I really could care less if someone chooses to use a Mac, a PC running XP (or Vista), or whatever. What drives me nuts though is the people who try a distro for all of five seconds, then say 'it's not there yet', because of some minor problem; perhaps it's not something they want to use--no problem with that--but when they go on to generalize about all of the Linux distros, and then stretch their own single experience to cover that of mr. average or Joe Sixpack, then I just can't keep my yap shut.
I really should stay away from Digg. Or they should change the name of it to flamewar-central dot com or some such; never have I seen bandied about such lack of awareness of what Linux is capable of, with so much smugness.
I mean, really, why not just live and let live? Why the need to spread the FUD? Either it's 'Linux doesn't have the device drivers', or 'I couldn't get something to work out of the box and that's the fault of the particular distro I tried', 'you need to do everything in the command line', 'game x isn't supported', or my favorite, 'No support for Photoshop'.
First of all, Linux is not Windows. If you haven't seen the linked article, then it is well worth a read. If someone is considering switching to Linux, it's because they aren't entirely happy with what they have; by no means does that include everyone.
So when someone asks me 'what distro should I use', before I answer them I always want to know why they are thinking of switching. Linux is certainly not for everyone, particularly if you aren't really interested in new computing experiences; if you think asking a question in a web forum or using Google is troublesome then the same is true as well.
There are some who do find using Google or asking questions in a web forum to be a hassle still doing it nonetheless; and you can almost sense a computer user on the other end of the posted question (on a web forum) sitting there with clenched teeth, thinking to him or herself 'where's my answer, dammit!'. You see this on Ubuntuforums all the time; a new user will post a really vague description of their problem, and then spam the board within a space of an hour or so, bumping their unanswered question, or getting nervy when asked to clarify the problem.
And when the volunteer posters lose patience with the new user (not uncommon on other forums, though Ubuntuforums it's unlikely), then they go off in a huff, often leaving a nasty post as their goodbye.
OK, it wasn't what you expected; just move on and keep on using what you are accustomed to--nothing wrong with that. Too much of a challenge or more effort than you were willing to exert; that happens all the time with many such endeavors in one's life. But to spread disinformation about one's experience to cover up the fact that it wasn't for you is downright ludicrous.
While it's true that certain Linux distributions don't have every single device driver on the planet for every single device, the Linux kernel provides more out of the box than any other system. Certain Linux distributions ship with a more stable and tested kernel (Debian Etch being the most notable), while others are transitioning between releases (OpenSuse comes to mind), and others still try to pack every freakin' thing into their distributions, good examples being SabayonLinux, DreamLinux, LinuxMint, PCLinuxOS, and Sidux. Ubuntu and its variants (Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu) fall somewhere in the middle.
If the device driver you need for that one particular device is not in the Linux kernel, no matter how cutting edge, then it's not the fault of developers, but that of the corporations that don't want to play nice with the open source community; ATI and Adobe are the prime culprits in this kind of behavior.
You can do most everything in the command line, but it's becoming increasingly the case that most apps are provided with a nice graphical front end; while the command line may sound really scary, it's actually not so, and it's way more powerful and tons faster than launching the gui, though the former is simply a matter of preference. Don't like (in Debian-based distros) to use the apt-get command in the command line? Then launch the gui front end Synaptic Package Manager and do it that way.
Yes, the games you love on your platform of choice will likely fare poorly on a Linux distribution; if all you care about is gaming, then it's hardly likely that you will want to leave your OS of choice anyway. That in no way negates the many other strengths of Linux, however.
And though people report that they do have Photoshop running in emulation under Linux, this one is the lamest; how many graphic artists are there that are actually using paid for (i.e., not 'pirated') versions of it? I suspect that it's more of a casual user type thing, especially as it comes up so often. And I would also surmise that few of those who offer this as evidence of 'Linux not there yet' are not among those who shelled out the mucho dinero for a legit copy of it.
And lastly, how does a single individual's limited negative experience translate to that of all the average users on the planet? The main limitation to those average users is information, and not the so-called huge learning curve often associated with Linux. Yes, if you are building Linux from Scratch, or using Gentoo or Slackware as a first distro, then this will likely be the case, but honestly, if you are talking about the top ten or so distros on distrowatch, then it's simply false. And one anecdote doesn't represent the broad masses.
I use Linux. I want to install it on practically everything I own. I got mine. You got yours. What's the problem? Stop with the lies already.
Beyond Linux from Scratch, running Beryl:
here: for some reason can't show the youtube video properly. Will try to fix.