This experience is based on running whatever the latest LTS Ubuntu OS was in 2018 on a Huawei Matebook Pro, a very nice thin laptop I bought at the Microsoft store in San Francisco. I also tried Fedora. Initially I tried stock Gnome whatever, before heading off for Fluxbox, Sway/i3 etc sparse style window managers after growing frustration.
- battery life worse than a full screen VM running under Windows. Need to fight tooth and nail with drivers and config files for graphics that switch from low power intel to high power nvidia based on workload, for example.
- wifi throughout worse than a full screen VM running under Windows.
- worse UI performance under load than macOS or Windows. The whole UI, eg the compositor or X server can easily grind to a halt with no “beachball” style indicator. Crashes in that process are not uncommon, and effectively lose the whole session.
- somehow I managed to break my sound output with a routine software update in the year 2019
- browsers (eg Firefox) still buggy or blurry under Wayland
- battery life worse than a full screen VM running under Windows. Need to fight tooth and nail with drivers and config files for graphics that switch from low power intel to high power nvidia based on workload, for example.
- wifi throughout worse than a full screen VM running under Windows.
- worse UI performance under load than macOS or Windows. The whole UI, eg the compositor or X server can easily grind to a halt with no “beachball” style indicator. Crashes in that process are not uncommon, and effectively lose the whole session.
- somehow I managed to break my sound output with a routine software update in the year 2019
- browsers (eg Firefox) still buggy or blurry under Wayland