The market has rejected Linux desktops. Get over it.

For your isolated experience, I can post countless others with variety of hardware that has worked and worked well. You are correct about hardware issues but despite that, today's Linux kernel and Ubuntu and Fedora like distros support maximum hardware out of box, even older ones that are now doomed in Windows world. There are rare occasions that needs some work arounds but otherwise, Linux and specially distros like Ubuntu, Fedora and SuSe work like a champ on variety of hardware.

USB cams are one prime example of how resilient hardware manufacturers are to giving out their code to open source for drivers, some companies refuse to make drivers, they won't even work with open source developers to make drivers as well. So for USB cams, a crude method like USB sniffing has to be resorted to for making the driver. Apart from Logitech, no other webcam manufacturer has worked with Linux devs and therefore results with other brand cams are inconsistent to say the least. Canon is another company that takes a lackluster attitude toward open source, they have several printers, some of them high end photo ones lacking open source drivers, HP is far better in this regard, almost all their printers made till date work on Linux out of the box or via excellent HPLIP.

ATI is another company that till now hasn't come with one quality driver for Linux and yet, they won't let the Linux community work with them to develop one either. Maybe there are proprietary issues but even then, its most frustrating for all. I had to shelve an expensive ATI 4850 dual GPU and resort to a cheapo nvidia 8400 just to get some peace in Linux.

All in all its still quite good in hardware situation. My old super expensive and amazing sounding Yamaha sound card work like a charm in Linux, so does my ancient UMAX scanner and many other stuff.

 

Here you have struck the heart of the matter.

Power Users, techno-geeks and the inquisitive delve into the OS to understand the OS, to do things thier way, a better way, a different way. To learn, to play, to break, to fix. These users, they understand the benefits of command prompt/console. They understand knowing these things helps them advance.

Normal users, those who *nix wants as thier customer base, are not the same type. Efficiency is only ancillary. Text commands are undesired. Difficult installations of a new web cam means they have to learn, so instead they let the geek squad do it for them.

It is simple. Of the 100 people who use a computer, fictionally, 90% just want it to work so they can focus thier attention on other things, like nascar or football. 5% enjoy computers and learn how to run thier OS very well. 3% go beyond just knowing the OS, they begin to UNDERSTAND the OS and learn to manipulate it beyond what it is "set" to do and unlock what it is "possible" to do. And finally 2% are to the point of understanding what the limitation are, but are not satisified, so they hack and crack and whack on it to see if it can be made to do something differently.

Where does *nix fit in that scale? I would say in the 5% or lower, not in the 90%. It could break into the 90% range, but not until there is some very compelling reason to leave what one is familiar with (M$) for something new and different.

It is just how people work, and it is not limited to computers, but many facets of modern life.

Sul.

 

That seems about right, though maybe I'm wrong, where Linux presently sits, and I'm afraid it won't progress much beyond this unless steps are taken by the major players in the development community to reduce the development "clutter" and focus their efforts on a much more streamlined and efficient strategy, concentrating on the most important features and functionality to present Linux as an attractive and viable option to Windows. The distro count I still feel needs to be significantly reduced and of course as someone above alluded to, hardware vendors and even software developers need to get on board too.