Thoughts on Linux hardware issues, etc

(originally I wrote this as a reply to a blog post, but because that blog has a horrible formatter I decided to expand it and post it here as well)

I have been using Linux (mostly Ubuntu and mostly at home) and Windows (mostly at work) for years now and I would probably use Linux full-time save, maybe, for games, although if a game runs on Linux I play it on Linux. My choice of Linux is purely practical. Simply put, I can work much more efficiently on Linux than I can on Windows. But enough about how much I like it, the problem is I keep hearing these complaints (or is it excuses?) about Linux that I find baseless. What is more surprising is that I hear them from computer-literate people, such as software developers. The rest might seem like another "5 biggest Linux myths" blog post, but in fact it is just a couple of notes I decided to take down not to forget them later and maybe use them as arguments in discussions.

1 - I find hardware compatibility hardly a relevant topic when comparing operating systems. I wish it stopped popping up at least in computer literate environments. If you are going to install Linux on Windows hardware, please do not expect that the install will go smoothly. Specifically, do not expect that sound, video or wireless will work out of the box. This is not a problem with Linux, it is just a fundamental law of computing that software must be compatible with the hardware it is running on. The same thing or even worse will happen to Windows when you try to install it on Linux hardware. Just recently, my brother got an Ubuntu laptop from System76 and tried to install XP on it. It wouldn't install until he patched some firmware on it. And then try installing Windows on anything that does not look like a standard PC. And then try installing Max OS on anything.

2 - A responder to a (blog) noted: "doing ANYTHING in Linux that becomes a 25-60 minute black hole". This is an utterly wrong statement. People usually apply this to hardware issues (in which case see point 1). However, once hardware issues are resolved (either by manual configuration or by buying certified Linux hardware) doing ANYTHING in Linux is a breeze. Of course due to exposure to such a vast repository of open-source software (of which maybe only 5% is of good quality) you will always install things that will not work as good you want. This brings me to my next point...

3 - Finding, installing and uninstalling software in Linux is easier than in any other operating system I have seen. This plays well with the huge amount of software available for Linux in that you can always install it, try it and uninstall it easily if you don't like it. No registry or program files leftovers will ever clog your system. Also thanks to advanced automatic dependency management programs take much less space, sharing many standard libraries. I have tons of stuff installed on my laptop and still have room for music and video on my 80 GB hard drive.

4 - Keeping your system up-to-date, and I don't mean just the OS, but everything installed on your system is incomparable. Linux is ahead of any other OS by orders of magnitude. Anything you install from a registered software repository (usually it's 99% of all your software) will be kept up-to-date with the rest of the system. Every now and then you are reminded that updates are available and these updates apply to your entire system: the OS (kernel), utilities, desktop manager, office suites, Apache, Firefox, well you get the point.

5 - This might be a matter of personal preference, but to me it feels much better to work on a system and to know that all it does at any given moment in time is what you asked it to do. There is no antivirus that checks every file you touch. There is no spyware and no spyware removers. Let's face it, no matter how clean your Windows system is, there is always some dark magic happening under the hood that for some reason: slows your system down, blocks you from performing normal tasks, crashes, automatically reboots without asking you first, etc, etc. When I copy/move/delete files I want the OS just do it, and since I still use Windows at work I am constantly reminded how much faster these basic operations are on Linux (from both speed and usability perspectives).

In conclusion I would like to reiterate that Linux hardware issues are overrated and irrelevant to discussions about features/usability/performance of the OS. What's worse is that the issue is magnified by the fact that most installations take place on foreign hardware and then the performance of the operating system is evaluated on that hardware. This is wrong. The question we should be discussing is 'When it does work does it perform better (from all aspects) compared to the competition or not?'