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Well, there are a SERIOUS METRIC BUTT LOAD of Packages made up for Fedora and BSDs that are from Debian.

Guess you'll just have to remove them.

Sorry to hear your bias.

That's why YOU have problems with scanners, printers and external devices. Fedora itself does a pretty poor job of managing, discovering, utilising those devices, and OpenBSD ... well, it has to be worse than that, because OpenBSD has less drivers in place.

I'm an OpenBSD and Debian user myself, so I perfectly know the pains of both worlds [in terms of platforms: GNU/Linux and *BSD]. Unless you shop wisely, there's going to be the problems [but less than in the past]. The same goes to mainstream OSs, actually [like Windows]. Just don't tell me you have never experienced incompatible/buggy/badly supported hardware in Windows, 'cause I won't believe you [experienced it myself].

Last, but not least: stop whining [it's to all people] about the hardware support in GNU/Linux everytime some article shows up. I know some people will always find the problems in everything, but that's just how they minds work. Pretty unproductive. I'm sorry to say, but I find more positives, than negatives in GNU/Linux/BSD tandem and I'd never voluntarily use ANY of the Windows, nor Mac OSs.
That being said, it is uber-important that GNU/Linux/BSD doesn't get that much support when it comes to HW specs for drivers or the drivers itself. Blame vendors. But you know what? I'd rather have less, but high quality drivers, than the mass crap that works in a very funky way under other OSs. In GNU/Linux/BSD I just plug it and it works. In Windows I have to install it manually.

Aww, you beat me to it. I was going to say sure, avoid the pain of Windows 8 and experience a whole new level of pain you will never forget. Although, truth be told, Wi-Fi isn't really the main problem with Linux these days. Audio and video, as well as external device connectivity (scanners, etc) are where the real pains are. If your device works, great. If it doesn't work, you're fcuked. "

Yeah, but then again the same can be said for Windows XP and Vista these days. Windows drops support for hardware far quicker than Linux does. The problem is if Linux doesn't have support from the hardware manufacturer at all and no Linux developers have the device to engineer drivers themselves.

Which is absolutely irrelevant if the hardware doesn't work in Linux to begin with, isn't it?

Sorry?

What a load of rubbish. Hardware vendors don't release a driver for for new hardware on operating systems that are being phased out or EOL.

Windows doesn't drop any hardware support, My brother has an ATi Rage 128 running on his desktop with Windows 7, works fine.

That's not my experience. I find that getting older devices to work on newer versions of Windows is generally more problematic than getting new hardware running on XP/Vista. Even the latest cutting edge gadgets still almost always include drivers for XP.



Probably true, although it can be inconsistent, with things that work in one distribution not working in another. The main issue I find is that graphical configuration tools aren't updated. I used to be able to control a lot of my Thinkpad's features from the GUI, but those tools don't work in newer distributions and now they only be tweaked from config files.

How exactly does Windows XP "drop support" for hardware? Does Microsoft send out an automatic update that kills the driver whenever they feel a certain group of people shouldn't be using a particular device anymore? Sorry but I call BS on that one.

It's not that XP drops hardware support at all; rather the hardware manufacturers choose a point in time where they don't want to offer XP support for their next generation device, and therefore you never had support in the first place. Nothing dropped, just moving forward.

"But if you don't like it you can always fix it yourself!" ..

Only require me learning C/C++, some graphical library and a few other bits and pieces and playing around with obscure config settings that aren't documented anywhere.

But you can fix it yourself!

Edited 2012-10-19 08:29 UTC

Aww, you beat me to it. I was going to say sure, avoid the pain of Windows 8 and experience a whole new level of pain you will never forget. Although, truth be told, Wi-Fi isn't really the main problem with Linux these days. Audio and video, as well as external device connectivity (scanners, etc) are where the real pains are. If your device works, great. If it doesn't work, you're fcuked. "

All one has to do is find a machine for which the supplier is prepared to pre-install Linux. It will then be a machine which will run Linux.

For example, here is the ordering page for the machine on which I am typing this very message (running 64-bit Kubuntu 12.10):
http://www.pioneercomputers.com.au/products/configure.asp?c1=3&c2=1...

Scroll down the page to where you see the heading "Microsoft Windows", and ensure that no box under that heading is checked. Underneath that, under the next heading "Operating System Options", check ONLY the box "Ubuntu Linux OS Pre-loaded".

This is what I did. It saved me $117 over the recommended OS, which was "Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (32/64 Bit) [+$117]". I also ensured that no other software, such as Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Business Edition [+$253], was selected, as that would be software for the recommended OS only.

All up I got the machine for the base price of $449, and I saved $370 by selecting no Microsoft software or OS, yet I ended up with a (Linux desktop) system every bit as capable, and I was assured that it was guaranteed to be able to run Linux flawlessly.

BTW, have you seen Kubuntu 12.10? Fantastic OS, it works flawlessly on my machine (as you would expect), it is as fast as blazes, and it has a vast array of excellent desktop software available at zero cost installable in next-to-no-time at the click of a button. External device connectivity (scanners, printers etc) is also flawless.

If your time is worth anything, go for such a Kubuntu option. You will save heaps of time and effort. You also get superb value for money. The total system (hardware + software) is half that of a Windows 7 + recommended desktop software option on the exact same hardware. This is easily the best way I know of to "avoid the pain of Windows 8 and experience a whole new level of pain".

Edited 2012-10-19 12:52 UTC

That's kind of illogical as most of the same software is actually also available for Windows. If you're happy running GIMP, LibreOffice, Firefox etc. etc. on Linux there is no reason why you couldn't use those on Windows, too. As such you should compare the prices with that in mind, not compare Linux+LibreOffice+GIMP+etc to Windows+Office+PhotoShop+etc -- you should compare Linux+LibreOffice+GIMP+etc to Windows+LibreOffice+GIMP+etc which quite really doesn't match your "half of that of a Windows 7" and so on.