[calloc]

I've had to edit configurations files to get hardware working in the last month.

On a laptop we have here at the office I had to disable a certain driver from loading before a different driver or else the two would squabble over the wifi card and it would never show up.

The other thing that is more software related than hardware is that it is a MS Windows shop, all of the local domains are machine.domainname.local. This conflicts with MDNS as you could imagine, so the Linux machines are unable to access any of the resources on the machines named machine.domainname.local because MDNS would respond with a failure. Had to modify /etc/nsswitch.conf to fix that issue.

Linux is not without its failures. Saying it just works is certainly not the case. Whereas the Mac OS X machines I deploy come out of the box, get configured and are ready to go. Drivers work, software works, don't need to go googling for hours trying to figure out why ping won't resolve a machine.domainname.local address but dig is doing just fine.

[technomancy]

> Saying it just works is certainly not the case.

I said if you spend a little time scoping these kinds of things out up-front, it's very easy to get a machine on which it will work without issues. Obviously if you found a machine lying around the office and tried to load an OS on it, your chances of it working well are not going to be as good. You can't just load OS X on random hardware and expect it to work either.

[nailer]

After 10 years of Linux desktops, including purchasing a laptop with low-performance hardware just because it used entirely OSS drivers, I still has issues with basic things like multiple monitor support (it worked, but only when I disabled compositing, which makes redraw suck).

Sorry, from my personal experience that still isn't true, as much as I wish it were.

[brdrak]

I've been using dual monitor setups at home and at work for a few years now through several hardware builds, both desktops and laptops first using Ubuntu, then switching to Debian Testing for a rolling distribution about a year ago (after finally realizing I love the latest software, but don't want to spend time to upgrade/rebuild every 6 months to keep up with Ubuntu's release schedule or deal with the hassle of installing everything from source). I've been using Nvidia cards with the nvidia driver and dual monitor support has been fantastic for me.

[w0utert]

Well, I've been using Nvidia cards with the nvidia-driver and dual-monitor support as well, and it has been fantastic, until I upgraded my Ubuntu install, got Unity without asking for it, after which multi-monitor support was completely broken. My colleague who has 2 screens of a slightly different type (all are Lenovo ThinkVision) and is running Arch with Gnome 3, has been experiencing random multi-monitor glitches since day one. Sometimes for no apparent reason one of his displays doesn't get a signal after waking his laptop from sleep or hibernate, and the only way to resolve it is a reboot.

To make a long story short: we could exchange anecdotes all day about the state of 'Just Works' on Linux, but at the end of the day, I think no one with enough experience using various Linux distros and OS X, can honestly and sincerely say Linux is even close to OS X in that aspect.

Myself, I've been using Linux since Slackware 4 and have tried about 10 different distro's over time, alongside OS X for the last 5 years or so. Up to this day, I regularly run into problems that need fixing on Linux, particularly after upgrades, or when switching hardware. Whether it's Wifi cards, USB hardware, multi-monitor support, network configuration issues, software that stops working, system library problems: there's always something. OS X on 3 different machines, from OS X 10.4 through 10.7, I've only had one issue that required maintenance once, on a b0rked upgrade. It was pretty nasty, but fortunately OS X has Time Machine and target disk mode, so in no-time I was able to pull off any important data just to be sure, re-install the OS, restore my Time Machine backup, only to find out everything was back to normal, to the point I didn't even need the files I had to pull before the restore.

[technomancy]

I still haven't figured out how to get my phone to tether over USB on my friend's Mac. Works flawlessly on my Debian machine though. It's not like OS X is seamless.

[calloc]

You just claimed that Linux hadn't been that way in a while... I just provided a counter-point.