
My Disastrous Experience with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Thar (2015) - bmaupin
http://www.deragon.info/ubuntu14.04.html
======
dkuntz2
My biggest question is why does the author keep trying to use Ubuntu and
Unity, and not just switch to a different distro.

My experience with Ubuntu has been really similar to his, 10.04 was the peak,
I had a great setup with gnome 2, everything was fast and responsive, things
worked, crashes happened very infrequently. Every release after it has seemed
significantly worse than the previous ones. And I put the blame on Unity and
Canonical forking every Gnome application to work with it.

Anecdotally, I play around with two VMs, a Debian one running Gnome, and an
Ubuntu 14.04 one. The Debian VM has half the ram and processing power as the
Ubuntu one, and still runs significantly faster. Gnome 3 is great, and if I
were still running linux full time I'd use it as my DM.

~~~
dorfsmay
Are you aware of Ubuntu Gnome:

[https://ubuntugnome.org/](https://ubuntugnome.org/)

~~~
harel
I have always installed the regular Ubuntu as step 1, and gnome 3 as step 2.
Is the a benefit to using Ubuntu gnome over this method?

~~~
dkuntz2
I think so, because they use stock gnome apps, Ubuntu + Gnome will keep the
Unity forked versions of Gnome apps (iirc, I haven't gone this route in ~4
years, right).

Plus its one less step, and if I'm trying to get someone to switch to linux, I
don't want to let them even try to use Unity because, despite how pretty it
is, it's just so slow.

~~~
harel
For me it's the hassle of a clean install vs an upgrade.

~~~
harel
I mean, I already use Ubuntu 14.04 as a standard install with Gnome 3 setup.
It would be a hassle to do a clean install, setup my dev environments, apps
etc. if i was to install ubuntugnome from scratch. But as soon as a clean
install opportunity arises, I'll do that.

------
maxaf
I've come back into the warm embrace of OpenBSD this year, and couldn't be
happier. On supported hardware (cheapo refurb ThinkPad T420) everything works
out of the box. Suspend/resume, graphics, Wi-Fi, sound, etc... Hibernate to
disk works seamlessly despite full-disk encryption being present as well.

Everything Just Works (TM). I don't care if Linux is a wee bit more performant
or supports a wider range of hardware. Truth be told, I simply want to do my
thing & not think about the computer as such. I'm way past that age when "they
say it's free, if you get it to run; the geeks say hey - that's half the fun!"
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85p7JZXNy8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85p7JZXNy8))
was a viable approach to computing.

~~~
VLM
I am in the warm embrace of the CLI, where the author's problems just don't
exist and I can get stuff done. I like it.

~~~
maxaf
CLI or not, don't you ever close the lid of your laptop expecting it to
suspend without whirring its fans inside your bag for hours on end, and then
resume without losing its ability to connect to wireless networks?

I _do_ use Linux at work by way of Vagrant, and it's great for that. It's
Linux on the desktop that appears to be unsuitable for everyday use.

~~~
adrusi
If you want to use linux on the desktop, you have to buy your hardware with
linux in mind.

You don't have that concern with Windows because mainstream PC manufacturers
need to support Windows to be profitable, but there's the exact same problem
with OS X. It feels a little different because the OS comes preinstalled, but
you're still choosing the hardware for the OS.

If you buy a machine that is reputed to work well with linux, it works well
with linux. If you don't bother to check that, you might end up with a bit of
homework.

------
nacs
This is pretty much the opposite of my experience with Ubuntu vs Windows.

All of my hardware worked immediately after install on Linux whereas Windows
required hunting down drivers.

Most impressive was that the suspend/resume feature works perfectly in Ubuntu
(and the suspend/resume completes in 2-3 seconds) whereas in Windows, it goes
into suspend after a good bit of crunching but never finishes the resume
process (I hear the system fans/drive wake but nothing else happens and
requires a hard reset).

~~~
regularfry
The problem here is that the author _had_ hardware that was bought with Linux
in mind. The experience _should_ have been the same as yours, but wasn't.

