I had a similar perspective as you. I couldn't get past a lot of default design decisions made in many distributions and I didn't want to spend the time tweaking my machine. I installed Pop_OS after seeing the Theano release a couple of weeks ago and basically haven't booted into windows since. As a casual user I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a similar linux experience as I was.

Dude... I was reading all these comments mega confused. I installed Pop_OS a few months back and it's a million times easier to use than Windows.

From installing applications to changing my background.

One terrible experience I had was when Windows did something to the Linux bootloader and I had to try work out how to fix that, but I can't really blame Linux for that.

Honestly I am so much more productive on Pop than on Windows. I can spend more time actually doing my job and less time manually creating PATH variables for every package I install. As a Web developer Windows is a disaster.

I've never heard of Pop OS, so I just read up on it a bit. Here's a nice rundown https://itsfoss.com/pop-os-linux-review/.

> I can spend more time actually doing my job and less time manually creating PATH variables for every package I install.

I don't see how this is a Windows issue. Windows, just like Linux, provides the capability to update the PATH both per-user and per-computer; many tools use it and work. NodeJS is a popular such tool that adds its bin folder to the PATH. If a tool isn't updating its path, then it's on the tool's installer.

It's an issue because adding a directory to the path just isn't as common of a pattern on Windows. Whether or not it's Microsoft's fault is irrelevant because the fact is still that you have to do it manually a lot of the time.

This is all from my own past experience using video editing, audio editing, and image editing utilities where you usually just get a binary and have to do the legwork yourself.

Node is the exception, not the rule.

If you want a no frills experience that just works, give Lubuntu a try. Of all the Linux distros I've used in my company, it's given us almost no headaches. The fonts are crisp, and icons look fine too. Adding monitors has also been painless. And even my least technical users are able to use it (but might need a bit of help now and again). For us, it has actually been a pleasure to use because of its speed.

If you're prepared to give up whizzy animations etc, do try it when you have a bit of spare time.

> If you want a no frills experience that just works, give Lubuntu a try.

I can't speak for the UI but Aptitude vomits broken dependencies every time you have to upgrade your distro. It made me absolutely despise package management (I'm a Windows guy) until I switched to Arch and realized a package manager that is a pleasure to work with is not an inherent oxymoron. Obviously UI is another story but at least this one works.

It's hit and miss. At work I'm running a lubuntu install from 2012 that flawlessly upgraded up until now, sometimes skipping releases, sometimes not, switching desktop environment and window managers a few times along the way. Arch Linux on the other hand always has some minor breakage every now and then. Not with the package manager, but just something about the system being broken.

I do think windows update process is also seriously broken: no info given to users what is being changed, no indication given how long it will take, and often taking many hours to complete, all the while your computer remains unusable; I do not know why Microsoft is not being taken to task for such a shoddy experience.

I'm an old timer. I remember when Microsoft would expire your license - for any of their applications - essentially at random. And they disabled reloads of the software and disabled reinstalls of the entire OS. Even after you paid them again, it was a major hassle - but Mocrosoft didn't care about customer complaints as long as the money was rolling in (Bill Gates at the time said that "I am a businessman" when he dismissed customer concerns.)It was the Federal Government which forced them to stop breaking systems, threatening to pass laws against their practices. That's also about the time that Microsoft hired ALL the major PR firms to change their image (and Bill suddenly appeared everywhere with his charity - which was only giving away a small portion of his wealth, since he hides most of it offshore and away from any accounting.)

10s of billions with plans for more is not small amounts even for Bill. Also he does not hide most of his wealth offshore. He got his wealth from stocks in Microsoft a publicly traded company and that is where most of his wealth is. Many rich people manipulate offshore accounts to hide money but that doesn't really make sense for Bill Gates. Please don't make up things.

I've worked with executives who reported to Bill Gates, reported to Steve Jobs, and reported to Larry Ellison. Guess what? They all use the same set of accountants, and I've gotten descriptions of the way that they all hide money offshore. I've been in many meetings with Steve, and he even spoke of it internally, since it is all legal. At Oracle, our team reported to Larry and I helped reassign monies to offshore entities - and was assured that it was beyond question because "the Big 3 accounting firms are our customers, and we are their customers" and "they all make millions off us". Those monies were then funneled to groups of executives through those companies. So please don't lecture me about your opinions on these things where I have first hand knowledge. It seems like whenever I share something that I know on HN there are people who pop out to explain to me why I'm wrong. I guess I should be used to it - the more insightful the post, the more downvotes.

You can go with Manjaro if you want a better experience with pre-configured desktop environments.

There are official editions for XFCE, KDE, and Gnome and there's community editions for i3, openbox, LXQT, and so on.

You still have access to the AUR and the official repos mirror the official Arch repos but lag behind by a week or two.

Been using linux for decades and have never had to do any of this. Even 15 years ago I didn't need to.

Not everybody has the same sensitivity to this 'jarring' component of the Linux desktop, I'm well aware. But I think it would really help the desktop forward if the group that is sensitive to it would be catered to more, like Elementary is trying to do.

