Earlier quoted context omitted.
For old laptops it's significantly less bad, but definitely old. 5+ years old is usually a good start, though these days it may be better if it's even older. The most significant issues: - Peripherals simply don't work at all , as in, no touchpad or keyboard, or at least no touchscreen. This is definitely an issue with a variety of laptops including some Microsoft Surface and Dell laptops. - Power management . Freque…
Not trying to contradict anything you’re saying, which I agree is true for Microsoft and Dell machines, but to provide an anecdotal counter-example, the Asus Zephyrus, Flow and ProArt lines run pretty well on Linux provided you replace the Realtek WiFi. One place to check is the nixos-hardware repo for machines with reasonable support.
> to provide an anecdotal counter-example, the Asus Zephyrus, Flow and ProArt lines run pretty well on Linux provided you replace the Realtek WiFi.
I should be very clear here: what I'm trying to caution people not to do is set people up for the expectation that random Windows laptops will run Linux well. Specific Windows laptops absolutely do run Linux well sometimes, just by virtue of using parts that are very well-supported and somehow having firmware that isn't full of 100,000 bugs. (I love Framework but there are some occasional issues i have with my Framework 16 that really seem like they can only be issues with the firmware rather than Linux.)
That said, I still think you should consider tempering what you tell people, especially people you don't know well. The vast majority of users are not the type of people to disassemble their laptop and replace the WiFi card. And while I don't doubt what you're saying is true, I also think it's important to note that laptops vary a lot from SKU to SKU and revision to revision; the vendors typically don't support or test Linux, so there's absolutely no reason they wouldn't break it in a minor revision of hardware or firmware, either. Telling people that ThinkPads generally work well on Linux isn't necessarily unfair (They usually do, even today) but it's not as much of a sure thing as everyone portrays it, there are exceptions. And also, when you say they run "pretty well", you may have more reasonable expectations for what "pretty well" means than the average person. For one thing, I've found that the average person simply lacks the creativity to imagine the ways in which operating system compatibility issues can manifest. For another, these minor usability problems can profoundly impact how one uses their computer. For example, if sleep/resume works 99% of the time, that's actually not great. What happens in the remaining 1% of the time, you lose all of your work unexpectedly? Does your laptop melt inside your bag? Maybe, if you are profoundly unlucky, it could even light your damn house on fire. Of course, Windows and Windows laptops have plenty of problems with sleep/resume these days too with no Linux involved, but I still believe strongly that users who have never experienced broken sleep/resume will have a really bad time here. And again, since these laptops only support Windows, any random kernel or BIOS update could kick things into a bad state. (Immutable OSes will at least save you from having to guess, but I use NixOS and sometimes my intermittent hardware issues are really hard to pinpoint, which is observable for anyone who looks at the history of kernel versions on some of my less Linux-friendly devices.)
I think people evangelizing open source and Linux are very well-meant and often times manage to really help people escape the abusive relationship they have with Microsoft, and I want it to continue. I just want people to be careful with how they message Linux on laptops. If you are really sure someone will be highly tolerant of working through problems, maybe you need to caution them less. But, for other people, I just think it's better to be very careful and fully not recommend laptop vendors that don't support Linux. These laptops don't work well with Windows by accident!