~~~
antod
When I think of choosing hardware with Linux in mind, the primary overriding
consideration for me is using Intel graphics rather than Nvidia or AMD. That
sucks if you want fast 3D, but it is by far the best choice for a mostly 2D
desktop experience.

Using Intel for wifi/ethernet etc is also a good (but less important) choice.

------
zeveb
I think the problem is that Canonical's reach exceeds its grasp: it has some
good ideas (and maybe even a few great ones), but it can't drive them to
completion. Moreover, while there're willing to be revolutionary about some
things, they don't seem to be willing to take that as far as it could go (e.g.
Unity breaks compatibility with lots of stuff, but fundamentally it's the same
WIMP interface one knew from the 1984 Mac). Finally, they have made it
progressively more difficult over the years to tweak any parts of Ubuntu (try
running a different window manager, or login manager, or …).

I finally got tired of Ubuntu's far-but-not-far-enough, our-way-or-the-highway
nature. Now I use Debian, with everything tuned and tweaked for the way I
develop and use software. It's modular enough, it's good enough, it's stable
enough. I couldn't be happier (although some days I think I'll give Arch a
shot …).

------
AdmiralAsshat
I've tried at least 20 distros over the past six months (osboxes.org is really
amazing for trying a bunch in pre-installed, VM form). My picks for the best
combination of aesthetic and works-out-of-the-box were:

\- Fedora Cinnamon (I'm using the Cinnamon version of Korora, which is Fedora
with some packages and themes preinstalled to make it a little more user-
friendly)

\- Linux Mint

\- LMDE (Linux Mint: Debian Edition, if the whole security and package-
breaking thing scared you off the regular version)

\- Kubuntu (KDE Plasma is a really, really nice desktop. I fully admit that
I'm sticking with Cinnamon because I spent 20 years on Windows only and it
feels more "familiar")

I've also got Ubuntu Trusty + xfce on my Chromebook, but it's running in a
chroot and piggybacking off of the Chromebook's native Linux support, so I
don't quite consider it a full install and can't evaluate it's "out of the
box" support for hardware, etc.

I'm personally thrilled with having found Korora
([https://kororaproject.org/](https://kororaproject.org/)). Fedora's hardware
support seems to be better than some of the other distros I've tried as far as
getting stuff working out of the box, so being able to throw Cinnamon on top
of that pretty much gives me everything I want, sans perhaps less native
packaging availability than Debian/Ubuntu.

elementaryOS would be somewhere up there, as I do like it, but I'm mostly just
interested in the Pantheon desktop, which has been nearly impossible to get
working on anything other than Ubuntu.

------
blakesterz
This was a pretty interesting read. I've been using Trusty on a _desktop_ (his
problems are laptop, maybe somewhat different) for about 2 years as my primary
machine. This is one of the lines that really stood out for me: >>How can a
consumer figure that out? I _still_ hit problems on this thing. Weird random
problems, basic things that should just work, and sometimes just fail. I
frequently think "If I can't get this to work without an hour of work, there's
no way this is ready to be widely used".

~~~
coldpie
Yes. I really wish there was a distro I could just recommend to people that
Just Works, but there isn't. I've been using Arch Linux for a decade and it's
fantastic, almost never breaks. But no way would I recommend it to someone who
wasn't interested in editing config files by hand. But every other distro I've
tried breaks horribly, especially during updates. And they make installing
proprietary software (nvidia drivers, Steam) a huge pain. i understand the
ideological bent, but I just want things to work. And, as a Wine developer and
user, Arch is the only distro with a functional multiarch setup.

At the end of the day, I just don't recommend people switch to Linux.

~~~
Frondo
I've had great success with Mageia as a distro that Just Works. They're the
Mandrake offshoot from 2011, and on every laptop I've tried them on,
everything worked out of the box, without configuration. For many of those
laptops, I went through a major version upgrade (3->4, 4->5, etc), also
without problem.

It's basically because of Mageia that my linux hand-editing config know-how
has atrophied down to nothing.

------
techthroway443
Is it just me or do most of his issues seem video related? In which case that
would probably be a driver issue which would be poor vendor support and not
necessarily a problem with Ubuntu.

