This right here discredited your entire post (which was pretty trollish to being with, you need to stop thinking your hardware compatibility problems are somehow Linux problems).
Maybe YOU are the troll. Man I'm sick of anyone who has ANYTHING negative to say about ANYTHING being labeled a troll. We're not even talking about OS X here, but Linux on an OS X forum. You don't have a freaking clue what I use based on your absurd response.
The fact my DVD-RW drive does not work in Linux is not a Linux problem? WTF!? Since when? It was stated in this thread about how great driver support is in Linux compared to OS X when you really look at it. Well, it's not great enough to use the hardware I already have. There IS a driver for that DVD-RW drive in Linux. It simply isn't stable. And you can forget about getting a stable driver for it. I've had that drive now for a year and a half and the drive has existed much longer than that. It's still not stable with the latest kernel updates and probably never will be. My Intel web camera has had a driver in Linux for 8 years, but it's never worked "properly" and it NEVER WILL because no one will ever finish the driver (the thing isn't even sold any more so you can be certain there is no incentive for anyone tow ork on it).
Basically, if you're going to use Linux, you had better make DARN CERTAIN that you buy fully compatible hardware FOR it because you can in NO WAY assume that the PC you already own will work with Linux. They've had over a dozen years now to make Linux a competitor with Windows and that's a LONG time. It's still pretty darn rough around the edges, IMO. I've just finally started to see some joystick preference panes that rare GUI instead of CLI. It only took them a decade to get to adding it, even though the basic driver has had good joystick support for most of that time. And if you point these things out on Linux forums you get the standard response of "if you want that then write it yourself or shut up about it". Sorry, but I have no interest in writing drivers, preference panes or anything else of the sort. I'll just use an operating system that has that support already, thank you very much. Linux has always been and seemingly always will be for hackers. There are some dedicated individuals trying very hard to make Linux more than that and even some companies like IBM supporting it for their own server interests, but in the end, it still isn't a great desktop OS. Maybe in another 10 years, it'll be as easy to use as WindowsXP and another 10 after that OS X from today. But where will Windows and OS X be in 10-20 years?
Ubuntu is built on Debian and as such is the most Open of all distributions. Of course, you're misguided in what Open actually means in Open Source.
I already said they are not "open enough" (implying not open source in a sarcastic way), but clearly that flew right over your head.
Your MP3 files/DVD access are patent encumbered algorithms and as such are not Open at all. You either need a patent license for them or live in a country where the patent is invalid.
Yeah right. That's why Mandriva comes with them because I need to live in another country.... It's more like certain distributions cave when it comes to anything that might POSSIBLY give them a problem in the legal department. Most of the time, however, it's simply a choice from Linux purists that seem to think if a program is not GNU then it shouldn't be supported, distributed or even talked about. Most Linux purists are not happy unless NO ONE is making money off any of their work. They try to force this by not allowing any GNU software to be used for anything that is not GNU also. By doing so, they simply alienate developers who might otherwise support Linux.
Ubuntu however allows you through 2 clicks in the GUI to install non-free elements like these (including the nVidia graphics driver which are also non-free, being not Open at all).
I cannot speak for the very latest install, but there was no such functionality when I attempted to install a Ubuntu on either my PPC machine in the past or my PC. Most distributions (even Mandriva) do not offer ANY support for setting up non-free repositories. You have to generally search high and low for support information on where to find them. I did find a very nice site that gives the information for various distributions, though, but it took a lot of searching in years past. That in no way validates things for new users who will wonder why MP3 is a bad word on the Ubuntu forums. Sorry, but Ubuntu's "ideology" simply isn't my own.
This doesn't make it a CRAP distribution, it's a idealogical choice of only supporting Free (as in freedom) software out of the box. The fact that the
You call it an ideological choice. I call it lame. Some of us don't want to hunt high and low for BASIC functionality like the ability to play MP3 files. Any operating system that has no such support out of the box is not ready for prime time. When a $3 MP3 player at Walmart can play them and a Linux distribution cannot, well how does that make Linux look? Sorry, but commercial music is NOT typically distributed/sold in OGG.
option is there to easily, using freely provided repositories with a GUI tool to install all these components isn't enough of a compromise on their ideology to you ?
I don't CARE about THEIR ideology. I care about the ability to play my media libraries and MOST of the world uses MP3/MP4 and DVDs, not OGG and FLAC (there is no alternative to DVDs since they're studio based).
I think your problem is that you probably never really had to use Linux for any lenght of time beyond installing the flavor of the month once in a while.
How the heck would you know how long I've used Linux? I've been trying and using Linux distributions since 2000. I've gone through at LEAST 10 Linux installs and 5 distributions in that time. Back before I discovered OS X, I was still gung-ho to stay away from Microsoft because the way I saw it, they were at least partially responsible for the demise of the Amiga (gross mismanagement by Commodore was the rest). Their business practices are abhorrent, but I've since discovered Apple is no better at all. Both companies are extremely anti-competitive. So yes it would be very NICE if Linux were a good alternative to either one.
But the fact remains that even IF you have fully supported and functional hardware with Linux, you STILL have JACK when it comes to choices for commercial quality software. For example, I don't care how much you want to hype the Gimp, it is NO SUBSTITUTE WHAT-SO-EVER for Photoshop. The inability to get real-time previews for transforms alone KILLS it (sorry but grids are no substitute for seeing the actual image as you manipulate a transform). You can TRY to run WINE to get Photoshop to work in Linux, but the fact is it's glitchy at BEST and downright crashes at worst. I know because I've tried high and low to make Linux an effective environment to use instead of Windows. But it's not even effective if I throw out gaming. Linux is getting better, but it still has a long way to go before it's ready to compete with Windows on a user desktop level. And until the developers are ready to agree on STANDARDS for things like application installation, commercial software will continue to be a joke. At least you can get a decent browser these days (I'm referring to Firefox). Back in 2000, browser support was pretty pathetic in Linux. Do you need to run iTunes? Too bad. Older versions "kind of" worked in Wine, but it's VERY VERY slow (even on very fast hardware) and some features don't work at all.
