> This constant slide in quality over the past few years has me looking to Linux as an option.

Just out of curiosity, what's holding you back? I'm not trying to evangelize or something, it's more of a personal collection of reasons various people have provided that I have.

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hacker_homie 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I am running Linux, but I had to spend a solid month researching laptops before buying, and I didn't get up-streamed webcam support for a year after purchase.

The driver situation is a better but for cheap hardware it's so hit and miss, and when you mention this they shame the user for not knowing better and that isn't their fault.

At least if they buy a mac they know it's going to work otherwise you need to buy a computer that's two years old.

	▲	nickjj a minute ago \| parent [-]
		What kind of research did you do? I only ask because if you're buying it on a big site like Amazon you can search reviews for "Linux" and see what pops up. Ideally you're looking for people who have said they installed it successfully and haven't run into compatibility issues. Nowadays I'd say it's worth spending time on finding the specs you want at a price you're open to paying. There's a really high chance it'll work fine with Linux and if not you can always put the factory Windows install back on and return it. I'm really thankful I picked one up in August 2025 for $580 before prices went crazy. It's a Nimo N155 15.6" Ryzen 7 6800H with 32 GB of RAM (DDR5), 1 TB NVME SSD and an AMD Radeon 680M that lets you allocate up to 8 GB of VRAM. It's beyond ridiculous that the ram alone is worth more than the entire laptop today.

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kenhwang 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For me, it's gaming, drivers, and still too much Windows-only software.

Wine/Proton has gotten really good, but still requires tinkering, and still sometimes has really bad performance.

WiFi/BT drivers continue to be really terrible, there's connectivity but speed and reliability sometimes aren't there. Peripherals and motherboard chipset functionality still mostly won't work.

Desktop environments are still clunky and rough around the edges. Maybe I don't get along with KDE/Gnome and just need to shop around for another DE.

	▲	alphager 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Have you had recent experiences? I thought the same until I tried it out, on decision stable no less. The driver support nowadays is incredibly good on Linux (my desktop Bluetooth didn't work under Windows with official drivers; just works without any tinkering under Linux).

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xvxvx 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m lazy and don’t want to spend the rest of the year trying to get Linux running on my Alienware desktop. I think most of the software I use is available on Linux, I just need to find the time to get started.

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noisem4ker 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Any random thread with "Microsoft" in the title from the last few years is likely to include a decently representative library of reasons. Seriously: it's always the same, trite talking points being brought up, most often hijacking the subject of discussion.

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