Slashdot Mirror
Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux?
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Mark Golden, a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, tried to switch from Windows to Linux, and found it too complex for his liking. He writes: 'For me, though, using the Linux systems didn't make sense. I often send documents and spreadsheets between my home PC and the one at work, which uses Microsoft Office. And the files are sometimes complex. Meanwhile, for both personal and professional computer use, I want access to all multimedia functions. While solutions may exist to almost every problem I encountered, I was willing to invest only a limited amount of time as a system administrator. Claims by some Linux publishers that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows seem totally oversold.'"
As a guy who is doing the same thing he is, trying to drop Windows from my everyday computing, I feel his pain. While editing config files itself isn't too hard, knowing what config file to edit and when, and how to edit it is very difficult for a newbie.
The issue is not that they don't work, but that you still have to install drivers for them. The point being that in Linux you still have to install drivers for many hardware packages that are out there.
I have in Nvidia motherboard. I can install WinXP on the machine, but I can't use the onboard network interface until I've installed the drivers. It has USB2, but I can only get USB1.1 speeds until I install the drivers. It has onboard sound, but I need to install the appropriate drivers.
All these things have just worked in Linux for me for a long time. I haven't had to install the drivers to get them to work for me because most common hardware is supported directly. Including my Lexmark printer, my Canon flatbed scanner, my Logitech webcam, my Winfast TV Tuner card and so on.
Your point is misleading. Just because every piece of hardware off the shelf works with windows, it still requires that the drivers be installed. Linux has exactly the same requirement. You need to install the appropriate driver (kernel module) for it to work in Linux if one doesn't already exist. However, Linux comes with more drivers built in to the platform itself by default than Windows does. Its not uncommon to have to install drivers off a disc for Windows, but very common for most devices to just plug in and work in Linux now.