Perhaps it is because I have used Linux for quite a long time now, and it did not always work so well, but I still smile when I plug my laptop (Debian, Gnome, Wayland) into a Thunderbolt dock via USB-C shaped connector, and its display appears on multiple 4K monitors within a couple of seconds.
I unplug it, and it comes back to the laptop screen.
Screen rotation on my laptop works flawlessly.
Thank you - genuinely - to everyone who has worked on making this happen so seamlessly.
My 2026 Linux experience:
External display: just works
Screen rotation: just works
Webcam (internal, external): just works
Audio (internal, external, Bluetooth): just works
Bluetooth: just works
Wi-Fi: just works
Ethernet: just works
WWAN (integrated cellular modem): just works
Printing: just works
This is with a ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6.
Neither cutting edge nor ancient - a £350ish-secondhand-on-eBay machine.
@neil
Great to hear that!
In general I experience the same. BT #bluetooth pairing with headset und 'driverless' printing brought issues in current stable #Debian trixi but seems mostly due to (non-)confirmance of manufactures i.e. Kyocera networked Sprinter.
What Sprinter do you use?
> What Sprinter do you use?
I print rarely (I aim to be paperless), but:
* Brother QL-710 label printer (via USB)
* Brother MFC L2750DW (via network)
I've also used a small Samsung laser via USB.
a rebadged Konica Minolta (branded Ineo) at my workplace automatically appeared on a PC via CUPS when I installed Linux Mint - didn't need to install any drivers, it was just there and printed straight out of the box (including a complex PDF document in German with many graphics)
Brother, both an MFP and a label printer.
But then a cheap Samsung printer also worked easily too!
@neil @darkling we have a printer (Ricoh SP C260L colour laser) that requires a big driver/software package under Windows…
Or I just plug it into my Linux laptop, and it’s automatically detected and configured.
Same with the two Epson multifunction inkjets. Even scanning works on those with no configuration.
I have not tried it from my laptop, but I do it via an Intel NUC, via Lyrion Music Server, to a mix of Squeezeboxes and Sonos / Airplay 2 speakers all the time!
@neil ah, yeah, from a streaming conversant app/server isn’t so bad.
But capturing audio from a random app on the machine and casting it is still way harder than on macOS/iOS. You realise how much work goes into that when you have to roll it yourself with pipewire and chromecast sink daemons 😳
@WiteWulf I will happily take our word for it!
I do it via "wireless HDMI" quite regularly, I guess, but I don't think that that is quite what you have in mind!
@neil Just works it's my experience as well except ... internal WWAN
😭
Get it working it's a bit of arcane magic. Sometimes it does work, sometimes it doesn't (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xmm7360-pci)
@neil I have a new powerful ThinkPad with Windows 11 at work.
I have weird issues several times per week. It’s such a toy OS.
What bugs me about Windows 11 (Work laptop) is the limited, poor colour choices, lack of good high contrast options, especially around borders and title bars - the number of times I've closed the wrong window. Also, why do some new windows hide and not grab the focus?
It's bliss to get back to my Mint/KDE Plasma desktop and Fedora Laptop.
@neil I have a cutting edge ThinkPad P16 gen 3 from January. I do have minor issues with Thunderbolt 5, and I don't have WWAN or screen rotation, but Webcam, Audio, BlueTooth, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and Printing "just work" with no issues.
Printing is going a bit *too* well, since my laptop happily offers to print to an unreasonably large number of printers (50?) when I connect to the library WiFi.
@neil everything works fine on my latest Linux computer too, great graphical output, HDR is top-notch under Wayland, audio is fine even though it's still using pulseaudo. Onboard LAN is surprisingly crap at 100Mb/sec but a dongle and WiFi still work fine
I am of course referring to my LG TV running webOS
@neil Magnificent, isn't it?
When I think back to those days of trying to get my damned modem working in Linux Mandrake ...
@hedders @neil Oh man, winmodems were such a pain. At least "normal" modems could be configured with AT commands... so glad I stopped using dialup in about 1999 when I got my first broadband, but I had to "support" friends and family with it for years after. Usually on windoze...
By the time Mandrake came round, broadband was a fixture in my life, so never had to wrangle modems with it. Was a good distro though - I used it up until Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog came out.
@neil Yeah, I recently put Ubuntu on an iMac, for the purpose of copying some videos off MiniDV tapes.
Now, there were many small issues - the fans ran at full speed for no reason - the screen kept locking after 5 minutes, and getting dvgrab working required a dozen web searches and extensive use of my UNIX sysadmin skills…
But once I dialled it in, I downloaded 30 tapes worth of video from 2001 through 2011, easily.
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