though. I thought it would be a good thing if a Linux company introduced systems for general use, same with Edubuntu. Having Ubuntu on school PCs is definitely better than Windows for example.
Edit: The rest makes sense!
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painfull memories. mouse worked in instaler but not once installed. always something
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Debian 13.
Tried open suse, but on my laptop it was slow and loud and the battery would die almost instantly (had to make it hibernate rather than suspend if I wanted it to make it through the night).
Installed Debian 13 and it feels like a new laptop. Not sure what exactly made the difference between the two but I'm not complaining...
Tried to install Debian 13 yesterday
Didnβt even boot xD
Since I needed something stable, I installed Fedora Kionite and it worked flawlessly on the first try
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I am not a techy person. But I started using Linux in around 2007ish (might have been a little earlier). First started because of philosophical issues with open source mentality.
I bled for that philosophy, let me tell you. Nothing worked out of the box, my only friend who used Linux was an online friend, and his tech support could only help me if we happened to be online at the same time. He helped a lot, but dozens and dozens of guides later I managed to get it mostly working. Google.com/Linux used to be a thing, and it was quite helpful. After a few reversions back to Windows in the early days I got a terrible little netbook, and Wubi became a thing. It allowed you to install windows from within windows, without having to have a live CD. It worked great, but it was right back to all the same touchpad, wifi, monitor, et cetera issues. But this time I could go back to Windows and research my issue, print off the guides, and use them to troubleshoot. So much easier than asking my neighbor to use their computer, or trying to read and follow the guides from my blackberry lmao
Now? I haven't a had a single issue like that when installing a distro in 10+ years. Shit just works now. Granted, I stick to mainstream distros, or forks of mainstream distros. Craziest thing I've tried recently was Bazzite, which is basically just silver blue. I liked being on Bazzite and silver blue, but I ended up going back to regular old fedora workstation, because relying solely on flatpaks is limiting, and I (remember, not a techy person) don't understand rpm ostree lol
The last time I had something not automatically detected was on a ~2003 obscure "gaming" laptop (or what passed for gaming back then)
Yeah, it's been pretty straight forward for standard components for the last twenty years. (But I also tend to buy PCs that are known to be Linux friendly. That might be a reason for my lack of complaints in this area.)
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I have had an insane number of issues on my AMD card (not even old, an RX 6600 XT). Every new kernel version, ROCm version, there's some new bug/crash that happens. Currently, the LTS kernel is the only stable one for me.
A list of issues I've had:
- Random page faults in OpenGL if I dare use more than 10% of it
- An insane separation of the audio and video driver on the GPU that causes neither to be usable, one stuck in limbo, unable to be bound to any device.
- Segmentation fault when doing anything in ROCm (I've had to revert to a very specific month old version)
- Page fault with VAAPI if I have both a vulkan and opengl app running
- Absolute lag insanity if I use SPECIFICALLY 92-95% of my vram, anything else is fine. I swear it's not a vram issue.
- Glitchy artifacts frequently on the screen reminiscent of a VRAM issue (newest issue that made me revert to month old kernel versions)
I'm still gonna be using Linux, but I've never had issues like these in windows (where amd is famous for *bad" drivers).
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