What in this context does "help the desktop forward" mean?

It means making it more enjoyable to use for everyone, both for those that are more and less sensitive to the aesthetics. Everyone is sensitive to it to some degree.

I don't understand. I run linux on an IBM Thinkpad T40 for the better part of a decade.Then I moved to a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon which also runs Ubuntu fine.

IN fact installing linux takes at most 20 min and I am done. Drivers and everything are all automatic.

Windows on the other hand can take hours to install from scratch. God forbid you need a service pack or to find a driver that's not easily found anymore.

People have a cognitive dissonance about what it takes to run Linux. It's by far much easier than people lead on. Yes if you need to get into the underneath of things then maybe it becomes more difficult. But I don't think that's been part of the story for average users for a long time.

>> Yes if you need to get into the underneath of things then maybe it becomes more difficult.

IMO Windows is even more difficult when you want to get into underneath of things. Fiddle with registry settings, services and at times deleting AppData\App folder to get something fixed. At least in case of Linux you get good set of answers to your Google queries, but that is not as good in case of Windows. Also, Windows and the ecosystem of software around it has a huge reliability and performance problem still unsolved. Freezing, crashing are still rampant with Windows 10. If I boot my laptop after a week Windows Update holds me up for at least half an hour. Every update restarts the OS several times.

That's because it's a Thinkpad. The T-series had been the Red Hat company issue laptop for years, and has had boatloads of internal support as a result.

You're right in that a Thinkpad will mostly work out of the box long as you don't want that Nvidia GPU to work, but everyone else? Good luck. My XPS 15 was a lost cause, losing three quarters of it's battery life under Linux and with countless video problems.

And on a desktop? Hah! Roll the dice baby, and keep rolling them with every update, because sooner or later something's going to break. It always does.

I have a Dell XPS 15 running Pop!_OS, and it’s great[1]. No issues. It’s a much better experience compared to setting up Kubuntu[2].

[1] http://bryangrohman.com/pop-os-dell-xps-15/

[2] http://bryangrohman.com/kubuntu-dell-xps-15/

Nvidia is more trouble only that you need to install the proprietary driver rather than using what comes with the kernel. You also need vdpau if you want hardware decoding of video.

Has Linux changed a lot? Last I tried installing it years ago, I had to find each driver individually and had to get some stubborn ones working. At the time I thought to myself - no average Joe would figure this out, no wonder nobody uses Linux (and by nobody I meant non-devs)

Had less problems with Linux tyan with Windows for about 10 years now.

Installation is quicker.

No bloatware/scareware to uninstall (bundled McAfee etc).

I've spent more time hunting for drivers on Windows than on Linux the 10 last years.

Linux is also significantly faster for some of my workflows (git commits, anything with maven or node).

For me (partially colorblind, never cared much about fonts, everything is an improvement from what I grew up with) I also find certain Linux DEs a lot nicer and easier to use than Windows and even MacOS. Again this is my personal opinion, but I have used Windows for years before I switched to Linux and I've also been enthusiastic about Mac and Apple and have used it for years, I just happen prefer KDE or a well tuned Gnome, Cinnamon or elementary

The downsides? In my experience Linux is slightly less stable. And there exist stuff that is only supported on Windows (an old scanner I have. Although I should add it is not great under Windows either.)

For old scanners, you can try VueScan (paid app under Linux) which is a real breeze for those scanners which you cannot find driver anymore.

I did. I like VueScan and had a paid license at that time IIRC. But that particular scanner just didn't work which was a shame since it was supposed to be a good with photos and negatives. And as mentioned above it was good on Windows either.

Edit: I actually looked it up now on the VueScan website and here is what is says: "VueScan is compatible with the <my scanner model> on Windows x86, Windows x64 and Mac OS X."

Absolutely. I've installed Linux on quite a number of computers, and I've yet to run into a missing driver. It just works. Whereas I've also installed Windows on a lot of computers, and that's far more likely to have issues with drivers...

99.9% of drivers are in the kernel nto downloaded from random spots on the internet. The big exception is proprietary gpu drivers which user friendly distros provide packages for in the repos.

The big issue is thus. If you intend to run linux don't buy random hardware and hope it supports linux then complain linux is hard to make work. This is a natural course because people have all sorts of existing hardware and no real desire to buy new. It's also reasonable to try because linux does support a lot of hardware. Try it and if you like how the environment but not how works with your machine buy your next machine with linux in mind.

Linux issues are not about hardware support anymore (well mostly). The guy was talking about ui inconsistencies and overall ugliness of some distros (there are of course exceptions).

I have run exclusively Linux and mostly on laptops for 15 years and it's been about 10 years since I have had problems with packages clashing, except for python pip. (I don't use python though)

Does it sleep nicely on closing the lid?

OK why is MacOS still the ONLY OS that executes this flawlessly and smoothly every single time no matter what is running?

I've been using macOS at work for a few weeks now, and I'm surprised at how buggy it is.

