lol... even before Windows Plug'n'Play i've never had a problem setting up hardware
1. plug in what you wanna use...
2. use the Driver CD ...
3. poof it works
4. if that didn't do it, you delete all registries to the old driver then reboot, and repeat steps 1-3
the only thing i ever had trouble with was setting up a CDROM back when the only IDE slot for them was on the SoundBlaster 16 card, 386's tended not to want to regonise them.
personally i still see Linux/Unix as a more professional platform, there for if you need absolute speed and inch perfect memory control - oftenly for larger CGr projects in my case which can take upto 1Gb Ram just to render. But even then alot of the time i'll still just use WindowsXP or .Net just seems alot less hassel to be honest.
So many of the Linux you have to setup every single little detail, you have to setup the mode you wanna run it in, then the UI/Desktop you want to use, how it'll react, standard drivers, OpenGL&Other APi's ... just so much fart arsing around and for what?
about 5% extra speed overall & slightly better memory access, i mean peeps go on about how Windows has such bad memory setup and yet 9/10 they're still using Win98 which is like 8years old ...
XP might not have perfect memory management, but it is certainly the easiest to work around and unlike Unix based OS's you can be sure that a patch is never far away.
thats why i doubt i'll ever give up windows, it is very simple to operate i can just get on with what i want, it does what you tell it without asking for updates as it'll get them itself, the support is second to none.
sure it isn't the most perfect OS, but it is sickening to see so much Windows bashing all the time from people who arne't even using the latest version bitching they'd go to Linux if it weren't for DirectX.
Most of the time these are the same people who don't use VisualC++ for some reason which generally only makes sense to them and only programs in OpenGL instead of DirectX on principal although OGL vs Dx would be a simple Graphics battle, which to be honest Dx9 beats Ogl2 hands down in functions, speed & support but add to that Dx is more than just pure graphics.
the saying "cutting of your own nose despite your face" tends to always pop to mind. its always the younger generation too ... you notice most of the older users either use Windows exclusively else they use Windows + Unix, though still thier prefer to work majoritively within Windows ... and they're not the ones who constantly bitch about Windows setup.
[rant over]
sorry but alot of this is really getting on my tits lately, i've had 4 newbies ask me "how do i setup Linux" ... these are people that really should not be touching the OS in the first place, and as they're all from DB i have a feeling these chats about Linux over Windows are starting to give impressionable minds ideas which quite frankly are a waste of time - and i'm not sure if to help them out and let them find out for themselves, or just leave to to keep trying to figure out howto install them.
