Is it worth it?

Posted Aug 11, 2024 6:07 UTC (Sun) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: Is it worth it? by dxin
Parent article: A new kernel-version policy for Ubuntu

That's fine for some Linuxes, but last I checked Ubuntu was still pretending that it is a serious competitor to Windows for desktop use.

If you have moderately new hardware, with an x86-64 CPU, then you can probably run Windows on it. If you shut the system down, swap out some of the hardware (especially the GPU) and boot it back up again, it'll probably figure itself out within a few minutes. In most cases, it will *not* require you to insert the driver media provided by the manufacturer, but will instead acquire basic working drivers over the internet automagically (the OEM's shovelware app will install "fancy" drivers if you want them).

For those of us who build gaming PCs, this is table-stakes. We do not have the patience to deal with the system failing to boot because some driver is missing or dysfunctional, much less because some people on debian-legal have strong opinions about how the manufacturer conducts its business. Gaming is a hobby, not work. Nobody is paying us to put up with that.

Is it worth it?

Posted Aug 11, 2024 12:28 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> In most cases, it will *not* require you to insert the driver media provided by the manufacturer, but will instead acquire basic working drivers over the internet automagically (the OEM's shovelware app will install "fancy" drivers if you want them).

So in other words, the hardware manufacturer:

a) Makes sure drivers available for supported platforms at day 0.
b) Jumps through all the hoops to ensure (at least basic) drivers are available via said platforms' distribution mechanisms.

> For those of us who build gaming PCs, this is table-stakes. We do not have the patience to deal with the system failing to boot because some driver is missing or dysfunctional,

Unfortunately for "gamers", purchasing hardware without reading the "supported platforms" part of the specifications is their own damn fault. It's not "Linux's" fault if the hardware vendors don't do (a) or (b) in a timely manner, if at all.

Is it worth it?

Posted Aug 11, 2024 13:18 UTC (Sun) by yeltsin (guest, #171611) [Link] (1 responses)

This is simply dishonest. I haven't reinstalled my main Linux system in about ten years, migrating it between four "real" machines (two Lenovo laptops and two desktops, one Intel and one AMD) and one virtual machine, either by rsyncing the root partition and manually installing the boot loader, or simply moving the SSD. Unlike Windows, it did not require any configuration or building of modules in all that time, and picked up all the hardware on the first boot.

At the same time, on my last desktop, Windows Update took four years to update a buggy Realtek network driver (resulting in a completely dead network stack after ten minutes of heavy use), and on my current desktop (running a 2022 AMD CPU and a late 2021 motherboard), Windows fails to automatically pick up drivers for *six* (IIRC) hardware components, forcing you to install the drivers manually. Small, unimportant things like the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi controllers, AMD's PSP, etc. It also fails to detect the disk controller unless you enable a special BIOS option that "sideloads" the driver during installation.

If you were claiming that both systems have a way to go, I would believe it, but as written it goes completely against my own experience.

Is it worth it?

Posted Aug 15, 2024 12:25 UTC (Thu) by anton (subscriber, #25547) [Link]

Same experience here. We have a Debian 11 installation (with ZFS) that we have cloned (using ZFS resilver) to a number of machines, and they all work without fuss. IIRC we upgraded the kernel before cloning in one or two cases, because the target hardware was newer than Debian 11.

By contrast, my experience with Windows has been that every hardware change caused pain, and there were recommendations like "uninstall the old driver first", which for graphics cards guaranteed that the desktop would be perturbed. Maybe Windows has improved in the meantime, but Linux certainly used to be far superior. And what I read in tests about new AMD CPUs indicates that Windows still has problems in this area.