Why not switch to onboard/integrated video card and see if he notices any
difference?

~~~
jandrese
One thing that Ubuntu really falls flat on is third party video driver
support. The default nVidia blobs for instance are stuck on an ancient version
that don't support modern cards very well and break every time the kernel
updates (so twice a week).

The fix is to ditch Ubuntu's "third party" support and just install it
directly from the nVidia website instead. This is a bit of a hassle (you have
to shut down X on the first install), but it fixes the breakage on every
kernel update and gets you a far more modern driver.

I find Ubuntu's insistence on maintaining bug comparability on LTS releases to
be pretty baffling. mplayer's GUI doesn't work out of the box, and the fix is
easy, but they refuse to do it because it's an LTS release. nVidia drivers are
broken but again, you can't fix it because it's LTS. Zsh manpages don't get
installed, but that can't be fixed because it's LTS. Whatever happened to
being the distro where everything just works out of the box?

~~~
cellularmitosis
Yes, that's the whole point: LTS only recieves security updates and nothing
else.

There are two products here, for two kinds of people:

LTS is a product for people who want security updates but absolutely no other
changes.

The next release is a product for people who want bug fixes and new features,
in addition to security updates.

Your comment is essentially asking "but why didn't they make the spicy flavor
taste like the mild flavor?". They didn't make the spicy flavor taste like the
mild flavor because it's the spicy flavor, not the mild flavor.

~~~
fulafel
No, LTS gets backports of the xorg/graphics stack and kernel. Which helps a
lot.

------
lorenzhs
The article is from January 2015, and the title should probably reflect that.

~~~
leblancfg
This. And it's "Tahr", goddamnit. XD

~~~
CalRobert
Argg, thar be tahrs, matey!

------
blahkins
I guess I am not the only one with the WiFi wont work after coming back from
sleep/suspend. Honestly there is a much faster solution that I found: close
your laptop, let it go to sleep then open and wifi should be back. I am sure
there is a cli that you can force restart but honestly this is probably just
as fast :P

I didn't quite finish this article as its a bit lenghthy and sort of drives
the same point again and again "Ubuntu sucks and has bugs, Unity sucks...and
it sucks." yeah we get it, and you aren't the first person to actually say it
either. There are other Distros, other Desktop environments other then Unity
(you can even get them prepackaged! I am not even going to google it but i am
sure there is a modern 14.04 Kubuntu fork.). I guess the main point is that
Canonical is trying to position themselves as a leader in terms of consumer
end-user linux desktop OS vendor. And they are. Honestly even with its many
bugs Ubuntu is usually the first choice of linux Distro for me personally is
because of the usual catch22 with software: the bigger you are the bigger you
get because people get familiar and because there is a wealth of information
out there to help you if you do run into problems. Most software that is made
cross OS compatible usually means its made compatible with Debian/Ubuntu. And
that is valuable.

~~~
Thetawaves
I figured out that 'wifi not working' after sleep/suspend was caused by the
wifi card getting shut off and then not getting turned back on when the screen
is back.

The fix is to simply enter the key combination to turn the wifi card on.
Irritating, but not a deal breaker like having to reboot or re-sleep.

------
th0ma5
Been running 14.04 on a hacked Chromebook, a Zbox, and an old iMac for more
than a year and haven't had any issues. Looking forward to 16.04!

------
willcodeforfoo
I tried using Linux as my primary desktop mostly out of curiosity because I'm
wondering what my options are as Apple continues to focus its efforts on iOS
(c.f., the Mac buyers guide which paints a pretty bleak picture of the current
state of Apple desktops and portables:
[http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac](http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac))
and hopes that Docker performance would be as close to native as possible
without a VM/laggy shared folders in the way. Plus I had a spare PC laying
around.

I didn't give it as long as the OP, but it just took way too much time
fiddling to get to a stable, working place and even then things weren't as
nice as on OS X with very little to no tweaking. HiDPI in particular is a
mess, with support all over the place. OS X nails it. Plus there are some
really great apps I use every day on OS X that there is no substitute for
(Sketch, Tweetbot, Reeder, Alfred, and Photoshop come to mind.)

Even "little" things like font rendering is kind of a mess on Linux and really
is a big deal if you are a developer staring at them all day or are a web
developer and need to see what things look like with proper fonts installed.

