PPS: Please at least TRY to read the following - and if possible, not just the title - with an open mind and in a spirit of tolerance. It was written in good faith by a Linux user who will be staying on Linux.
I’m frustrated. Once again, I have had to buy a computer I didn’t want in order to stay on Linux.
Some background. Compared to most people in this forum, I am a somewhat normal computer user. That is, I have not touched a mouse in decades, I use a small lightweight low-end laptop (which is not slow on Linux), and I do not take anything to pieces. To be clear, I’m a programmer and a massive FOSS idealist. But I’ve never been interested in hardware, and in this respect I’m a complete normie. Let’s not forget that for most ordinary people, a “computer” these days is the tethered corporate toy in their pocket.
For me this slide away from free personal computing is now getting impossible to ignore.
- 20 years ago I could buy a laptop (a Fujitsu) from a major European electronics retailer which came with a Linux CD - a Linux CD! (Kanotix, a Debian variant).
- In the late 2010s, I had a nice choice of cheap Taiwanese Wintel netbooks. So there was a Windows tax to pay but at least the hardware worked fine.
- 4 years ago, the options were getting thin on the ground. For 400€ I could find only one Linux-compatible X86 laptop, made by Acer. And since I didn’t have a Linux live USB, I had to (fake-) register the thing with Microsoft in order to get access to the damn web.
- Today, there’s almost nothing left. Intel laptops have all but disappeared from the budget aisle, replaced by ARM-powered Chromebooks and, increasingly, big Android tablets with keyboards. Putting non-spyware Linux on these things is often possible, sort of, but it’s a nightmare. You’re back to the 2010 era of ROM-flashing on Android, using repos from random developers and wading through impenetrable forum discussions. It’s a massive PITA. This is not the way computing should be done, and normal users will never do it even if they were capable. It’s hardly secure either.
The geeky suggestion which I can hear coming, “buy a secondhand Thinkpad”, is not a proper solution. It’s a band-aid fix with a timeout (PS: meaning it’s on the way to EOL). Hardware from the likes of Tuxedo and Framework is nice but too heavy (PS: correction, Framework is not heavy) and way too expensive for me. The Pinebook Pro is always out of stock.
And anyway, for years I have wanted to move from a laptop to a convertible tablet (like the Surface or Lenovo’s Yoga and Duet lines). It makes so much sense ergonomically and even in terms of maintenance. (Keyboards have moving parts. I have to change my Acer because it has a faulty keyboard which cannot be fixed except professionally at prohibitive cost. Crazy.) But none of these computers are easily compatible with Linux. It’s possible, yes, but hardly simple.
I considered, for a fleeting moment, throwing in the towel. After 20 years.
And then bought yet another laptop, basically the same model as last time except a Chromebook. I know I’ll get an OS I control onto it without too much stress. That’s a relief. But I’m more worried than ever about how this story is going to end.
PS: I should have predicted the bitterness and negativity and cynicism I would provoke simply by sharing my thoughts and feelings in good faith. Social media is absolutely incorrigible. In the meantime I will of course be staying on Linux, as I thought I described.
I see what you mean and as someone who owns a surface pro collecting dust they’re still working towards putting Linux on, I understand the barrier to entry that a normal computer user like my mother would face in the event that they needed to do this. You are correct about it being similar to loading roms on Android phones or tablets during the early 2000’s, and even though there are a lot of reputable repos and flavors of Linux to choose from, I can see your point about the dwindling number of computers that either come with Linux out of the box, let you choose to buy without an operating system, or don’t require you to load up windows to download that necessary bootable USB.
And you’re right about buying used hardware. That hardware is dwindling in stock and even if it wasn’t it’ll only operate for so long without needing repairs.
Linux users (as someone who’s newer to Linux) very often talk over the heads of the people they talk to online, assuming a certain level of knowledge that’s absolutely not there for a normal person. Some of us need step by step instructions and a lot of the solutions I see here and other forums just throw out a bunch of jargon as a solution without a guide.
We need guides, people. Or at the very least something we can Google.
But we also need hardware that’s reasonable and affordable which is a PITA now that AI has just taken over the consumer hardware space and pushed it to the back burner.
There’s absolutely a reason that people are excited about Valve popularizing hardware that comes stock with Linux. I still don’t have a driver for the fingerprint reader on my ROG Ally X and I can only imagine the problems when the laptop or computer you can afford isn’t one targeted by a dev to be compatible.
Just because most things work doesn’t mean everything works as it should. There will absolutely be headaches a normie computer user will have no idea how to fix.
Completely agree on all counts. I’m not at all a gamer but I keep hearing things about Valve and Steam (whatever the hell they are!) and the vibes I’m getting is that these things may end up saving the day for free software. Hope that’s right.
Valve is one of the very few “tech” companies that are actually offering a Linux distribution stock and working with other devs to make sure things work not just for their hardware but for other companies that want to offer such hardware with Linux installed or as an option. Because they are mainstream they are making a lot of normies aware there’s another option beside Microsoft and windows. This is a good thing on all counts. I do think other companies need to pick up the baton though.
Pinebook is an outlier in a market that is completely dominated by windows hardware and it’s shitty.