[pyre]

I tend to agree with Paul_S that while GNOME would be better served focusing on the content production side of things, Linux on the Desktop can still be viable. The issue is that you need someone to throw money at it (e.g. Ubuntu/Canonical) and hire non-developer designers, maybe commission usability studies, etc.

Maybe once enough people are actually on Linux, non-developers with professional skill sets will volunteer their time to Open Source projects, and we won't need to necessarily use money to gain access to their skills. For now, most of them are on Windows of MacOS, and are only going to devote time to their current ecosystem, if at all.

[jshen]

There is only one thing stopping me from using Linux, hassle free hardware support. I want sleep/wake, video card, etc, etc, etc to simply work. And please don't pretend this is true already.

[rrmm]

All that stuff works, if you choose your hardware carefully. I've used both apple laptops and now netbooks with linux with great success.

The proliferation of hardware using PVR based video chips has been a pain though.

No denying hardware support is a pain.

[tikhonj]

I've found that, with my last two laptops anyhow, most of the hardware problems only came up at install time. After I got the right packages (drivers and stuff), things worked well enough. Getting that set up was tricky, sure, but after it was configured correctly it worked.

So the simplest solution is not to install Linux yourself! You can buy a computer that has Linux on it already. I guess you could also get a friend to install it for you :P. The advantage with getting preinstalled Linux is that not only won't you have to figure everything out yourself, but you also will have hardware chosen explicitly for Linux.

[natrius]

It was trivial for me to choose a computer that would work well with Ubuntu out of the box.

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/

[subsection1h]

Have you tried Ubuntu Certified hardware and encountered problems? Everything works fine on my Ubuntu Certified hardware: a ThinkPad and an OptiPlex desktop that both have Intel GPUs.

[jshen]

I had an optiplex desktop that did not work well. It was a giant pain in the ass to get video working properly, and it would often not wake from sleep.

[pyre]

OptiPlex covers a large number of models and hardware, just like "ThinkPad" does. I'd imagine that the Ubuntu Certified Hardware list specifies models that are known to work well.

[jshen]

1) It was the computer my employer gave me, I didn't have much choice (well, I could have requested a mac).

2) I don't want to spend $500 to find out if certified really means everything works.