I hope OS X sticks around for awhile or a worthy competitor appears. I'd think
there is an opportunity for someone to create a great portable, a great
desktop, and a great OS for both but I'm sure it pales in comparison to the
tablet and mobile ecosystem.

~~~
ocean3
The last 2 OS X upgrades has made my laptop lag too much. I now do more setup
on OSX then Ubuntu. Ubuntu on the same laptop runs so much better. Only issue
i have is the touchpad. Could not make it behave the same as in OSX.

------
raverbashing
I don't think this is an issue with 14.04 only

Updating a Ubuntu install has been a "surprise", some things start working,
some others stop working

It seems there are two types of packages, the "base system" (kernel, libs,
etc) which is rock-solid but anything that gives "user friendliness" is a
crapshoot

------
jopython
I converted to Ubuntu 9 years ago and it has been my Home desktop ever since.
I cannot be more satisfied. Yes, I have tried the filth that is Win XP, Vista,
7 and what not, during these years only to go back to Ubuntu. I am currently
in 14.04. I wonder how much better it can get in 16.04?!

------
matt_wulfeck
Every year I try and switch over to a Linux desktop from Mac and every year I
rage quit because of some stupid bug. On the surface things always work
"flawlessly", but then I try something slightly out of the ordinary and I'm
digging through logs and obscure message boards to figure out what is broken
(adjusting the speed of my mouse off hyper drive... More than the slider
allows).

In the end I think I'll probably end up using a chromebook for Linux if I want
to escape from BSD Mac. Or just stick with Mac on the laptop and Linux on the
server.

~~~
teekert
Haha, I have the opposite experience, usually I use Linux to get things done.
When I configure my wife's Mac (which I also often use) I get so frustrated
that I can't use TimeMachine to make backups to an smb-share (Why? I ended up
using rsync). Also, I can't use sshfs without significant hassle. FTP is not
support in finder... And I have once spent an entire night trying to make my
external mouse not feel like I'm mousing through mud only to find out that the
mouse behavior (accel curve etc) can't be adjust anymore since Leopard (or
something) came out. That was pretty frustrating.

Other that those things osX is pretty stable but it does get slow over time, I
have 16GB of ram in my 2011 Core-i7 MBP, I see a lot of beach-balls even
though I reinstalled last year.

~~~
tmikaeld
I keep seeing this repeated, why would it be OK not to use tools to fix issues
in Linux but not OS X?

Here tools to fix your issues:

\- Time Machine only support HFS+ filesystem but you can use the excellent:
Carbon Copy Cloner

\- For mounting SFTP, FTP and any cloud drive use: ExpanDrive

\- It's actually not the mouse curve, it's the rendering buffer, most people
don't notice it but a windows user should, fixable with: Smoothmouse

\- If it's slow you probably don't have an SSD drive in that computer, so
while it's indexing all hundreds of thousands of files it will be slow while
using it.

------
roryrjb
Over the past 10+ years on and off I've used Linux on the desktop, mainly
Ubuntu (started with 7.10), but also Arch, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, openSUSE
and aside from Arch (for obvious reasons) I have got on pretty well with all
of them, with very minimal tinkering. I've basically found that newer versions
of Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu have had less issues. I guess I've been lucky
with the hardware I've had, granted I haven't owned many setups in that time
frame.

------
bigpeopleareold
The article describes a few problems that I have (the network-manager issue,
the frequent bug windows), but I think I have more patience for these issues,
since the issues tend to be smaller than the little and constant nuisances I
experience with using my Mac at work. However, I did stop using Unity, with
the benefit of having a little more memory to work with (I really don't use
the desktop itself, except for widgets on the top for time, battery, resource
usage, etc.)

The bigger problems I had with 14.04 on my laptop have been solved in 16.04:
poor wifi performance and the seemingly random times it would just come out of
sleep mode while the lid is closed.

------
moondev
I have been very happy with elementaryOS (based on trusty). Been using it on
my desktop for about 4 months and I don't miss windows at all. Only thing that
gives me trouble is viewing video that uses drm protection in flash.
(watchespn)

------
talles
Anyone knows if the complaints in the article are still happening in 16.04?

I recently installed it for a friend of mine and it's his first time using
linux. So far so good but the problems listed in the article worries me...

