Out of curiosity - what laptop maker is installing Sway by default?

I had a few false starts before, but MS force-updating me to the objectively worse and user-hostile Windows 8 triggered my latest (and successful) switch.

Related question - how usable (in practical terms) are these cards for running AI models like Llama or Stable Diffusion? I know it’s technically possible but I don’t want to install a billion AUR packages and a custom kernel, etc.

I don’t think their Linux support is bad, but it’s not Linux first. If Windows users had to run a command to fix a display bug it would have been held back until it was fixed. With something like System76 you get a laptop with Linux preinstalled that just works, no commands necessary.

Keep in mind I called them Linux-conscious / Linux-second. They still focus on making it a fantastic machine for Linux users, but I think it’s a little less than some other shops provide for Linux.

Just want to add that Framework isn’t quite Linux first, more like Linux second / Linux conscious. With some tweaking it works great but there are sometimes little issues that crop up, especially if you’re using the newest machines.

For example, when I got my Intel 12th gen Framework last year, X was super laggy (opening a terminal and typing a few characters might take several seconds). You’d have to end up disabling some kernel power management setting. That was fixed in later kernel releases and was because it was new hardware, but their focus pre-release was making sure Windows worked well on it, not Linux. Technically even now there’s some kind of conflict between the ambient light sensor and the screen brightness keys and the fix has always been to disable the light sensor, so I’ve never actually used that feature on my laptop (unsure why Windows is unaffected).

It’s still a great laptop and I absolutely love them, but I think other shops like System76 should get credit for their top-tier Linux support.

They said they tested using the version of Windows preinstalled by HP, as (presumably) HP would have fine-tuned it for the machine.

Both i3 and sway are very lightweight so you do get good performance, but it’s the easy tiling / no-nonsense looks that appeal to me.

I’d hold off then as I would expect you to need to iron out wrinkles with regards to collaborating with others in the MS universe.

For gaming and desktop use, I’ve had a flawless experience using AMD cards and a decent time with NVIDIA. The only reason I’m with NVIDIA now is for the AI capabilities (don’t bother trying to run stuff using AMD’s ROCm - it’s near impossible to install).

I’ll buy Windows games at full price only if the developer has made efforts to better support Linux users (say by fixing a bug that only affects Linux users).

I think it’s gotten better in recent years. Years ago when I was trying to switch to Linux I had an NVIDIA 750 GTX Ti, back when it was the first Ti card and required the absolute latest drivers. Ubuntu’s repos didn’t package those drivers and Nouveau didn’t support it, so I had no choice but to install NVIDIA’s drivers manually. Then every time the kernel updated the drivers were effectively uninstalled and my system was unusable until I reinstalled the drivers manually. That experience led me to switch to AMD for the next card I bought.

About a year ago though I switched back to NVIDIA for the AI capabilities and I’ve had an absolute flawless experience with it, despite using (or because of?) Arch.