Using a Linux Laptop in 2026
aoli.alI remember buying a brand-new notebook in 2016, the year I switched to Linux, and ending up messaging a developer in IRC searching for a wireless card driver.
Fortunately, I was so into it, that I didn't mind the 10 hours I spent trying to make it work on the first day. Three days later I switched (from Fedora) to Arch Linux, and the driver was there already, which made me really love Arch cutting-edgeness.
Never left it since then.
Back when I switched to Linux in 2008, I had a similar wifi driver problem on my new Dell laptop. Eventually I found a different release of the Windows driver cab file strangely with an identical version but this one worked on Fedora. Soon after I found wifi worked on Ubuntu out of the box and switched to that for years.
Interesting, mine was a Dell too.