[mkozlows]

This has nothing to do with operating systems, and everything to do with hardware makers. If you design hardware for a particular OS, it will work very well with that OS and poorly with anything else.

So for instance: Every Chromebook out there is running a Linux kernel, and they all have exemplary hardware support -- power management is great, trackpads are phenomenal, there are no issues with sound or wifi or GPU. BUT if you try to install Windows on them, it's super-awkward and hacky if you can get it to work at all.

For historical reasons, most people who try to install BSD or Linux are doing so on hardware that was designed for Windows, with components that were selected on the basis of how well they work with Windows, and driver work that is done for Windows. This does not lead to great outcomes, any more than buying a Chromebook and using it as a Windows machine would.

So in a sense "hardware makers aren't making hardware designed for Linux (other than Chromebooks) or BSD" is a problem for adoption of Linux/BSD, but it's a problem that can only be fixed by hardware makers.

[mindslight]

There's a social component as well. If a hypothetical user buys a device with a proprietary OS (eg MS, Apple, or stock Android), the blame for any quirks falls squarely on the manufacturer. The user then copes by blaming themselves for buying that manufacturer, not spending enough money, etc. The solution is to simply deal with the quirks until purchasing a replacement thing can be justified. This phenomenon should be readily apparent to anybody who's ever inherited perfectly good hardware from someone who was sick of their computer and just wanted to get a new one.

But installing something that the manufacturer didn't supply is a deliberate choice. Any quirks get blamed directly on the changed software, even if there are actually fewer of them. The change becomes the issue.

[douche]

> But installing something that the manufacturer didn't supply is a deliberate choice. Any quirks get blamed directly on the changed software, even if there are actually fewer of them. The change becomes the issue.

This rings true for me very much this week. Even more fun when there are multiple changes, but rather than examine the situation and determine objectively which change caused a problem, whichever change is the biggest magnet for FUD gets blamed by default.

[nextos]

This is so true. If you plan to run Linux or BSD, you should better cherry-pick hardware---especially laptops.

E.g., Linus himself was using a MacBook Air 11 late 2012 for some time. It works fantastically well on Linux. Newer MacBooks are sometimes not so well supported. Only thing lacking is no recognition of ACPI events to flag each time the battery discharges by 1% or below a threshold. But very few laptops have this.