Submitted by dele_ted in freeAsInFreedom (edited )
My old laptop broke recently, and i finally got hands on a new one. It's a really neat little Lenovo beast. It came preinstalled with Windows, where everything worked as it should (camera, microphone, speakers, fingerprint reader and all the other fancy). After making sure everything worked as it should, i of course installed KDE Neon.
The microphone stopped working. The speakers degraded in quality. The fans went amock. The fingerprint reader broke. The camera started lagging. Bluetooth started crapping. The trackpad went to shit. All the usual that often comes along with installing a new OS.
Usually, a few apt-get's and some research is all it takes to fix this stuff. I spent five hours yesterday on this, and things are still broken. I decided to say fuck it, I'll try a new distro. Who knows, maybe that'll work better. Writing this on Elementary OS, things are still broken. And, it seems, unfixable. These devices require drivers, and there is nothing available outside of Windows.
How was i supposed to know that Lenovo went out of their way to make their machines incompatible with anything but Windows? I just want fucking Linux, don't care if it is debian-based or ubuntu-based or fucking Arch, as long as the basic necessities work. A laptop needs a microphone, a pair of speakers, a usable trackpad and bluetooth. I dont give a shit about a fingerprint reader, but this is basic stuff, and it DOES NOT WORK, and WILL NOT WORK in Linux.
I am now contemplating to just pirate Windows and say fuck it. I hate it, but i need my laptop to work, and it doesn't in its current state. I am forced to pick between two poisons; one is sweet and lovely, but cripples me for life, the other is bitter and shit-stained, but only gives me some inner bleedings.
That's it. Rant over. Fuck proprietary drivers, and fuck manufacturers of products that will not work without them.
e: Ubuntu MATE fixed almost everything. There's still some minor issues here and there, but I'm satisfied and will stick with UM from now on. Thanks for the recommendations!
kore wrote
I just buy old computers. problem solved.