[slurgfest]

I don't think Ubuntu has ever claimed perfect support for those and I don't understand why Asus is not being held to the mat for not doing basic QA with at least one Linux distribution.

Anyway, when you buy hardware, do not just buy whatever looks nice but buy something confirmed to work for your use cases. If that use case is running OS X, get something which supports OS X. And same for Linux, too.

[bitwize]

I don't understand why Asus is not being held to the mat for not doing basic QA with at least one Linux distribution.

Because there's no money in it.

A PC runs Windows. That's practically the definition of a PC. They're selling into a market that's like 90% Windows -- more like 99% if you filter out all the Macs. Their margins are razor thin. They can either do QA with Windows only at a certain cost x, or they can do QA with Windows and Linux at cost 2x and see almost no additional money for it.

[slurgfest]

OK. It is open season for saying that Linux is bad because your laptop doesn't support it. But if consumers decide that laptop manufacturers only need to support Windows, it should not be a shock when brand new laptops are made without good Linux support.

I can't even imagine how bad driver support would be in Windows or OS X if every single device driver had to be made by the same company selling the OS.

[bitwize]

I can't even imagine how bad driver support would be in Windows or OS X if every single device driver had to be made by the same company selling the OS.

I can. That situation happened with OS/2 back in the early nineties. That's one of the big reasons why you don't hear about OS/2 anymore.

[astine]

The whole point of the Ultrabook is to act as a viable Windows competitor to the Macbook Air. Linux doesn't even enter the picture.