this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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How do you deal with compatibility issues? I dual boot Fedora on my surface but I keep having to boot back in for various reasons.
The surface isn't a great Linux machine. I tried to run it on my Surface Pro 4 and it was just OK. These days I go for hardware that has known Linux compatibility. I'm especially a fan of the Framework laptop, but my Dell XPS 15 has been a solid Linux machine too.
I used it for my product design classes back in uni so it's a leftover :D Never heard of the Framework laptop but it won a red dot so it's already got a +1 in my book haha.
My wife uses a Framework running Arch and we're both very impressed. The build quality is excellent and even the touchpad is very nice. There's a small issue with sleep currents though, but neither of us have had the time yet to sit down and configure the low power modes properly yet. Framework is aware of the issue so hopefully their next models will be improved (and for what it's worth, I've seen high sleep currents on Frameworks running Windows as well).
For hardware: I haven't tried on a surface but actually avoided getting one for the problems I've heard with compatibility. I got a brand new Asus gaming laptop a couple years ago and had some driver issues in the first month or two, but those were taken care of in new kernel versions that came out... Now everything on it works flawlessly.
For software: I can only think of one instance that I couldn't get working... Chivalry 2. But that was a year ago, there's a solution out there to get it working now. Otherwise, 90% of the time, things that aren't normally built for Linux work when I run them through Bottles (uses wine/proton). The other 10% typically require some work, but nothing others haven't already resolved online for me to leech off for a quick easy solution. For games, protondb is an amazing resource.
Please note the following is very dependent on your needs and is based on a student experience. For a two-in-one I would consider one of the OSes that seeks to replace Chrome OS (Usually Linux or Android) but maintains good android app compatibility. I find that android apps give me enough functionality over Windows in tablet mode to make the switch worth it, but you've still got all the usual Linux compatible stuff.