[spurgu]

"I think part of the problem can be solved if there was some nice hardware that came with Linux preinstalled, with all the driver configuration work already done for you."

Something to think about: How many percent of the non-tech people you know have installed a fresh copy of Windows by themselves? It's always the tech savvy family member who does it

[tikhonj]

And installing a copy of Mac OS X is not only questionably legal but also significantly more difficult than installing Linux :).

In my experience, ~90% of all the problems I've had with Linux are at install time--missing drivers, complicated partitioning...etc. Once I have the system running, I've actually had less problems with Linux than either Windows or OS X.