Sometimes it just refuses to wake from sleep, and I don't understand why. I used Linux on an Apple laptop for years and didn't have this problem.

It doesn't work well. I use my 2016 MBP with an external monitor and once a month or so I need to hard reboot it after sleeping because it gets confused and won't display anything on the internal screen.

It's not?

My system76, with vanilla Ubuntu LTS does this perfectly for years. As did my thinkpad before this and the thinkpad before that. Always Ubuntu LTS, without big modifications.

The last time I had 'sleep' issues was with MySQL crashing when it woke up, and it found the os time changed without its internal clock moving forward. IIRC that was over ten years ago.

My main computer for last few years has been an Asus X305 laptop, using Ubuntu 14.04 with the i3 tiling window manager (i.e., there is no desktop). It's best computing environment I've had since I started out on a TRS-80 in 1979.

My i3 setup is not tweaked to auto-sleep on lid close. I'm sure it would have been easy to set up when I installed i3 back in 2015, since the sleep-on-close worked with Ubuntu's Unity desktop. Instead, when I installed i3 I attached sleep function to a hotkey, so before I close the lid I press the hotkey (if I want system to sleep). It is totally not a big deal. The system does autoresume when I open lid, which it also did in Unity environment. But if it didn't that would also not be a big deal.

To me the idea that someone would reject a superior system if it didn't auto-sleep (or auto-resume) on lid close/open is bizarre. I actually prefer to manually control with a hotkey.

It does everytime on my XPS 13

Oh that's a good point. It doesn't always. I'd say 2/3 times, 1/3 times something else happens. Usually I manually hibernate first.

Also connecting two HDMI monitors is wonky, monitor 2 flickers once every other minute or so (it's worth it) and sometimes isn't detected.

My HP Pavilion laptop did this perfectly several years ago, at which point I didn't even know how "lucky" I was that it all worked. Fedora/KDE was the distro.

Can you give us details of laptop and distribution used? Seems hardware is still difficult i.e. trackpads, WiFi, screen resolution, external displays, etc.

I’m on an XPS 13 9370. I like the idea of a Thinkpad but I wanted a laptop that came sold with Linux hence the Dell.

So far hardware support seems pretty good. Not sure my Ubuntu 18.10 install is getting the most out of the GPU but everything works including Bluetooth audio and suspend.

The only issues I have are with the trackpad and the silly keyboard layout.

Trackpad: it’s small, a bit twitchy and not sensitive at the edges when moving inwards but is moving outwards. Driver issue I think.

Keyboard: who thought it was a good idea to split the left and right keys with PgUp and PgDown? Someone who doesn’t touch type would be my bet. The old layout was better.

I think of it as a replacement for an 11” MacBook Air as it’s about the same size but with a 13” screen and a quad-core i7.

Oh also, I got a 4K display and that was a mistake. Raw terminal text is tiny and Gnome currently doesn’t mix monitor resolutions very well. So dual screening with a 1440 monitor is not easy. Ordering again I’d get FHD instead.

I'm running the same laptop with Manjaro and do not have any trackpad issues. So either you're right and there is some driver issue on your system or maybe it's a hardware issue.

Only problem I've encountered so far is that if I unplug my usb/hdmi/ethernet hub while it's in standby then X crashes as soon as I wake it.

Thanks, I might give Manjaro a go. This is an evaluation machine for me so switching distos is not a real pain currently.

Out of interest what trackpad driver does xinput report running for you?

Mine is a Dell07E6. I’ve wondered about switching to the older Synaptic one.

Same.

Curiously after you asked me this I also tested my trackpad a bit more and it turns out that if I go slowly from off the trackpad onto the trackpad it doesn't register the touch at all.

Not sure if that's some kind of feature intended to prevent accidental touches or a bug. Never noticed it before in my ~7 months of use.

I’m pretty sure it’s a software thing whatever it is because I don’t get the same behaviour in the BIOS pages. The trackpad is pretty choppy there for me but it is sensitive at the edges.

So there’s hope at least it can be fixed.

I find my xps 13 is almost problem free, and runs better than windows. But then again, maybe I'm just used to it. Its hard to say after a year

xps 13 for me as well.

Lenovo Thinkpads are in general well supported and have hardware that works out of the box. I run Mint on Thinkpad 450s and have no issues at all.

Thinkpads and Dell Latitude series (5xxx something). Currently Thinkpad X220 and L440. Wifi non-free drivers but in most distros, trackpad on L440 seems to recognise multiple finger use for scrolling &c. I admit that I tend to use at most one external display - projector - and that seems to work, I know that the newer hires external displays pose issues around scaling &c

Ubuntu LTS on thinkpad x220, and some Asus and other lenovo for my kids. Works fine.

i had no issues with the hardware on T500, t460s, 230x, 270x.

Or I have? Everyone has a different workflow. I've been linux only for 12 years about. I rubbed the license key off my laptop and when I went to re install and I just couldn't afford it. Been using linux ever since.