I have to agree my XPS15 from Dell isn&#x27;t viable for native Linux installs (NVIDIA Optimus not supported on Linux, cannot connect external displays, can&#x27;t really use the discrete GPU).<p>The mouse pad works kinda funky, touch display bugs out, scaling doesn&#x27;t work well in Gnome&#x2F;KDE (works sorta well in Unity) since it doesn&#x27;t have 1:1 pixel doubling due to the resolution Dell chose.<p>Battery life is considerably poorer on Linux, i might need to play with Intel&#x27;s AMT but I really don&#x27;t feel that for a desktop distro I should be recompiling my own kernel with various modules and flags, the fan control is pretty awful and has 2 modes silent and jet engine and nothing in between.<p>On the software side well 3 major pieces of software missing Office which can be mitigated with Office 365 (sorry folks OpenOffie&#x2F;LibreOffice isn&#x27;t there yet for actual work), Exchange client and non-browser &#x2F; SSL extender based clients for enterprise grade VPN&#x27;s (Checkpoint, CISCO, Juniper etc.).<p>For me this presents a huge problem when I actually need to use my computer for work, this pretty much gives me 2 options either do all the technical aspects of my work on a VM or do or the non-technical aspects (office, communication, reporting etc.) in a VM.
Considering that VM Workstation works better for me on Windows (better performance, no compatibility issues) than Linux and some software that actually needs things like 3D acceleration like Office 2013 onwards runs very poorly in my Windows Guest on a Linux Host (due to lack of support for the OPTIMUS &quot;chip&quot;) it&#x27;s a no brainier for me.<p>Other things that make me stir clear of Linux as the primary OS are the simple little things that while might be trivial are very important things like connecting to a projector or using what ever magic wand HID the client might have during a presentation I just don&#x27;t want to have to be in a position saying gosh sorry the display port to VGA adapter isn&#x27;t working or i can&#x27;t use that mouse because it just looks horribly unprofessional and yes I know I could solve these issues but in many cases there isn&#x27;t an easy way to solve them universally and wasting 10-15 min on finding some config file to edit and then restarting the xserver to make it work will just make one look bad.<p>That said if you want to utterly stick to Linux as a desktop today it&#x27;s very possible if you A) don&#x27;t need to use most commercial enterprise software B) have complete control over your hardware selection and C) don&#x27;t need to waste much time doing non-technical stuff on your machine.<p>Sadly I haven&#x27;t found many places that would enable at least me to do so so Windows&#x2F;OSX is the only way to go for me.