~~~
slavik81
I never encountered most of his complaints on 14.04. I still have other
occasional problems, though.

The most annoying one is that WiFi auto-connect happens on the login screen,
but it apparently can't access the WiFi password until I log in, so it pops up
a WiFi password prompt that steals focus while I'm half-finished typing my
login password.

------
Mikeb85
Yeah, my experience with 14.04 has been seriously sub-par, 12.04 was much
better.

Seems Ubuntu and desktop Linux is seriously regressing, with the newer kernels
my laptop won't suspend any more (Thinkpad T530 w/ Ivy Bridge and Intel
graphics), after 4+ years of flawless usage. Seriously, nothing went wrong for
years and now there's some horrible regression that has fucked up the whole
experience and I can't suspend my laptop. WTF (and I have checked mailing
lists, it is an upstream bug of some sort though some blame the kernel, others
blame systemd).

~~~
teekert
Could it be the constant back-porting of patches that leads to problems? And
in fact you are using and old, patched kernel? Perhaps a truly new kernel
would surprise you.

~~~
Mikeb85
Maybe. But according to others, it's an upstream bug that still exists in the
new(est) kernels.
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1504584](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1504584)

------
pjungwir
So even though this article is from early 2015, commenters here seem to
confirm 14.04 is still bad. I've been feeling guilty lately for running 12.04
and am just waiting for a slow weekend to upgrade. I run Xubuntu and have no
intention of adopting Unity. I have two monitors with an Nvidia video card. I
like how in Ubuntu things "just work". Also I like running the same OS as many
of my production servers. But maybe in spite of that it's time to try a new
distro? Any recommendations?

~~~
coldpie
If you don't mind using a command line, switch to Arch. It's always up-to-
date, it never breaks, proprietary software like Steam and the nvidia drivers
are available in the official repos, and it doesn't force crap like Unity onto
you.

~~~
pjungwir
I am happy using the command line and even prefer it to GUIs. I've always
thought that Arch was a "project" distro, like having a car you work on every
weekend. I spend enough hours fussing with systems already, so I want my
desktop to "just work". In the past I thought Ubuntu was the "just works"
distribution, but perhaps that is changing. "Never breaks" is pretty
appealing. Maybe my stereotype about Arch is wrong!

~~~
coldpie
I've been using Arch for a decade, and it's the only Linux distro whose
package management I find to be sane.

I spend about one minute per day maintaining my machine by executing "pacman
-Syu" to upgrade all installed packages before I log out. Occasionally (once
or twice a month), I'll need to manually port my changes to a config file into
a new version of that config file. Rarely (once a year), I'll need to hunt
down and fix something that broke. For example, a few years ago the
proprietary nvidia drivers dropped support for my graphics card, so X refused
to start until I installed the legacy drivers. Extremely rarely (count-on-one-
hand), Arch will make a major system change that requires manual intervention,
such as the switch from SysV to systemd. Breaking changes like those are noted
on the arch-announce mailing list and the homepage
<[https://www.archlinux.org/>](https://www.archlinux.org/>).

It has an intimidating install process, but once you understand the system and
have it up and running, it's actually very low maintenance. I attribute this
to the fact that it doesn't try to "do anything for you," which usually
actually means "break the system for you" in my experience.

~~~
deong
> I spend about one minute per day maintaining my machine by executing "pacman
> -Syu" to upgrade all installed packages before I log out.

For anyone else thinking of trying arch, this bit is actually important. The
one sure way to make Arch break is to try and treat it like debian stable
where you just get a working system and then expect to not touch anything for
several months at a time.

If you do that in arch, you'll likely be unable to use the package manager for
much of anything, because the versions of things you have installed will have
rolled off the end of the "rolling release" system. Arch expects you to do an
upgrade of all installed packages ("pacman -Syu") at least every couple of
weeks -- daily is a pretty common pattern. He's right, that the process is
almost always completely painless, but you still have to do it. Wait too long
and the upgrade command simply won't work without you doing a fair amount of
manual recovery.

