What I mean is, all the little tweaks that must be performed when you have conflicts. That seems to be the thing I see the most: "I had to blabedy-blah the such-n-such to get it to recognize [whatever]"
True, to a lesser extent all the time. I've had the same experience with MS-Win, chasing down drivers and making registry edits. I don't think any system can support everything just the way you want it without going through some effort.
I plug in my camera, it reads the card. I plug in my printer, it says Hello Printer! I haven't installed a driver in a long time. Everything reads, everything works.
That's how Linux works for me. I didn't install any drivers for the three cameras I plugged in this morning (vacation trip yesterday, lots of pictures) and pulled the pictures from. My printer worked first time, etc.
I did have to tell the printing subsystem what printer it was, and name it for the network printing service. That's not what I would call a difficult install.
This may seem lazy, but I don't even have to read the stuff carefully on the box if I buy hardware or software. I buy what I need, what I like best. I don't have to wonder if it'll work, or fuck with it to get it working. Even if I went beyond what I'm comfortable with, like buying a new hard drive or video card, I'm fairly sure I could just buy a good one and pop the fucker in. (I'd read some forums first, of course, in case there was some tricky trick)
And that's what I do, too. With pretty much the same level of "checking", that is reading some forums and doing a google-search in case there is some trick needed.
However, you do check to see if it's Win, Mac, any of numerous game consoles, hardware minimums, etc. I've always wondered why compatibility checking before buying is no big deal to the point of not mentioning it if it's between all those different systems, but add Linux to the mix and suddenly it's a huge effort.
The pre-packaged software for Linux that I've gotten has all "just worked" too. Sadly, most of the kids games that I have that worked just fine up through Win2K are now failing to run on XP, Vista and Win7. And not esoteric games either, Disney Interactive, Thomas the Tank Engine, things like that.
I agree that bleeding-edge hardware might not be supported, but let's also stipulate that many hardware makers don't take any time to do anything but write Windows drivers. A friend of mine tried to use Win2K back when WinXP was all the rage, and I don't think he was ever able to find all the drivers for his hardware to work 100% under Win2K. So he found himself in the same position as some Linux users, with hardware from OEMs that didn't care to support his OS of choice.
The reverse is also true, however. Once hardware is supported in Linux, it remains supported. While many Windows users upgrade the OS and find themselves with hardware that no longer works or is no longer fast enough to do what it did before, once something works under Linux it keeps on working as the kernel evolves.
I understand and respect the fact there is a hobbyist aspect to geeking, like Furb so eloquently stated.
That's what I see in Windows and Mac fan-boys, too. I think it's a geek thing, not a Linux thing. Of course there are Windows geeks, there are as many deep wells of tricks and tweaks in Windows as there are in Linux or any other OS.
OSs are complex systems.
Now, get ready for a laugh. In my little universe, I'm the resident geek. Parents, kids, friends, I'm the one they come to when their stuff is fucked up. I can usually get it goin', and if it wasn't for M$, I'd never be able to help them if everyone was running a different OS.
I should have read ahead and used this as my example of Windows geeks. I, also, spend almost all of my family/friends support time getting Windows working for them. I know enough to make things work pretty well, but I'd never call myself an expert.
The few I've converted to Linux don't ask for support. They just work.
They used to pull that shit at work, custom device bullshit which they'd have to configure, conflicts out the ass. Probly why I'm so resistant to stuff like that. I like simplicity, having been trapped and tortured out of workplace necessity, having to stick with it, and put up with crap. Calling out techs at 2am to fix their own mistakes. Fucking around in little dossy dialogue boxes with improperly trained support fucks over the phone who had no clue what they were actually doing. That shit is torture.
One of the benefits of free software is that code is vetted by more than one person on an ongoing basis. This makes for very stable code.
Microsoft is a godsend, as far as I'm concerned. If it wasn't for them, there'd be another widely utilized "industry standard" OS, I'm sure. And I'd use that.
Of course there would, for all the good reasons of common experience and common formats. All the reasons that Win95 took the world by storm. I used Win95, too.
My beef isn't with "free software", it's with fanatical devotion to clearly inferior technologies just because they're "free", and the violence inherent in copyleft licensing.
They're not inferior, AL, just because you don't perfer them.
And as for the violence inherent in copyleft, how about the fact that you're under dire violent threat for stealing your Win7?
Somehow copyright is violent if it is used to enforce a software license you don't like, but copyright is magically not violent when it is used to enforce a software license you publicly violate and urge others to violate on a program you like?