Being so impossibly sexy and yet still intimidating for no reason.
Also Wifi support for certain chip sets.
Standby drains the battery surprisingly fast.
Suspend , hibernation and resume
yes laptops may seem like they suspend and hibernate and resume properly on Linux. But they do not work reliably. Back in 2010, you could have laptop running hot inside your backpack just because it failed to suspend on lid close. Fast forwars to 2026, the lid close action works but for me, there are still small chances that it doesnt suspend properly or slow to suspend. I blame Intel and Micro$oft for the new standby mode.
As much as I hate Macs, those fucking money grabbers suspend 200% well. I dont care if you’re alert or drunk or 30,000 ft in the air, if you close on the lids on these laptops, they suspend quickly.
Oh, that’s not just a Linux issue sadly. My company uses Dell Laptops with Win11 as development machines and every single coworker has issues with their laptop overheating in their bag if they don’t completely shut it down beforehand (I say completely because if you close it before it’s fully shut down, it will still keep running and overheat, fun!)
One of the main things I do miss about my MacBook.
I think the main problem lies in the community.
Not everyone, but a few vocal rotten apples are hostile to new users who either:
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Don’t already know the answer to their own question
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Are not using their distro
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Didn’t immediately read the wiki entry for their exact problem
This kind of gatekeeping is why some people are put off of Linux and the community as a whole. Just because someone asks a question you think is obvious, doesn’t mean it’s obvious to them.
For number 3, it is only gatekeeping if the person asking for help can’t read.
Oh hi it’s me. Archwiki and tldr are great, but man pages explain things adequately about 20% of the time.
Many of the Ms we’re supposed to R aren’t very well written, and we need to be open to explaining how things work in different ways if qe want others to take up with the things we like.
Man pages are the only reference material I know that has more information-free circular definition chains than Wikipedia. And I imagine that it’s for much the same reason; they’re primarily written and fought over by experts who only need terse reminder notes for themselves, and who can’t remember what it was like not spending every day up to their elbows in the subject.
i’d go as far as saying tfm exists for a reason
And Google sucks more and more every day…
There’s a good way to point people to existing documentation without being a jackass.
If someone doesn’t find the wiki article that answers their question because they didn’t know how to ask it with the right keywords, just point them to the wiki article and add any missing context to help the next person out.
A rude “rtfm” response with closing the ticket isn’t helpful.
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BLUETOOTH
Aha bluetoothctl connect f3:a2:de:e6:b5:a1
Connected
Could not connect
Audio.
And software availability.
pipewire just dissolved all my audio issues ever. could not be happier with it.
Audio is so bad it’s unbelievable. I don’t know if it’s because laptops are built with shitty hardware and then compensated for with proprietary drivers (which Linux doesn’t ship with) but my God are they bad.
Nothing that can’t be fixed by wearing earbuds or plugging in some good speakers, of course.
Software compatibility is probably the biggest issue. If someone relies on a piece of software that is Windows or MacOS exclusive, that can be enough of a deal breaker. Open source alternatives may exist, but they do not always have the same features or behave as expected compared to what they are replacing.
People assume it’s all terminal all the time. I haven’t needed to open the terminal for months. It starts up. With the GUI I open the browser. Maybe steam, too. Do stuff. Shut down.
While this may be true (I really have no idea at this point), terminal is a superpower, pretty much the best option for anything except manually dragging and dropping files one by one.
I never use the terminal. It’s not necessary for me. I’m not an IT user. I’m not missing out on anything. Many things I do don’t even have a terminal command. It’s important new users know this if they are not in to IT.
It’s useful for any meaningful use of a computer.
That’s flat out objective bullshit.
Flatpak and Docker are great, but making them talk to each other can get as complex as solving the problems they came to make easier in the first place.
It needs more pre installed machines on the market.
Freedom is overwhelming.
You can change everything and anything… so that means a LOT of choices.
Yep, just choosing a distro can be daunting when you know nothing.
In Linux, you can configure everything. And you’re will be forced to do it.
That really depends on distro. With something like Arch and Debian, that is definitely the case. On the other hand, Bazzite requires almost no configuration and has scripts for common use cases.
Debian can be installed without doing any configuration. In the installer choose to have KDE, Gnome or another desktop and you will get a functional desktop with most normal apps and games. I’ve only made small changes to configuration but nothing that was blocking me from using it. Might not be the case for everyone and some other distros will be better at automatically configuring more things.
Regardless of which distribution you choose, there will come this moment…
It deprives Apple and Microsoft of revenue. /s
Last time I tried (Mint) the dealbreaker for me was battery management. I tried various utils and settings but I couldn’t get as much juice of of the same charge using Mint and still have good performance. If anyone has any suggestions I’d be grateful!
Depends on the hardware.
I have a gaming laptop that I use for Teams for work. I put linux on it so it would shut up and be silent. On windows, even on silent settings, it is always wasting resources and causing the fans to come on loudly.
With linux it is silent. On top of that, battery life is much better because windows is not doing all that crap it does in the background. Still not great, its a gaming laptop after all, but better.
Also, does mint come with good power management tools? I opted for Cachyos due to the gaming (nvidia) driver support. My other laptop is Fedora, and it too does really well with battery life. Both are more up to date than Mint, right?
For me its the nuance of things.
Like quality of life settings. Turn Bluetooth on automatically at boot. Yeah, you can do it, but not by looking at settings and turning that option on. No, you need to recognize that’s a problem then search for an answer, determine which of the 2 or 3 answers you find are right, then do it. Is it a deal breaker? Absolutely not. But I don’t want to “solve problems” for every thing I want to do.
My other gripes would be lack of software support. As great as some apps are, others there are no support for Linux.
I was about to say, I’ve only come across that particular issue since moving to KDE, but I know what you mean about the lack of options, but then I looked in the settings, and found this:
It’s getting there!
Maybe it’s just the distros I’ve picked, but I’ve literally never had to do anything to get Bluetooth to turn on at boot
This stuff unfortunately depends by the desktop environment and because there are hundreds of them, it’s inconsistent.
On gnome it remembers it correctly, although there are a handful of times where the gamepad doesn’t connect automatically and I have to manually do that
