[johnduhart]

> Consider yourself told, then.

Oh, please enlighten me, Drew.

> Linux works OOTB on pretty much all hardware, often better than Windows

Are device manufacturers supporting Linux?

> since it ships with all of the necessary drivers.

No it doesn't, last time I checked to even get the recommended usb wifi module to work on Arch required downloading additional packages and compiling a kernel module.

> The average user can handle KDE Plasma just fine.

Cool let me know how you handle explaining why they can't run some exe they downloaded on your GNU/Linux setup, and when they complain that they're used to Microsoft Word not this LibreOffice stuff.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

>Are device manufacturers supporting Linux?

Device manufacturers barely "support" Windows. If it works, then it doesn't need support, and it works.

>No it doesn't, last time I checked to even get the recommended usb wifi module to work on Arch

I don't want to hear an Arch user making any claims about the usability of Linux for the average person.

>Cool let me know how you handle explaining why they can't run some exe they downloaded

By explaining it. It's simple.

[emilsedgh]

Cool let me know how you handle explaining why they can't run some exe they downloaded on your GNU/Linux setup, and when they complain that they're used to Microsoft Word not this LibreOffice stuff.

Mac users don't seem to have these problems.

[bildung]

>> since it ships with all of the necessary drivers.

> No it doesn't, last time I checked to even get the recommended usb wifi module to work on Arch required downloading additional packages and compiling a kernel module.

Compiling things yourself is the entire point of Arch. If you don't want to mess with things like these just use Ubuntu.

[Xylakant]

There's still no stable support for my thinkpads fingerprint sensor on a current fedora/ubuntu. Last time I checked, neither supported the built-in WWAN modem in my thinkpad, either. And I'm not even using any really exotic hardware and the T460s model isn't exactly brand new either.

Windows support works perfectly well for both pieces of hardware.

[explainplease]

Okay. What about hardware that works better on Linux? Why do you assume that this issue strictly favors Windows?

[Xylakant]

There is very little standard (consumer) hardware that works better or exclusively on Linux (1). Due to market pressure, Windows drivers are widely available, but Linux is not necessarily (fully) supported. As another example: printers. Quite a few (even SO/HO) printers don't have proper Linux drivers. I can't reliably print double-sided on our office brother printer. Getting the networked scanner to work is a lesson in debugging. On MacOS and Windows: Trivial task. Just works.

(1) Keep in mind that the whole article is about consumer/end-user OS, not about server OS. I'd still bet that windows support is at least as widespread as Linux on servers.

[explainplease]

> Due to market pressure, Windows drivers are widely available, but Linux is not necessarily (fully) supported

That sounds like something Microsoft would say back in the 90s.

> I can't reliably print double-sided on our office brother printer. Getting the networked scanner to work is a lesson in debugging. On MacOS and Windows: Trivial task. Just works.

I've seen many people over the years saying the same thing in the opposite direction: their stuff works better on Linux than on Windows. You're just assuming that Windows is always better based on your personal experience. In reality, vendors often push out poorly written Windows drivers in a hurry and move on. If you're lucky, you might be able to dig out an update from 7-pages-deep on a vendor's web site, and maybe it won't introduce a new bug that keeps you on the old one.

Neither side of that binary is useful. Instead, look at the hardware you need, see how well it's supported on the platform you use by looking at actual user reports, and don't make any assumptions.

However, one assumption you can generally make is that, if a driver is in the Linux kernel, and people are using it, it will continue working, because Linus doesn't tolerate regressions in code that's actually used.

[explainplease]

> Cool let me know how you handle explaining why they can't run some exe they downloaded on your GNU/Linux setup

The same way you explain that they can't run a Windows exe on Mac?

> Are device manufacturers supporting Linux?

...Yes?

But even better, there are people other than device manufacturers supporting them--which means better drivers, because they aren't motivated by bare profit to ship a minimally functional driver ASAP and reassign all the programmers to model+1. This is why upstreaming is a good thing.

BTW, do you read LWN?