Sounds to me like there's something wrong with your display. Are you using really old hardware? Or really obscure hardware? Maybe you're using nVidia cards without proprietary drivers? TRUST me, there's no reason why text and icons should be so large, so if it feels like you've lost resolution, you probably have. I'm able to use my full 1680 by 1050 resolution. To make things even smaller, I adjusted my text pitch to only about 88 DPI. Works really well.

As for the rest of the interface… it is EASILY changed.

“Sound – I have yet to get a distro that has good sound support, we have ALSA, OSS, the newer ones which I forget, seems like a mini-battle for sound support.”

Actually, we just have ALSA… OSS is usually not even compiled into the kernel and OSS apps just get rerouted to ALSA. Sound usually works perfectly on Linux thanks to ALSA, but there is a new “kid” on the block that screws it all up called “Pulse Audio” that some distributions foolishly bundle by default. Ubuntu, SuSE, and Fedora do it. The others don't.

If you use those that install it by default your best bet is to remove it and get ALSA reconfigured. Believe me, ALSA works perfectly unless the distributor screws it up with PA.

“Until linux allows me to download and install a new program as easily as XP I doubt linux will make the mainstream, if I want to install a new application under linux, I download the equivalent of a zip file, extract it, look through for some kind of install instructions, create directories, change permissions and a bunch of messing about. With windoze you download to desktop and double click… if only linux was that easy.”

What? Searching through tools like Synaptic is harder than picking through hundreds of spyware, shareware, commercialware and manually resolving libraries like .NET is easier than the one-command wonders that are apt-get, yum, and pacman? Perhaps you were left totally unaware of Linux package managers? Because trust me, most your Linux distros have massive software repositories that do ALL of that for you, so it sounds like you completely forgot about them or just weren't aware of them to begin with.

Trust me, with package managers and respositories, most Linux distros beat the software installation practices of Windows hands down.

I've used linux from SuSE 6.4 and even in the latest distro's there are still many things that make me choose XP at boot time…

The default UI – Why oh why does every linux distro I've tried look like it was designed for children? huge icons, even bigger ugly text in menus, it almost feels as if I've dropped down a screen resolution or 2.

Sound – I have yet to get a distro that has good sound support, we have ALSA, OSS, the newer ones which I forget, seems like a mini-battle for sound support.

Until linux allows me to download and install a new program as easily as XP I doubt linux will make the mainstream, if I want to install a new application under linux, I download the equivalent of a zip file, extract it, look through for some kind of install instructions, create directories, change permissions and a bunch of messing about. With windoze you download to desktop and double click… if only linux was that easy.

Having said all that, I love linux and it's quirks (sound support apart). and use it regularly when not gaming :)

Rev

Sounds to me like there's something wrong with your display. Are you using really old hardware? Or really obscure hardware? Maybe you're using nVidia cards without proprietary drivers? TRUST me, there's no reason why text and icons should be so large, so if it feels like you've lost resolution, you probably have. I'm able to use my full 1680 by 1050 resolution. To make things even smaller, I adjusted my text pitch to only about 88 DPI. Works really well.

As for the rest of the interface… it is EASILY changed.

“Sound – I have yet to get a distro that has good sound support, we have ALSA, OSS, the newer ones which I forget, seems like a mini-battle for sound support.”

Actually, we just have ALSA… OSS is usually not even compiled into the kernel and OSS apps just get rerouted to ALSA. Sound usually works perfectly on Linux thanks to ALSA, but there is a new “kid” on the block that screws it all up called “Pulse Audio” that some distributions foolishly bundle by default. Ubuntu, SuSE, and Fedora do it. The others don't.

If you use those that install it by default your best bet is to remove it and get ALSA reconfigured. Believe me, ALSA works perfectly unless the distributor screws it up with PA.

“Until linux allows me to download and install a new program as easily as XP I doubt linux will make the mainstream, if I want to install a new application under linux, I download the equivalent of a zip file, extract it, look through for some kind of install instructions, create directories, change permissions and a bunch of messing about. With windoze you download to desktop and double click… if only linux was that easy.”

