Well honestly I am not trying to be an idiot and not trying to deter newbies from linux but all I have noticed is that regardless of what you try to do on linux something will always go wrong, the installs for certain hardware is virtualy impossible, in fact some is! This is not the case with Microcrap Windows. (Notice i am not very fond of windows, mostly because of the instability when compared to a stable linux system, and the stupid "legal" spying on you.) I have installed only one distrib with out flaws once with any modification (Suse 9.0) and soon found out that there was no 3d support with ATi video cards. I don't know what everyone else thinks of all this, so I would like to hear all your opinions.

Kind of contridicting myself on this one but, I am thinking of getting a laptop with linux support. Preferably with an nVidia vid card so I don't have to worry about all that ATi crap.

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Linux doesn't come with drivers from manufacturers, most are coded by volunteers so sometimes hardware doesn't work properly or is not supported at all. With MS, you get the drivers from the manufacturers so chances are that things may appear to work smoother on windows compared to Linux. Your best bet, is to look at hardware compatibility lists on your chosen distros website or various forums before attempting an installation.

As I am sure you are aware, and I mention it on to make the point, but the reason Microsoft's Windows has such great hardware has very little to do with Microsoft's programmers but has more to do with industry wide support of Microsoft. If ATI didn't make a driver for Windows, Windows users would dislike ATI as much as Linux users do. On ATI's defense, I don't believe they have seen a huge market demand to support Linux like nVidia has, From what I understand a lot of Hollywood Digital effects studios have been using PC's running Linux for quite a few years now and have had systems with nVidia cards because nVidia was willing to support Linux. That support quickly migrated down to their consumer level card when they saw the market was there. ATI is just starting to see that the market is here and frankly they have quite a task on their hands, first getting a good driver made for Linux and secondly getting the Linux community, a community that for the last few years have been saying nVidia or nothing, to recognize that their drivers work well with Linux.

This same thing applies to a large section of the computer industry, and things are starting to change, companies like Macromedia, and Adobe are starting to really watch the Linux movement to try to decide if and when it will be worth their time/money to support. Those of us that use and love Linux really do owe companies like IBM, Novell, HP, and even SCO credit for really bringing Linux to the attention of the non-IT people of the world. As more people/companies start to use Linux more companies will feel it is worth spending resources developing for Linux. I believe that Linux is right now on it way to the down hill side of one of the first battles an OS has to go through on its way to mass adoption, and that is to be recognized as a viable market. Linux is there on the server end of things and is rapidly racing toward the being there on the desktop end of things.

I believe that within the next few years we will see companies really start to add Linux as one of their supported OS's bot in the Hardware market and the software market. ATI's latest drivers by all reports and with a good deal of feedback from ID, seem to work really well, their next big hurdle will be making the install go a lot smoother. Hopefully they will take a cue from nVidia and dedicate a team to Linux development and this will happen sooner rather than later.


p.s. If you have not yet tried SuSE 9.2 you should give it a look, it has made great leaps in the realm of hardware support even since SuSE 9.1.