Linked by Michael Fraser on Sat 29th Mar 2003 03:21 UTC
When I first started playing with Linux (RedHat Distribution -- Version 5.2 Deluxe), it was a present from a father's friend in Boston. As I recall that is the only version of RedHat I ever got to work correctly without any major problems (like "Kernel Segmentation Error" or something to that effect).
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If all the computers hardware is supported out the box and you never upgrade hardware then there's no problem. But even if it was possible to include drivers for every existing device with a distribution, users upgrading with new hardware would still have to manually install drivers in Linux.
Installing and configuring drivers may be trivial to experienced Linux users, but it's far more involved and complex in Linux. In Windows even users who know almost nothing about the hardware they're installing can insert the CD that came with the device and follow on screen prompts. Using the CLI and editing config files requires far more knowledge of both the hardware and the OS.
I'm sure there are good reasons for the complexity of this in Linux, but surely there's a way of making it easy for the user? NeXTSTEP was UNIX based, yet installing drivers was simple with it's graphical Configure.app, isn't something similar possible in Linux?