> Your hardware generally either works or doesn't work. If you are looking for Linux-compatible hardware to purchase, you'll need to do a few internet searches first, which is the same as any other OS.

I'm sorry, but this simply isn't true. I've seen this specious argument for almost 30 years now. It was not true in 1994, and it is not true in 2021. The fact that this is still making the rounds, is perhaps the most damning indictment of desktop Linux.

When making a hardware purchase for Windows or Mac, pretty much everything is supported right out of the box. I pick up a webcam, it works. I pick out a printer, it works. I don't have to worry the hardware is supported on Windows or Mac. It is, right out of the box. It's a very rare occurrence if I have to download anything to support it, and usually then it turns out to be needless OEM crapware.

When it comes to Linux it's a crapshoot. Hardware description often don't say if it's supported. So you have start to google around and see if it's supported, and if you're lucky, you'll get get answer, but often you don't. Instead, you just find people asking if it is supported, or maybe talking about how it's kind of broken. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the kernel support is based on chipsets -- which makes sense from an engineering perspective -- but makes zero sense from a consumer perspective. This information isn't easily available.

Purchasing desktop hardware for Linux is like walking in a minefield, and it's always been like that. You'll never get everything to work all at the same time, so you'll just have to satisfy yourself with which subset of features you want supported, but of course, you won't actually know what features are broken until you actually start using it, because you'll never list and test all your cases before purchase.

While not stated in the above post, the lack of hardware support is often followed up with either a hopeful, "It's open source! It will get better!" Or a dismissive, "You've got the source. Fix it yourself."

That's a lie. Even as a software engineer, I don't have the time or knowledge to develop my own driver for some sound card, or figure out why everything coming out of my printer has a pink a hue. I don't even know where to begin to debug that, and that's assuming I have the time to do it. If an SWE can't do it, there's zero hope for anyone else to fix their own problems.

So what about the developer community? Surely they'll fix it! In my experience, the answer is probably not. I've never seen partially supported hardware go to full support. Either the developer moves on because it's "good enough" for him (e.g. see your comment about how screen tearing "doesn't bother me at all"), or some newer version comes out, and everything stops to (partially) support the new one.

"Linux on the desktop" sounded great 20 years ago, and I really wanted it on my desktop. But then I realized that it's always tinkering. Desktop linux is like having a broken down car for your daily driver. What I wanted wasn't "Linux", but rather a unix for my desktop.

Then MacOSX came out. An honest to god unix, but with hardware support. Once I made the jump, I haven't looked back. Now the only linux device I own are a raspberry pi and and an underused NAS. I'm cool with that.