Just checking: is linux on laptops still an absolute disaster zone that requires you to search for error messages and edit .conf files with vi?
Used/refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad on eBay is worth looking into. Splurge on an X1 Carbon if you have the means. They’re built to last so buying a few generations back is a good way to stretch funds. I’m running Mint on one and it’s been a breeze. The build quality is hella premium and everything works.
Thanks, I don’t mind splashing some cash and it’s not THAT much, I’ll use it for years. Unfortunately stupid China requires Windows 11 Home with Copilot installed (puke) AI says Fedora or Ubuntu works well. After Spring Festival is over I’ll see about finding a local Lenovo dealer and wipe the preinstall out without even booting it and get them to install lee-nucks. As long as pinyin input works there isn’t really much Windows software other than Photoshop and Office I need. I gave up on Baidu netdisk after it installed video and photo viewing software without asking and reset my file associations to use their crap instead of VLC.
Fedora Workstation with GNOME does pinyin input well.
I really like my Thinkpad X1 Yoga because I like having a pen digitizer on a laptop, and it works very smoothly with Linux. Libreoffice works identically to how MSOffice used to work, which is better than how it works now.
Cool. I wish you luck. With a local dealer maybe you can score a good deal on a refurb with hardware warranty still intact.
I’m Fedora-curious and look forward to trying it out when I have more free time.
Not really, I guess it depends on what distro you use though. I have a newer laptop running Fedora just fine. Tried a handful of other distros before I settled on Fedora though. Bazzite (don’t like immutables that much) and a couple other obscure ones that I can’t remember the names of rn but had issues of some sort. I generally prefer Debian but it’ll be a while before they get a newer kernel afaik. Any distro that ships with only vi and without nano is doing it wrong, imo.
fedora on my thinkpad, as the kids say, justwerks
I guess this is really a question for an AI. I just hate system administration so much, especially having to spend hours figuring something out only to solve it and never think of it again. At least when I did it as a job I could use it
That has not been my experience.
A number of years back I got one of those distros on a USB stick and something didn’t work, wifior sound or printer or something and I found myself editing an /etc/conf file and it brought back so many horrible memories I screamed, yanked the power cord out of the walland booted right back into Windows. Formatted the stick and swore never to bother again. But Windows is getting worse and worse so I’m getting backed into a corner. It recently updated itself even though I have automatic updates deliberately disabled and my start menu changed, calling Office 2007 an “app”.
It really depends on what laptop you have. The thinkpads for example seem to work perfectly out of the box. I have a lenovo legion with an nvidia card, and everything works out of the box except swapping monitors. If you are constantly connecting/disconnecting monitors it glitches out and you have to reboot.
Meanwhile my wife has a thinkpad and everything works out of the box, including switching monitors.
We use to have an old macbook that we ran Linux on and that thing was terrible. WiFi required some random github install, trackpad was awful as well.
Dell Insprion, I guess the hardware is stable so maybe it can work. But the keyboard sucks so badly, it was added as an afterthought. I want a good laptop with a great keyboard. Meanwhile Micro$oft is pushing everyone towards AI and voice input because some people can’t use keyboards. Windows 12 will eliminate keyboard and mouse as input devices entirely for voice and touch. As long as it runs ancient Photoshop CS4 and MS Word 2007. I tried OpenOffice a few months ago on a spare laptop, spent a half hour entering data on a spreadsheet and then it crashed. no problem it has document recovery. It said could not write to C:\users\whatever and that’s the last time I’ll ever use that piece of junk.
OpenOffice
You should use its successor, LibreOffice.
Yeah, that’s what I meant.
It crashed and said it couldn’t write to c:\users and I lost work. Never again. Office 2007 works just fine and always will. What is it with nerds and choosing the worst, most unpronouncable names for their software? The GIMP, doh ho ho boy that was funny back when Pulp Fiction came out (it wasn’t).That is Windows’ fault
no
I’ve run it on my last two laptops, everything just works. And I do mean everything. Special buttons, standby and all. I do run CachyOS (which is arch, btw), so it’s always recent, but I won’t think that’s a requirement these days.
I’m also sure there are laptops where that isn’t the case, but I don’t have them or know people who have them, so I can’t even say how common that is either.
Oh God, you made me forget about standby and hibernate never working properly. Oh, the nightmares… I miss my Sparcbook. That thing was an armored tank.
It really depends on your hardware, on the specific Linux distribution you choose, and what kind of programs you plan to use. I think at this point, if you have decently-supported hardware and you just need typical programs like a browser, image editor, office programs, then any beginner-friendly distro can do this without much fuss or opening conf files.
I’d also suggest working past the fear of editing a configuration file. It won’t hurt you, especially if you just wiped your machine to try out Linux. Just back up the old version, try a change, and reverse it if it doesn’t work. But many distros like Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu etc are possible to use without needing advanced technical knowledge.
Fear? I used to be a UNIX system administrator. real UNIX, not that children’s toy lee-nucks. Our systems were the size of refrigerators and came in pairs for redundancy. I never want to see another command line as long as I live.
Ha, then I misread your first comment thinking you were writing from the perspective of a beginner, sorry for that. I stand by that it might be possible at this point to install and operate some Linux distros fully with a GUI, but I may have just forgotten some terminal steps that were necessary along the way.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
