Re:It's the DRIVERS stupid... (Score 1)

BTW, I am a big fan of Linux. I use Ubuntu personally. It is interesting to read how words get interpreted. I want drivers to be open source. I do not want drivers to be proprietary. I was lamenting that Microsoft gets special treatment that keeps people hooked onto Windows. Real World Issue: While Broadcom and some other wireless vendors work with Windows, I recently had an opportunity to switch a neighbor from Windows to Ubuntu. Ultimately my neighbor said I had to go back to Windows because he couldn't make his particular wireless card work. He didn't want to fight with it and so Windows won that battle. Real World Issue: I built Ubuntu computers for my kids. The problem came when they wanted to do all the iTunes stuff they were used to doing with their iPods. I downloaded a couple of iTunes-compatible packages, but it wasn't iTunes, so in the end I had to go back to Windows. Real World Issue: I have a Brother Multifunction printer-scanner. I could get the printer to work with CUPS, but the scanner was a no-go under Ubuntu. I wish I could have just plugged in the multifunction and had it work, but that was not the case. So I don't use the scanner with Ubuntu. I totally love Ubuntu and love apps like VLC (but only grudgingly love things like OpenOffice and font handling in Linux) and with nVIDIA available for Linux feel even closer to being able to give up Microsoft altogether, but Linux has to step up to the plate, improve its integration with iPod, with scanners, with wireless cards, and all the other crap that has to be reverse engineered. Or else Joe Sixpack will continue to fall into the arms of Windows over and over again.