I'd do much worse than that to someone who writes in light gray over white. You owe me a couple of corneas.

I'm complaining about, after the standard evening of "new OS install", being mired in non-working stuff, staying up way too late, and still having no solution in sight. I'm not even getting to the App stage, which I'm sure is OK, and a centralized repo must be very nice. But I get stuck before that, at the OS stage.

My most recent issues have been:
- grub2 simply not working with my motherboard
- issues with my dual-gpu, dual-screen config. I never got it to play video reliably, even setting up 2 different-rez screens didn't really work.
- not being able to make head or tails of UpStart, which I think is what I was supposed to use to autostart programs.
- on one machine, having a nice friend recompile the kernel because that was somehow required to be able to access my server's SMB shares
- being unable to get the Start menu on the right side of my main screen (or I could, if I swapped out Unity, but then the menu was written sideways ?), nor to get RDP remoting to work (and VNC is very ugly & laggy)

What compounds the problems is the lack of documentation. I don't mind a few problems. I do mind not finding end-user documentation on how to do/fix things, and having to rely on other-version or other-distro docs in the hope they will apply to my case.

I end up feeling stuck up a creek and w/o a paddle; then realize I could have had Windows up and running a good while ago... and decide to stop my escalating commitment.

I never get to the app install stage, I'm talking about the OS install.
I spent about 10 hours researching how I could use UpStart to start deamons. And another 10 (spread over 3 weeks, the dev was trying to be helpful, but he seems to work at it only on weekends, which is fine, but still...) trying to get grub2 (the default bootloader) not to crash on boot. Then had to learn about free and non-free video drivers when I had the gall to have a dual-GPU, dual-monitor system *and* wanted to play videos...
I'm sure if I got though the OS install, Linux centralized app repo would be nice. Alas, before that I need the OS to boot, handle my screens, and let me autostart programs.

you missed the "extra" between "3" and "hours"

You're right in theory, but in practice, as I said in the OP, my Linux installs never succeed: fatal grub2 boot bug, inability to handle 2 screens *and* play video, inability to configure startup processes via Upstart for lack of doc... and that's overlooking creature comforts such as preferring to have my Start menu on the right-hand side of my main screen, using RDP instead of VNC because VNC is so ugly and laggy...
I'm sure all of that can be fixed (except the right-hand menu, best I could get was with... sideways text ?). I tried. And gave up when after a lot more hours than setting up the equivalent Windows config would have taken me, and still no sure-fire solution in sight.
You"re right that Linux saves some time at the app install stage. If the OS isn't right, I never get to that stage though.

My time has value, so if I have to spend 3 extra hours researching stuff on Linux that either Just Works or that I know how to do on Windows, Linux ends up more expensive. My last handful of attempts to switch to Linux ended taking a lot more than 3 hours, and I never got to a working config, or to a nicely working config, for a vareity of reasons (grub2 choking on AMD controllers, nice multiscreen handling and video support requiring different drivers, Upstart having no end-user doc,...).
Sorry but I don't see a need to spend hours and tear my hair out over software.

http://www.microsoft.com/en/mo...

(apart from Samsung's need for pressure points vs Google ?)

Tizen needs a unique selling point. Being "a Mobile OS that works" isn't one, that need has been met years ago, and nobody wants Yet Another Smartphone OS for the sake of it.Maybe there's a need at the extreme low-end, next to Microsoft's Asha line (not a resounding success), and a tad below Android One. Maybe Security could be a selling point (except it doesn't seem to be doing much for Blackberry). Maybe there's a fringe of teach-heads who deem Tizen more linux-y than Android and keep agitating about it for that reason (not a big market).
As it stands, the most unfulfilled need I see is the carriers' desire to take back control of our phones, and I'd rather that one stay unfulfilled.

The easiest way is probably to simply get a Cloud Print-ready printer, and a wifi router. Printer and Chromebook connect via wifi. No messing with card/sticks...
https://www.google.com/cloudpr...

he also won the Youtube, and the Internet !

Apple is not the only one guilty of this, but it's more egregious in their case because they trade a lot on their luxury image.

If companies cared about workers, they'd set up factories in countries were workers are actually protected by lax and practice. Apple especially have the profits to do so.

They don't, and they don't. Let's just stop pretending the resulting product is glamorous.

I'm not in until I can switch clients and servers. My current IMAP system lets me use pretty much any email provider and any email client I want.Over the years, I've used several of each of those, and figure I'll have to keep switching once in a while.
Inbox pretty much locks me in to gmail and Inbox (or dial it back to a regular email client). That doesn't work for me, no matter what its features. Amongs which local backup seems to be missing.

Mine is Intel + AMD. Apparently this changes *everything*. Plus last time around, Ubuntu wouldn't let me put the menu bar on the right-hand side of my main screen, and other desktop manager wouldn't rotate for vertical, and videos wouldn't play nice on either or both...

I'm sure it can be gotten to work, just not by an ignoramus who values his time such as myself; and I'm not sure the end result would be as polished as I want (sideways text when the task bar is on the side ??)

I'm geeky for a non-programmer, but, for example, rarely managed to get Linux to run on one of my PCs, and never managed to get it to run *satisfactorily* (with my dual monitors set up as I want them, smoothly playing video, running what I want at startup...). Stuff such as "recompiling the kernel (which someone had to do for me on my last attempt) stumps me.

I could contribute: translations, feedback on the UI ("could your mom understand *that* ?), testing... I've tried twice, and found the atmosphere utterly unfriendly. Mostly, especially in big projects, devs are out for peer recognition and hacker glory, not to take care of the thorn-in-your-side user for which things are either not working or not understandable. And that's too bad.

getting a lot of flack in high school for answering "I don't know" to a lot of stuff. And not just from teachers ^^