------
badmadrad
I use ubuntu on Macbook Pro and its a clunky experience for sure. The main
issue is that the drivers aren't up to date with the latest hardware so there
are all types of bugs if you try into install ubuntu on certain hardware. I
would say if you wan't a more seamless experience you should try to use
certified hardware so it just works.

[http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/](http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/)

------
bithive123
In my experience all of Canonical's software is better in theory than in
practice. I've been burned so often that these days I just stick with Debian.

------
julie1
almost all windows since 95, a lot of mac OS since 7.5.3, OS2, a lot of linux,
OS9000, solaris, AIX and *BSD.

My experience recently has been that all OS are having problems. Just to name
a few : \- HW vendors doing sub par drivers and documentations, and
integration :you even have more than one HW for the same model; \- ACPI \-
forced obsolescence of peripherals; \- outsourcing is clearly related to loss
in quality especially in HW; \- too much packages and dependencies;

And still : most developers don't know how to do asynchronuous programming,
and that is really a problem when everything is about handling events.

------
known
Like Microsoft, Canonical should also hire couple of psychologists

------
gregmac
It has been nearly a decade since I last ran Linux on my desktop (I think I
might have been Ubuntu 6.06 actually), and this exactly sounds like my
experience.

With a desktop PC, it's generally manageable, but every time I tried on a
Laptop (and I have tried several brands) I have had various problems with
display/bluetooth/sound/network/power/sleep/hibernation. It also seemed like
everytime I did an upgrade, while it may fix one problem, something previously
working would break. I even specifically researched and bought hardware that
was "Linux friendly" (eg: was generally considered to be well supported).

I eventually realized that my desire to run an open source OS on my machine
was consuming far more time than it was worth, and I'd rather be getting
actual real work done than fixing my display not scaling properly with an
external monitor plugged in, or having to reboot because it just came out of
hibernation and now can't see any wifi networks. Since then, I've run Windows
on my desktop, even when I am 100% working on code running on linux servers
(and basically just spend my time in an SSH terminal, IDE or web browser).

Apple has the unique position of owning the hardware: they basically have a
very, very limited set of platforms to test on, and as a result, it's pretty
easy for them to ensure that everything works.

Microsoft builds an OS that is supposed to work on all kinds of random
hardware from random manufacturers.. They largely take the position that it's
up to vendors to implement drivers correctly, but even then Microsoft
apparently runs an extensive hardware compatibility test lab and generally
spends a lot of time and money making sure it "just works" as much as they
can. I have no doubt that crash reports directly feed to this, and when
necessary if they suspect some combination of specific hardware is leading to
a crash, they likely test it.

Linux distros, on the other hand, seem to have none of this. Many of the
drivers are open source, created by volunteers because they bought it and want
it to work, and still not many vendors put effort into releasing their own
drivers. No one tests even close to all the combinations possible, nor as far
as I know, is there anyone monitoring crash reports and trying to deal with
combinations of problems like Microsoft does.

Am I wrong in this? Is there some organization that is putting lots of effort
into getting desktop linux into "just works" state?

Canonical has some hardware certification programs for Ubuntu Server, but I
don't see anything for desktop. For what it's worth, Ubuntu Server from my
experience DOES "just work", but they don't have to deal with some of the
tricky things like recovering from sleep modes.

From experience, today, 2016, if I wanted to run linux on a new laptop and
have it "just work" (meaning: zero issues with sleep, networking, plugging
into multiple external displays/projectors, bluetooth), what are my options?
Is zero issues a reasonable expectation?

For the true die-hards, at what point does your ideology of rejecting a
proprietary OS become counter-productive to actually getting work done?

~~~
antod
_> It has been nearly a decade since I last ran Linux on my desktop (I think I
might have been Ubuntu 6.06 actually), and this exactly sounds like my
experience._

I know it's hard to believe but things have changed a huge amount for the
better in 10yrs.

My current Thinkpad has no driver/hardware issues at all. Suspend/resume is
solid, auto updating of display changes on the fly works fine etc - it works
better than a lot of Windows laptops I've owned or borrowed over the years.

 _> For the true die-hards, at what point does your ideology of rejecting a
proprietary OS become counter-productive to actually getting work done?_

So you're using your stale decade old experience to presume the ideological
"die-hards" can't get any work done?

