restore from disk image :-)

or avoid multiboot...anything useful here?
https://encrypted.google.com/search?...HEL+repository
https://encrypted.google.com/search?...age+repository then you posted how you did it? :-)
yes, rtfm is rough. context sensitive help is much better. although back in the days of context sensitive text-only help, pcs were more limited.
but these don't look close enough:
https://encrypted.google.com/search?...HEL+repositorytry supergrub? My multiboot went bad last year when tried upgrade to grub2. supergrub "hybrid" could start the oses, but i didn't work out how to get grub2 install correctly. when i get back to that, I'll probably try installing over the mess that's there.

i think one of html 5's claimed advantages is dropping the 3rd party video format+plugin. html5 performance becomes complete responsibility (and opportunity) of browser coders. So, I expect webvideo player of less popular oses will not lag the same webvideo player on windows.

Eventually, we have arrived to the point where the number one problem of GNU/Linux is revealed.

HARDWARE SUPPORT.

99% of the times someone complains because Linux is too hard, it is because he cannot use a particular hardware device easily, plain and simple. So, they say "it is difficult to learn" because they are trying to make a wifi card work even when it is known that it does not work under GNU/Linux. Great.

Mr. restalis, congratulations, you have not been so stubborn to try the impossible!

By the way, after some thinking, I have reached the following conclussion: there are two main reasonable reasons to use something other than Linux/BSD.

--One: Hardware support. If your hardware does work only with Windows, you can only use Windows or switch hardware. I know what many are going to choose here. Still, if the problem is a cheap piece of hardware (a winmodem or a USB wifi card), then you can analyze the trade off and make an inteligent election.

--Two: Software availibility. If you need the computer for a particular task, and GNU/Linux has no software for that task, then GNU/Linux is not your system. I know that games and many professional apps are not availible for GNU/Linux, but I have a PlayStation and you can dual-boot. Dual-booting and virtual emulation are great tools, as they allow you to use the proper tool for each job.

Most other reasons you will hear are just rubish shouted by fain-hearted people that is afraid of docs and of passing "apt-get install" to the command line. Efficency and cost reduction (and the fact that you can forget about piracy) overcome most other critics you will face.

I dare to go beyond: even that faint-hearted people can benefit of GNU/LInux if it is another one who administrates their computer. Your grandma can benefit of Gentoo's hight speed without having to face a single compilation problem, if the one that administrates the family's computer is you.

After all, someone had to administrate your grandma's computer anyway, so why are you going to use an operating system you wouldn't use for yourself?

The wierd thing is, its been over a year since I had a piece of hardware that didn't work on Ubuntu. However I did get stuck in an install loop with a Windows driver just the other day that required manual removal of DLL files and registry entries and hacking of .ini files to make it work.

Considering the almost universal buy in of hardware manufacturers Windows also runs into problems.

The primary issue with Linux and hardware is that people who have always bought PC's with windows PRE-INSTALLED attempt to install Linux, find it difficult and think Linux is crap. You've got to ask how often they have tried to install Windows on to a machine, and how difficult they would have found it.

And I don't mean restoring from an image disc thats tailored to your hardware.

You are right, especially on laptops, and there it is mostly the wireless card or (yet) unsupported technology, like NVidia's Optimus. On almost all desktops I ran Linux on in the last time (ok, I hadn't the possibility to run the newest high performance hardware) Linux ran out of the box, besides the occasional install of a graphics driver on newer cards. But nothing really difficult or even impossible. So I would assume that this is significantly better than maybe 5 years before.

I think that it would be very easy, both to give Linux unwarranted praise, and to give Microsoft Windows unwarranted damnation. Neither one of which would be deserved.

Linux is an open-source operating system which, precisely because it is open-source, "can run on anything and everything." The software engineering world has a huge demand for that, and Linux delivers.

Apple's OS/X (and I/OS) systems have abundantly proven that "Unix can be tamed," making a very palatable system for people who (don't have to) know or care that "my computer / phone / music-box / nifty pad runs Unix," while reaping its benefits.

Even so ... to dismiss what Microsoft has done would be entirely wrong, even though it is admittedly very fun to do.

In some ways, I think that the most fun thing about Linux is: "Gee, I didn't know Linux ran my thermostat ..." Linux is so damned useful, it pops up in lots of places where "there's not a penguin in sight."