"Avoid the pain of Windows 8"
And say hello to the pain of not finding suitable drivers for half your devices.
And say hello to the pain of not finding suitable drivers for half your devices.
Nowadays, I've found that I can install Ubuntu on more laptops and desktops and get better driver support from the initial install than even Windows can in many cases.
With Windows, I've had to scrounge around for drivers and pray they're compatible with Windows 8 Professional 64bit Premium Plus Bonus edition on the same laptops.
No official Google Drive[0] support (but we do have Dropbox)
No official Garmin Connect[1] support
[0]: http://askubuntu.com/questions/161273/is-there-a-google-driv...
[1]: http://askubuntu.com/questions/505/how-can-i-use-my-garmin-d...
Apart from that I totally have to agree with you - even the proprietary graphic card drivers haven't given me any real problems for the last 2 years.
But, again, all of this isn't much of an issue anymore.
(Also Google loves Linux and particularly Ubuntu. I'm not sure why they are dragging their feet on Google Drive but it's not because they don't care)
In fact, the last time I ran into any issue wasn't on a desktop. It was Ubuntu server on a newly launched Cisco UCS blade nearly 2+ years ago. At the time, I'm not sure what if anything could recognize a VIC out of the box (Ubuntu does as of 11.04).
On my Ubuntu desktop, my video capture dongle is barely supported. It tries to upload the proprietary firmware every 60 seconds. (I created a blacklist in my module config to stop it)
NONE of these are the fault of Ubuntu or the Linux community. But I do understand the sentiment of Joe "just found out about Ubuntu from a geeky friend" Smith thinking it sucks cause he can't use his slick new AMD GPU without a bit (or a lot) of pain. To be fair, that pain exists on Windows too.
This sort of thing has been there around Linux for ever. I have reached a stage where I am just too bored to do the endless investigation and fixing any more. I will just use Windows, which contrary to all the complaints that people keep making, actually "just works"
Sure it is, it's a short, inciteful quip that required little effort and provided absolutely nothing in the way support yet produced a 30-odd comment tangent, a solid 20% of all commentary. Pretty much the definition of a reasonably successful troll.
>I will just use Windows, which contrary to all the complaints that people keep making, actually "just works".
Because one of your anecdotes is worth more than all of theirs.
Drivers for our HP printer for example? 200MB+ download for OS X and Windows. Works the moment you plug in the USB cable on Ubuntu and have been for years.
The current Linux kernel supports more devices than any single Windows release. Linux also supports more legacy devices than Windows Vista or Windows 7 and supports numerous architectures not supported at all by Windows.
In the case when there's no support for certain hardware, it's often the manufacturers who are at fault. They don't spend the resources to create the drivers or they make it difficult for the Linux community to make them.
In Windows 7 everything works perfectly out of the box. Two external monitors, no problem (Ubuntu only supports one). Wireless mouse, no problem.
I finally found out that there was an incorrect drive letter allocation (stuffed if I know why). We frigged around trying to allocate a drive letter through admin settings. We finally got it to work, but it wouldn't recognise the file system. We reformatted it and it worked fine.
Then there was the time the keyboard wouldn't work under Windows 7. It appeared and disappeared. It also worked under Ubuntu.
The point is that your mileage will vary depending on the hardware and operating system. I find Linux easier to fault find, whereas Windows is a disaster to fault find. My Windows faults normally end up with "just re-format it and start again".
In terms of recovering from faults Windows is much easier for me which isn't surprising since I've been using Windows for a long time. I find things like the Device Manager to be more user friendly than looking at kernel logs.
(I also have an external WD drive, no problems)
EDIT: By the way power management in Ubuntu on this laptop is all broken as well. It doesn't detect closing the lid, I have to go through some voodoo sequence to get it to sleep.
Having 'Device Manager' full of yellow question marks is _common_, even in Windows 7. http://i.imgur.com/zembU.jpg Anyone who thinks otherwise either has kept their Driver CDs, has the original installation still on the machine, or is just plain lucky
When it comes to laptops number one becomes the wireless card.
I usually avoid video issues by making sure the computer has an nvidia card or laptop has an nvidia chipset- learned my lesson there.