I am a Linux user for years now, and I have never even come close to wrecking anything with it with 'improper configs' or otherwise, on a laptop or desktop.
The problem you describe is not a matter of an 'improper config' wrecking a laptop due to the awful user-unfriendliness of Linux. It is a matter of you messing with something you didn't understand, jamming the machine in a bag to overheat, and then having to replace the battery.
There does not exist an operating system which is impervious to this kind of nonsense.
Linux distributions (keyword: distributions) have often shipped in a default configuration which can result in damage from overheating. There's no need to accuse the OP of "messing with something he doesn't understand."
Vendors often perform QA on hardware to ensure that it operates properly in conjunction with an operating system. When hardware is designed such that it requires particular operating system behavior to prevent damage then it is absolutely reasonable to require that operating system be used to maintain the warranty. Closing the lid of a laptop is completely normal behavior -- and it's a fact that many linux distributions ship with a configuration that will not properly suspend the device, leading to potential damage.
This is not a matter of "user unfriendliness." This is primarily a matter of hardware vendors limiting their testing to the behavior of certain operating systems (and thus limiting their warranty -- you can't warranty what you haven't tested; what isn't well-specified). I wouldn't be surprised if Apple refused to warranty a device which had Windows installed on it.
There's no need to get religious here. It's merely an issue of vendor support, and hardware which relies on particular OS behavior to operate safely.
Just to be clear, the issue has more to do with the vendor-supplied OS vs consumer-installed OS. My biggest overheating-when-should-be-sleeping issues have almost always been Windows on a Dell. But I have had it happen on a Cr-48 and MacBook as well.
I recently discovered that bad software can really cause hardware to fail. I switched from using the proprietary AMD fglrx drivers to the open source radeon driver a few years back. For some time, my notebook has been running pretty hot after being powered on for a few hours, even when idle. I always put this down to a dust-blocked heat sink. When the problem persisted after cleaning out the fan and heatsink and replacing the thermal grease, I started to research other causes. Turns out that clock gating, a technique that clocks down the gpu when it is idle in order to save power and reduce heat output, is disabled by default in the open source radeon driver [1]. However, I discovered this too late - the constant overheating has already seems to have damaged the gpu to the point where random color artifacts appear on the screen and the system will freeze after being powered on for a few hours.
So as it turns out, Linux may really be bad for your hardware. Still, there's no way I'm going to stick with Windows on my new notebook.
Linux is not bad for your hardware, misconfiguration is bad for your hardware.
Annecdotally, heavy graphic card use on any laptop (yes even running windows) will cause a heat death in a shorter ammuont of time than normally expected.
No, in this case, Linux really is bad for your hardware. Reading gp's wiki link, it would seem the feature to clock down the GPU is disabled by default because it's still a work in progress. That would mean that although it works in a lot of cases, it's not yet truly dependable. And if it's not yet truly dependable, then it's not able to dependably care for the hardware in the best way possible. And as such, Linux can be bad for your hardware, though it isn't always.
Any rebuttal you might throw at this reality would make me to look at you more and more like this. :)
Per your claim, some driver for some piece of hardware has a disabled feature which you can use to mess up your hardware.
So why don't you just freaking avoid enabling that feature?
Is it Linux's responsibility to absolutely prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot after taking very special effort to research the best way to blow it off?
Question: does OS X fully support every possible bit of hardware which you can technically make to run with it, with every feature you want? Is it absolutely impossible to shoot yourself in the foot with OS X?
>If this workaround not used, there have been reports that the laptop's memory controller setting may be screwed. After an incorrect suspend, if the corruption happens, many memory blocks starting with ~1G will be corrupt. Good way to see it is to use "memtest86+". The only way to fix controller setting is to open the case and plug off the battery. Please note that on this ultrabook the battery is not a user serviceable part and this could mean that by opening you can get your warranty void! If you start Windows or Linux with a corrupted controller, you will get system crashes or/and damaged file system. More info here: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42728 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/962798
I think almost everyone carries a laptop in a bag, and most don't have ventilation. The problem was that even though my linux configs were set (correctly) to sleep when closing the lid, it would often get prevented from sleeping by a program or driver that didn't respond properly to the sleep request. I did mention the case where Windows had a similar issue.
I was only trying to show that the OS and Software can play a big role in the health of the hardware. Software bugs can cause hardware failure, and a notebook not going to sleep when the lid is closed is usually a bug unless it is specifically configured to do that.
Wrecking things with a default build is still an option with binary blobs and sneaky variant hardware. Our dev team standardized on the x120e's a while back; the first one or two were great, but the second batch had a serious flaw in about half of them -- the fan speed reported to the kernel is inverted. (How you invert a PWM count, I've got no clue.)
Same distro, same config, and half the batch has a death wish, shutting down the fan in response to increased CPU temp.
The problem you describe is not a matter of an 'improper config' wrecking a laptop due to the awful user-unfriendliness of Linux. It is a matter of you messing with something you didn't understand, jamming the machine in a bag to overheat, and then having to replace the battery.
There does not exist an operating system which is impervious to this kind of nonsense.