I'm wondering if the best approach to going full Linux would be to copy-paste somebodies' benchmark because surely if I get a brand new purpose built PC with all the right components? I bring this up because I remember how when I was messing around with Linux mint awhile back and I had very little time the damn wireless adaptor I had wouldn't even get detected.
The steam deck would potentially be the next best thing I suppose and have a different Linux distro installed on that. Going to have to have a think about it and I'm making this thread because I wonder if there have been people who have done proper experiments on this because I do think the hardware lottery is real with Linux.
I have had a problem with a wireless adapter too. USB. Actually most of the things I've had trouble with are USB or very old and niche (like a weird scanner).
There's not some crazy lottery, and every time I hear that term it's in regard to overclocking anyway. If overclocking is your obsession you're likely going to need a lot of your own research.
I'd pay particular attention to:
You really don't have to concern yourself with things like CPU and RAM unless you're just being especially weird with your choices and not sticking to a common recent-gen x86 CPU, etc. I've heard AMD GPUs have better driver support, but I'm sure there's resources for learning with all the Nvidiaphiles out there. I've only used with AMD GPUs.
If you have a bunch of gamer things, like Razer 1337 Gam3r D3a1hma1ch Super Professional MLG Extra-Mechanical Ultra RGB Sk1llz keyboard and the functionality of the included software is important to you, I'd be very wary of any such features working in Linux. Linux users are not the target marketing for those, so it's going to be nowhere near out of the box to use.
Now the motherboard comment is really interesting because I wonder if that's what potentially borked my Linux installs if motherboards are the more common problem with Linux, I tried swapping USB brands to something more known rather than fake and Chinese, It didn't do anything. It stands to reason then I should probably go with some kind of pure AMD mid-tier machine and just check out the specs of people who run Linux with zero problems then that should mean I can run Linux with very little issues.
You see I made the mistake of looking at Linux like a normie and thinking at least one of the distros should run out of the box for me. Got to examine it more like an autist because even though I'm fairly capable at hardware it's not my thing I'm more about the software. I underestimated badly how bug ridden Linux could still be depending on what hardware you picked which explains why Windows runs fine for me for the most part but Linux doesn't. It's a shame that the Linux autists don't explain this to noobs because it's really helpful information to know and would probably save people a lot of frustration down the line if they simply built second PCs to run Linux rather than piss them off trying to get Linux to run on components that aren't supported.
I'm thinking back to my time with Krita initially, I had a very old Wacom tablet that simply didn't work with zero pen pressure which is very important for art. Ended up buying a new XP-Pen tablet instead that worked beautifully and I had zero problems using it in Blender as well. It's completely true that some hardware just doesn't seem to be supported in a lot of open source projects and that's something to bear in mind.
So maybe the path forward is check motherboard compatability for specific distros? Buy AMD CPU and Radeon graphics cards for maximum compatability with Linux. By the way, Signal is another form of open source software that has this problem, I had to explain to people that I know RL once that it was likely their specific phone simply wasn't supported which I think is something that devs should be far better about reporting on generally with their software.
First result on a search engine peek:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/11ehfdn/how_to_know_which_motherboards_will_work_well/
Also, probably worth trying to avoid built-in Realtek for any subcomponents you really intend to utilize. Their driver support can be pretty godawful with Windows, I'm sure it's only going to be even worse on Linux.
Also, AMD GPU's have some reputation for being a little more Linux-friendly due to open-source driver support. Not sure if that's changed much in recent years though so be sure to double check on how accurate that is. (I can't do it right now, since I have to head out.)
Thanks, that's useful information
Anything USB you can just pass through to a virtual machine running windows. Like if you need some old scanner to work.
Not ideal, but not that annoying. Shouldn't stop you from using Linux.
But in any case I'd try out Linux in a VM under windows for a while so you start with a distro you can tolerate. Most linux distros now have terrible GUIs that look nice and have near-zero usability.
I didn't know that...thanks. I do want to keep being able to use this old scanner so I'll have to get that set up
You can use VirtualBox to try out Linux and then later to run your scanner in Windows.
Desktop-use wise I'm already 98% Linux myself, the other 2% if my scanner works in a virtual box then that's 1% of it covered.
I'll get to gaming eventually. I'm currently not prepared hardware wise to dual boot, I just don't have the disk space to give up to partition at the moment