Mark, Let me be more specific. And let me continue using my mother as an example of the average computer illiterate user.
I am not saying Linux is bad... I am not saying this at all. I am saying that for the able, Linux is good and, for the average consumer, it is a huge gamble. Unless, of course, YOU are there to set it up for them.
I do appreciate the more specific information. However I stand behind my original statements. If you built this box yourself, _with the intention of installing Linux_, then you should have made sure the hardware you purchased would work. And if so, how well, etc. On any machine I have built myself, I have always made sure I stuck with what I knew would work as advertised if the machine wasn't mine, such as my mother's. Trust me, even I hate troubleshooting problems all the time. And yes I agree, it's true, Windows does support more stuff out of the box, but that in itself is not necessarily a good thing. I've seen MS drivers for hardware just fail completely and require hardware replacement or actually getting vendor drivers that work. The issue is the same regardless of the Operating System.
And just for fun, I had my mother do an FTP install of FC2 on her machine and walked her through it on the phone. And my mother is the least computer literate person I know. Granted I did walk her through it, but it goes to show, with known hardware, Fedora and all other distros work just fine.
-- Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Mark Haney Network, Database and Systems Administration DoctorDirectory.com Inc.
