clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> I think the observation of most Linux users that Linux "just works" is 
> clouded by them typically having at least some basic experience in 
> administering Unix machines.

  I think it depends a lot on the hardware setup you have. With the right
hardware you probably can just install OpenSUSE or a similar distro and
everything will just work, right out of the box.

  However, if you have even slightly more exotic hardware (and sometimes
even some quite common hardware) you might have to struggle for hours
before you will get the system fully working.

  For example, when I first installed Suse on my PC it had a HomePNA card
as its network card, and it just wouldn't work. It wouldn't work with
Ubuntu or Debian either.

  I had to struggle for hours with that problem, searching the net for info
and trying tons of things. In the end, it was enought to add *one* line in
one configuration file, and the network card started working like a charm.
I just can't understand why the installer couldn't to that itself, as it
was rather obvious in restrospect (but 100% non-obvious if you don't know
about it). I don't know if newer versions of OpenSUSE have fixed this.

  Likewise many ATI graphics cards work poorly, if at all, out of the box
when installing a Linux distro (any distro). For example both Ubuntu and
Debian were completely unable to even start X with my old ATI card. Suse
was able to start it, but without any kind of hardware acceleration and
with a lousy 60 Hz refresh rate. It wasn't until I ran ATI's proprietary
configuration tool (which has to be downloaded separately from AMD's
website) that I got hardware-accelerated windowing at 85 Hz. (There exists
a third-party driver for ATI cards which is able to use higher refresh
rates and hardware acceleration, but for some reason it was unable to
*configure* itself appropriately. I had to run ATI's configuration utility
before it started working.)

  Linux distros sometimes also have problems with sound cards and sound
chips, even popular ones (eg. I have had severe problems with a SoundBlaster
Live, even though one would think there would be full support for such a
classic sound card out-of-the-box in any distro in existence).

  And be careful if you try to install Linux on a *secondary* partition,
while keeping Windows on the primary one. While distro installers generally
won't cause any harm, they might get confused and configure Grub incorrectly
so that neither OS will load (I think I had that kind of problem with
Ubuntu). You'll have to manually fix the Grub settings so that they will
work properly.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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