~~~
hiram112
Can you recommend a decent, used thinkpad I7 model, not too heavy, available
on outlet or EBay for $700 or so? Or would a Dell XPS be a better choice?

~~~
antod
I don't know enough about the Dells to comment sorry.

My current is an i5 T530 with a FHD display and 3rd party RAM/SSD upgrades.
Works solidly with Ubuntu - the only time it boots are after I finally get
around to installing kernel updates. It flawlessly suspends and resumes in
between times.

The 15" models might be too heavy for you - mine spends most of it time docked
with a 27" monitor. I didn't need much portability.

------
dre85
I have never once managed to get "suspend" working on my computer with any
version of Ubuntu. Every time I install a new distro I immediately disable
this feature. Suspend on Ubuntu is basically a "freeze/crash immediately"
button.

I've experienced the majority of the bugs that the author is talking about and
a lot of them do happen on a daily basis. Somehow, I just learned to live with
it. It's kind of like a chronic disease.

For me operating systems are a "choose the lesser evil" situation. For me it's
a balance between:

A) Linux (Ubuntu) \- negatives. boring, super buggy desktop. Mainly
weird/incompatible for entertainment purposes. Major hardware
incompatibilities. Fixing bugs takes hours of Googling and compiling random
things. Q. My so and so doesn't work? A. It's a free product, don't complain!

\- positives. Despite what people say I find package management wonderful.
Awesome for developers, everything is one apt-get install away with the
exception that you may have to add a PPA like the author mentions. Fast. Never
bloated. No viruses. No spyware.

B) Windows \- negatives: Bloated. Slows down over time. Needs a yearly
reinstall. Viruses galore. Spyware galore. Windows 10 has taken the Google
approach of spying on you as much as possible and sending home every last drop
of personal data for their own financial gains. \- positives: Most software
works well. Pretty much every application ever made has a Windows exe for
simple installation. Nice looking GUI.

C) Mac: \- Negatives: Pay double the money for half the hardware. What if I
want a touch screen? Buy our other products too! What if I want a 2 in 1? Buy
our other products too! What if I don't want to pay 2-3000$ for a laptop with
a 1 inch bezel in 2016? Buy it anyway!

\- Positives: Never used it, but it looks brilliant at first glance. Seems to
be the perfect combination of Linux performance/capabilities with the good
looks and refinement of having a multi-billion dollar company behind it.

~~~
cowardlydragon
Mac positives:

\- searching... sweet sweet searching magic

\- reloading your state after reboot magic

Mac negatives:

\- Mac hotkeys... slowly drives you insane, remapping doesn't work, 1/3
applications won't respect it or are broken by it.

\- Finder / file manager is just awful. Awful. I could probably argue Win 3.1
file manager is better.

\- not a Linux UNIX core...

It drives me nuts that desktop OS isn't a solved problem, given how many
people use it and how much CPU horsepower exists to emulate the crufty old
stuff. Why Google never grabbed Linux and made a genuinely usable desktop OS
is beyond me.

------
pfarnsworth
"Oh no, my desktop experience on a completely free operating system made by
volunteers doesn't work as well as one made by thousands of well-paid
employees. I guess I'm going to write a rant blog post, and then sit back and
wait for someone to fix my problems instead of learning how to help with the
effort."

Honestly, these posts have been around since the dawn of Linux. Unless the
author actually decides to get involved with the effort, I don't see how
relevant this is. Making a complete operating system is hard and requires a
lot of work, which is why the desktop still is Linux's biggest challenge.
There's a reason why Windows and MacOS are still around, because it does a lot
of very hard things right, and it's easier when you're paying people and
forcing them to do the boring grunt work that makes a completely OS.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its a fair criticism. Its been a decade, and the free OS still doesn't work as
well. This is not likely to change.

~~~
reitanqild
Worse, it is now more broken than it used to be according to some of us.

For me it is Unity.

For others it is suspend/resume or graphics.

