> Wrong when you think those pieces are only "kernel, whatever else you like" and think that "whatever else i'd like" does not include the desktop
Eh? Of course ‘whatever else you like’ includes the DE, WM, Editor and really, whatever else you like. Furthermore, I didn’t have many problems with Linux in the desktop in the default stable installations of Debian during the last few years, nor in deviations from said stable installations[0] – of course, if you want to change/adapt things, those changes are not going to happen magically.
Really, my point is: Ideally, the distribution packages everything and picks some reasonably sane defaults. Then, it is easier[1] for a user to install their preferred applications from the archives of this distribution rather than testing out many different distributions hoping that one of them, by chance, picked their preferences as defaults.
[0] There was some trouble way back in 2005 with encrypted root devices on software RAIDs for which I had to hack together a little extra initramfs script, but apart from that, everything major worked the way I expected it to work.
[1] In terms of time spent, not necessarily in terms of additional exercise by playing around with installation CDs.
but in reality even trivial stuff like changing the brightness will not work in ubuntu if you change the DE.
also, buy a newer laptop with the new intel sound drivers (the architecture that is replacing AC97) and tell me sound works out of the box. There's dozen of implementations and none follow the standard correctly. the driver code is a spaguetti hell. and on top of that, most mixer apps tries to add more decision logic...
Well if you’re using a broken system, that’s not really reason to extend your argument beyond said broken system. Sound works just fine on my T410s with
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio
(assuming that’s what you meant) and ALSA. The same goes for changing the brightness, though I have to admit that I don’t quite know what actually changes the brightness – it might well be implemented in hardware for all I know. Nevertheless, as this particular installation started out with Gnome 2.x, then got changed to a mostly-Gnome-some-Xfce mix and now is at mostly-Xfce-with-Nautilus, switching DEs obviously doesn’t necessarily hurt functionality.
as i said, look at the code for intel audio driver that you are using and see the spaghetti to support every bogus implementations.
mine works until it tries to handle the audio channels for the HDMI, then it sometimes route audio there instead of the speakers.
and my point is that, under ubuntu with gnome3/unity, they took care to test this machine (most sold win8 ultra portable) and made it work around those bodus audio channels on the gnome mixer.
using xfce gives me silence everytime i plug and unplug a headphone (have to fiddle with alsamixer, or use gnome3/unity's mixer which will not work on my setup)
Eh? Of course ‘whatever else you like’ includes the DE, WM, Editor and really, whatever else you like. Furthermore, I didn’t have many problems with Linux in the desktop in the default stable installations of Debian during the last few years, nor in deviations from said stable installations[0] – of course, if you want to change/adapt things, those changes are not going to happen magically.
Really, my point is: Ideally, the distribution packages everything and picks some reasonably sane defaults. Then, it is easier[1] for a user to install their preferred applications from the archives of this distribution rather than testing out many different distributions hoping that one of them, by chance, picked their preferences as defaults.
[0] There was some trouble way back in 2005 with encrypted root devices on software RAIDs for which I had to hack together a little extra initramfs script, but apart from that, everything major worked the way I expected it to work.
[1] In terms of time spent, not necessarily in terms of additional exercise by playing around with installation CDs.