[yingw787]

Linux doesn't require Windows to operate, but it might work better if it's packaged in Windows.

The big question mark for me is drivers. Having great drivers to take advantage of hardware across a multitude of different platforms is an issue of market share and market demand. I have an NVMe drive, 16GB of the fastest RAM, workstation-grade networking, and Dolby speakers on my laptop. I can't take advantage of it, because I accidentally erased Windows 10 Professional for Workstations when dual booting Ubuntu, that had all the specialized drivers. I'm fine with Ubuntu, but I kind of wish I had Windows + WSL instead.

[jorams]

Whenever drivers come up I wonder what people are doing that somehow doesn't just work automatically. Everything I ever plugged into Linux in the past few years has instantly worked perfectly, the only exception being GPUs.

Meanwhile Windows starts looking for drivers for a few minutes, and may or may not find them.

[Naac]

Agreed. From the list of hardware OP listed I see 0 reasons why it won't work natively in Ubuntu. Even better than windows because you won't need any special drivers to download!

[microtonal]

Doesn't Windows download the drivers and/or doesn't your vendor offer driver downloads?

(For Windows itself, you can just download the ISO from Microsoft's website and use the product key that is on the laptop during installation.)

When it comes to drivers, it's one of the reasons why I dislike Windows. I try Windows every now and then, just to see what is happening in that ecosystem. The last time I installed Windows on my NUC, it automatically got the drivers for all the hardware (nice), but with that all kinds of vendor applications that I don't want, some Realtek nonsense and some Intel GPU application.

I was quite surprised by that. On Linux or macOS, I driver is just something that you load into the kernel, but it would never come with applications that I most likely I don't need. The system felt... polluted?

[sml156]

As long as you have a network connection you can install Win 10 again and it will activate the license for free as long as it's the same Home or Pro version, You can even switch your install to or from 32 and 64 bit.

The license is stored on Microsoft's server's.

[yingw787]

I might not have activated my license, but I do have a genuine Microsoft Windows sticker and the laptop serial number. I'll give them a call tomorrow to see what they can do. Thanks so much for sharing!

[Kipters]

You don't need to, your license is actually an attestation in your laptop's firmware: you can simply reinstall and it will automatically activate by itself