If you're willing to eschew nearly all commercial software and only have basic word processing, e-mail and browser needs, then Linux might be for you. If you're a programmer or a hacker and are willing to jump through hoops to get everything working that's possible to get working, then Linux might be for you. If you want to do complex commercial work, forget about it. Linux is a joke in those areas and probably always will be since supporting such software or trying to attract such software goes against so many of the Linux community's "ideology".
The fact is I DID jump through those hoops and I did get all those things working (save the hardware drivers that simply aren't very good). I know the shell environment in Linux pretty darn well. That does NOT mean I think any better of Linux because of it. I know full well MOST people have no interest in learning those things and the fact is that operating systems like OS X prove you do not NEED to know those things in order to do your work.
The BEST operating system would be the one you never even notice. You should be able to sit down and get to work. It should be completely intuitive and easy to learn. Currently, OS X is by FAR the closest to that experience. The Mac has a well deserved reputation for being easy to learn and for "non-computer" people to use. The real question is WHY should any operating system be otherwise? Why should you have to sit and read a 500 page book on Linux for dummies to figure out what to do when it dumps you into a shell and X refuses to start because the updater didn't include the Nvidia source for the latest kernel update and therefore X won't start. Just to find out that is the root of the problem online when it's not obvious to you because you are not into the roots of operating systems could take HOURS. And you can FORGET about getting help from most Linux users on IRC chat rooms, etc. Their typical reply is "RTFM" even though most Linux 'manuals' (and I use that term VERY loosely) consist of "man" pages (if ANYTHING which is also very common) and they are pretty darn cryptic at times, often poorly written and force new Linux users to use the CLI right off the bat.
Yeah, some of these newer distributions are fine so long as they work like they're supposed to and you don't look for software it didn't set up repositories for you to use automatically. But the first time something goes awry (and it will), you are staring at a CLI prompt wondering WTF to do to fix it. Odds are you won't be able to fix it as a new user that does not have intensive detail knowledge of the CLI. You'll just delete the whole thing and start over, maybe with Windows instead. Forget about commercial backup software too. Better get used to Rsync on the command line....
Out of all the rpm-based distros, Mandriva has got to be the worst. Never found it to be anything special, and its updates suck.
I've had the least problems *BY FAR* with Mandriva over the years. It has simply WORKED with my hardware where other distributions have had serious issues or required a lot of extra work.
That's odd, I've never had that issue with SuSe, from 9.3 to current. It just works, right out of the box, as long as you make sure the hardware is on the HCL.
That's NICE that YOU have not had problems with Suse, but that in NO WAY means others have not. My hardware is supposedly supported. It works fine for awhile and then the whole system FREEZES with no explanation, no indicators in the logs, etc. I've found a few others that had similar problems before, but for the most part there's no explanations out there and no support to figure out the problem. When Suse 11.x came out, I tried it again and it had the same problem. Everything else seemed much nicer and with a lot of reboots, I have it all set up on an extra partition with all the non-free codecs installed, etc. I'd be using it today instead of Mandriva if it weren't for those freezes, but I'm sick of them.
Not quite sure why you had difficulties with Ubuntu. If you want to play nearly any video file, if it doesn't already have the codec, it will say "would you like me to find the codec?" and will download it, and it will play. It plays DVDs, MP4's, MP3's, whatever. If you've got proprietary codecs needed, a quick look on their support site shows a repository to add to get WMA support. Not hard at all.
Ubuntu's Live CD wouldn't even load on my computer here. The graphical loader craps out (shows unreadable garbage display) every time and despite two releases since the first time, it still didn't work the last time I used it. Bypassing the normal graphical loader does work, but until I got my newer PC last year, Ubuntu ran like CRAP on my old one because it's memory hungry (my last PC only 788MB of ram, which was more than enough for Mandriva and Windows98, but not Ubunut). I also had a less than stellar experience I had when I tried it out on my PowerMac two years ago for similar reasons. Tiger was happy with 512MB of ram, but Ubuntu ran like molasses. I guess I somehow expected it to be faster than OS X, but it was definitely slower.
Bypassing the normal graphical loader, it comes up
nVidia graphics cards are actually the easiest. Ubuntu sees that you've got a card with an available restricted driver, and asks if you'd like to install it. You do. It's done. Again, not hard.
Again, not everything that works for you works for everyone else. I'm sure you won't believe that since like most Linux users, you seem to think it's better than it really is.
In short, because you've had bad experiences and are clearly lacking Linux experience in general, you're making a broad generalization that Linux has a
If you call 10 years of Linux experience "lacking in general" then you CLEARLY must have pretty darn high expectations for what 'experience' is in the Linux world. I mean for goodness sake you're one arrogant elitist. Don't feel bad. 90% of the people I met in the Linux world over the past decade were elitist types that looked down on everyone that wasn't just like them. OS X has similar behaving users, but they're more like fanatics than elitists. Windows has both, but more represents 'average' people than either the Mac or Linux.
Point is that if you use a sane distribution like Ubuntu or Fedora or Debian or CentOS - you do not need to do anything out of the ordinary.