What? Searching through tools like Synaptic is harder than picking through hundreds of spyware, shareware, commercialware and manually resolving libraries like .NET is easier than the one-command wonders that are apt-get, yum, and pacman? Perhaps you were left totally unaware of Linux package managers? Because trust me, most your Linux distros have massive software repositories that do ALL of that for you, so it sounds like you completely forgot about them or just weren't aware of them to begin with.

Trust me, with package managers and respositories, most Linux distros beat the software installation practices of Windows hands down.

I've used linux from SuSE 6.4 and even in the latest distro's there are still many things that make me choose XP at boot time…

The default UI – Why oh why does every linux distro I've tried look like it was designed for children? huge icons, even bigger ugly text in menus, it almost feels as if I've dropped down a screen resolution or 2.

Sound – I have yet to get a distro that has good sound support, we have ALSA, OSS, the newer ones which I forget, seems like a mini-battle for sound support.

Until linux allows me to download and install a new program as easily as XP I doubt linux will make the mainstream, if I want to install a new application under linux, I download the equivalent of a zip file, extract it, look through for some kind of install instructions, create directories, change permissions and a bunch of messing about. With windoze you download to desktop and double click… if only linux was that easy.

Having said all that, I love linux and it's quirks (sound support apart). and use it regularly when not gaming :)

Rev

As for 200 standard actions? Hardly. I'd say maybe ten, which is a nice number: You install any drivers missing (Not bloody likely to BE missing in the first place.), codecs, and your favorite apps with one command, even in power distros like Arch this can all be done with one command. Uno. One single command.

My experience has always been Linux taking a fraction of the time Windows does to be ready for regular use. There will be exceptions, like Arch only having the core so you have to set EVERYTHING up, to Gentoo taking a weekend to install purely because it's a source distribution.

But then take Ubuntu, which has just about everything set up for you, or Mint, which even has all codecs set and ready to go, which even Windows doesn't have.

Won't ever happen, of course. Apple is too convinced that their computers are somehow worth 20%-70% more than PCs, despite Macs being nothing but PCs now with the same hardware and everything.

See, the reason I don't buy the “Macs are going to take over argument” is primarily that reason. By switching to Linux I don't spend ANYTHING. I keep my perfectly good hardware and I get to use a superior alternative to BOTH Windows and Mac OS X.

When switching to Macs, you are effectively doing more than just an operating system change, you're spending more money on entirely new hardware. That costs a lot of money, and I see that's primarily why Macs will never take a significant market share.

The issue is how to get them. While most ethernet I've used works flawlessly with Linux out of the box, what if there's a more “fringe” ethernet card only a userspace driver that doesn't come with your distro works with?

It PAYS to have a separate stream for drivers. My best option would be to just boot into Windows if it has ethernet working, look up my network interface, and find the driver for Linux.

This has not happened to me yet, though, since ALL my drivers are available if not already ready to use with my distribution. The only driver I have to explicitly download is my proprietary nVidia driver. Back when I used Ubuntu it was because they wanted to avoid actually putting anything proprietary (“non-free”) in the defalult desktop. I use Arch now. And the reason THAT isn't preinstalled and fully ready is for the same reason NO OTHER video drivers except for vesa are installed: In Arch, X and anything that uses it purely an extra, and the virtual consoles (The TTYs.) have no use for drivers more advanced than vesa.

Cross-platform releases are effectively the same way. New hardware? Wait for its actual Linux “release.”

I have noticed nVidia is *very* good at havign drivers ready for all supported platforms FAST though. Note how quickly their drivers are out, supported and set for each new Xorg release.

As for 200 standard actions? Hardly. I'd say maybe ten, which is a nice number: You install any drivers missing (Not bloody likely to BE missing in the first place.), codecs, and your favorite apps with one command, even in power distros like Arch this can all be done with one command. Uno. One single command.

My experience has always been Linux taking a fraction of the time Windows does to be ready for regular use. There will be exceptions, like Arch only having the core so you have to set EVERYTHING up, to Gentoo taking a weekend to install purely because it's a source distribution.

But then take Ubuntu, which has just about everything set up for you, or Mint, which even has all codecs set and ready to go, which even Windows doesn't have.