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The state of Linux as a daily use OS in 2021

Deepu K Sasidharan on March 24, 2021

Originally published at deepu.tech. I got my first PC when I was in high school, in 2003. It was a DIY Intel Pentium 4 PC with 512MB of RAM, runni...
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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

When you install Linux yourself, hardware support can be very poor. Also, forget all hardware tech supports.

Preinstalled decent hardware with Linux is non-existent here. Also, System76 doesn't deliver to Thailand.

Not to mention that handful selection of work-essential software can be uninstallable, MacOS usually installable, but tech support is very good. Windows, always installable.

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Deepu K Sasidharan

Isn't Dell or Lenovo laptops available in Thailand? Ubuntu or Fedora works perfcetly fine with most of Dell/Lenovo/Asus laptops.

For example Ubuntu officially supports all these hardware: certification.ubuntu.com/desktop

You can find the full hardware support list here as well linuxjournal.com/supportedhardware

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

I have a Lenovo laptop, and Xubuntu, and WiFi problems.

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Deepu K Sasidharan

It could be a one-off problem or distro not supporting that specific wifi-card issue, Did you try any other distro, like Fedora or Manjaro? If not maybe try with a Live USB and see if the problem persists. But if you are already an experienced Linux person then probably you tried all the patch/fix available

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

While it does support, installing must be done manually.

However, the WiFi sometimes dies unexpectedly, at unexpected time. My guess is the heat, but I can't be sure; and there is no-one to help...

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Deepu K Sasidharan

It could be hardware issue as well, check with another OS (Windows or Fedora to be sure). Is your laptop still under warranty? if not may be you can replace the wifi-card, they are fairly easy to replace on most laptops and should be cheap I think

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Any brand / model to recommend? I can easily buy online, then ask someone offline to replace it; although there may be shipping costs.

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Deepu K Sasidharan

My personal favorite is the Dell XPS line. I have a Precision (same as XPS 15)
They even have developer editions that come with Ubuntu OOB

The manjarocomputer.eu stuff also seems good and they ship worldwide

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Martin Jablečník

Also HP hardware works perfect for me.. ;)

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Deepu K Sasidharan

This company ships worldwide manjarocomputer.eu/

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Daniel Ziltener

Having sane defaults was not a thing in the Linux world

Yes it was, for a looong time. Just because Ubuntu keeps fucking up doesn't mean everyone else does so, too. openSUSE for example has had sane defaults for as long as I can remember - and that's since I started with Linux on openSUSE 10.0. Mandriva is sadly dead, but it, too, was very sane for beginners.

[Ubuntu] the easiest distro to get started

Ubuntu is just the most media-hyped distro. There's nothing beginner-friendly about it. No match for distros like openSUSE with its YaST2 tool etc.

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Deepu K Sasidharan

I get what you mean but it really doesn't mean anything if adoption is poor. I don't like Ubuntu as well but its the most popular and IMO is user friendly and has the best software support. So for someone who isn't technical Ubuntu is still the best option to get started. Its just practical.

Also I don't agree that openSUSE's YaST2 is for non tech beginners. I have seen it and it needs you to know a lot about linux to use it. It is indeed easy and powerful for people who know what they need

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Daniel Ziltener

it really doesn't mean anything if adoption is poor

Adoption isn't poor though, and even if it were, it'd still mean something.

for someone who isn't technical Ubuntu is still the best option to get started.

Why? And "because more people use it" is not a reason.

Also I don't agree that openSUSE's YaST2 is for non tech beginners.

It is much more so for tech beginners than the terminal is, to which you have to resort frequently in Ubuntu.

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wkrueger

2 words.
Adobe.
Products.

1 more.
M1.

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Deepu K Sasidharan

Well products are a big issue but thats changing. Look at Blender for example. And when market catches up even Adobe would be forced to make it work on Linux but thats gonna take some time.

For M1, I'm glad it happened so that ARM is pushed more, its not like Apple inveted ARM right. As usual they make things popular which in this case is a very good thing so that others can come up with better ARM chips. Also M1 is still not as fast as the higher end x86 CPUs like Ryzen etc but IMO that will change soon and AMD and Intel already are working on ARM so if anything M1 is good for Linux

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Nicolas Penot

Is it now possible to run Excel and Word on Linux? To me, it is the only red flag to install Linux.

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Patrik

Depending on your needs, a lot of people can replace Word/Excel with LibreOffice's alternatives.

If that just won't cut it for your needs, perhaps using the web-based version of Word/Excel might be a viable solution?

I doubt Microsoft will care about native Linux-compability for the Office-package.
VSCode on Linux was not that big of a surprise, but SQL Server was definitely a surprise to me, so who knows, perhaps they'll deliver Office using Snap-packages or similiar :)

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Deepu K Sasidharan

Not natively, but WPS office and LibreOffice work excellently even with Excel/Word formats. But I have been using only Word/PPT/Excel online and google Slides/Sheets/Docs in the past 5 years so I cant attest to the native experience. But the online versions are excellent for my use case, mostly presentations and word docs.

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Gökay Okyay

Wow that Cyberpunk theme looks amazing! I'll try it when I reinstall Ubuntu! Nice post

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Grigorii Tkachuk

Did you tried to use chromebook for development?

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Deepu K Sasidharan • Edited

Actually I have never used a Chromebook. But I can imagine it being horrible due to the heavy Chrome layer. Did you try? how was it? If they just let the Linux OS underneath run directly probably it will be good I think