Burnout is one of the biggest problems in the IT world.
Agreed. It's intense, hard intellectual work. And no matter how good a job one does, it's never "done". Someone always comes up with something they want changed, or added, or whatever.
My field is networking. "Router Guru", as it were. On-call SUCKS. Years of having to get up in the middle of the night, or spending weekends doing overnight migrations, really takes it out of a body. If I were any good at house painting, I'd prefer that too. At least when you leave a painting job and go home, you know you can get a good night's sleep.
Now I just do minor stuff like surf the net. This is why Linux is difficult for me but I do so loath Microsoft and Apple. If there really was a reasonable alternative which worked right out of the box I would be all over it. This is why I keep pulling for Linux to get it together.
When I set up a Windows system for someone, it takes me quite a while to get all drivers loaded, the 3rd party applications together, lock down the network (getting better, at least Microsoft has learned to turn some few things OFF by default), make sure their anti-virus isn't going to be the source of their problems, etc. Then I just make sure that FireFox sets itself as the default browser and there is no Internet Explorer icon on the desktop. That solves quite a number of problems all by itself.
Comparing the work of ensuring that Xwindows has the right screen size, that the network interface is correctly being detected, then doing the same basic work of getting the applications together, a Linux install is (for me) far less intensive to get to the same level of usability.
I understand perfectly well that familiarity, technical skill, simple preference, all make one or the other work better for a person, but the impression that it just doesn't work is a constant surprise to me.
There's a YouTube of people trying out a GNOME/Linux system after being told it's the next version of Windows. The reactions are all very positive. "Gee, that's easy!"
Keeping my fingers crossed that some bright developer out there will put together a functional Linux package at a reasonable price. Maybe they need some sort of easy to follow guide. Maybe I should run down to the bookstore and purchase a copy of Linux for Dummies.
If you're going to get a Dummies book, see if there is one for the distribution you want to try. RedHat, for instance, has their own installer that has some WONDERFUL options I've never needed to use.
Descriptions, sources and languages: Distrowatch.com: $0
Install disk: $0.10 to burn, $1.75 finished from LinuxCD.org
Linux.org HowTo guides: $0
LXer.com, LinuxQuestions.org, DebianPlanet or hundreds of other forums: $0
Heck, send me a personal message with a mailing address, I'll mail you a liveCD to see if your hardware is all correctly detected. Do you like GNOME or KDE or XFCE as a desktop?
So what's the price you call "reasonable"?