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by AnIdiotOnTheNet 2723 days ago
Don't get me wrong, I agree that progress has been made. Sound, unless you need low latency, is pretty much a solved problem now, for one.

But there are a lot of reasons that Linux's particular brand of issues are actually still a deal breaker for people, and refusing to acknowledge that will never attract anyone to the platform.

1 comments

For low latency I've played with Jack a little while I was playing bass. It wasn't very bad, but I don't have recent information on the issue.

I for one do photo post-processing and development on Linux mainly, and have no problems while doing what I want to do.

> ...Linux's particular brand of issues...

Can you please elaborate? I'm interested. Since I'm using Linux heavily and for a very long time, I might be blind to that problems.

Just google around a bit, even just on HN, and you'll find dozens of examples. A lot of it comes down to poor drivers, especially for laptops, but much of it is systemic.

I'm reluctant to go into detail about my own personal blockers because every time I do I end up in a multi-page argument with some evangelists who insist that everything I want to do is completely wrong and I should just change my entire workflow to match theirs.

You're right. Laptop support tends to be problematic, and boils down to selection of right hardware "platform" in the beginning. The worst part is, the right platform is not always budget friendly.

I personally found out that professional class hardware (Dell XPS, HP EliteBook, Lenovo ThinkPad) has the best Linux support out there. I have a EliteBook 850G2 at the office, and except the fingerprint reader (which I don't use), everything is working without any problems. Battery life is also great (~7 hours). However, works for me is not a valid excuse, esp. with hardware.

If you want to discuss further, you can reach me via my profile page.