To Linux or not to Linux

Linux over the past few years has really started making its way into the home desktop market, albeit not very sucessfully. You see the thing is Linux is hard to use, even for people experienced with computers (experienced with Windows anyway). Sure installation is simple enough, but getting support for uncommon drivers is an absolute nightmare.

Recently I tried to setup an Orinoco Wireless card on my Mandriva 10.1 (formerly know as MandrakeLinux) laptop and it fully rejected it. I went through the list of included drivers and none of them liked my card. Even when I looked under the linux section of my driver cd it only supported linux kernels 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4. Well I'm sorry for being too computer savvy as to be using a 2.6 kernel but news flash - its been out for quite a while. Heading over to their website it still wasn't available and googling it came up with instructions, but none I could follow.

So why is it that its so darn hard to do anything on? I think that's simple and can be summed up in one word: exposure. Windows is by far the most common (popular?) operating system around. Recent versions, such as XP, are actually quite good but tend to destabilise heavily after about a year without a good reformatting. It's this reason that has prompted me to set up a dual boot system with Mandriva Linux 10.1 and Windows XP Professional. This way I get the best of both worlds: reliability and security when I need to access the internet, and good multimedia capabilities when I just wanna play some games or listen to music (linux doesn't properly support my sound card).

Now you know it can be done. I'm a student, I don't do any programming, hard core binary, hex, l33t or other complex computer courses. I can use word, make a web page in notepad and install linux as a dual boot system. So why can't you? Just go download the community bittorrent cds from www.mandriva.com, ask a tech savvy friend for some help and Bobs your uncle, you got a working dual boot system!