In <MPG.212e3e3a5b0746d598a592@news.individual.net> ,
Conor <conor.turton@gmail.com> wrote:

> Windows costs nothing when you buy a PC. Dell charge a £50 premium over
> a Windows box to put Ubuntu on.

That's not strictly true. The situation is that Linux is only available
on a very few models and with the base spec it is cheaper than the
Windows version. But if you want to upgrade it it will probably cost
more than a different model number with a similar spec to what you want
that's only available with Windows.

> When your computer goes tits up, you're more likely to find someone you
> know who can fix Windows than Linux.

But it's less likely to go tits up with Linux.

> When you buy hardware, you're pretty much guaranteed it'll "just work"
> when you use Windows whereas in Linux, it's a bit of a lottery
> especially when the Linux distro authors tell you a network card is
> fully supported in the current version of a ditro, even going as far to
> recommend it, only for you to find out that it was in an older version
> but not the current.

A lottery is something you have no control over. You do have control
over whether you buy hardware that's supported by Linux. Your main
bugbear seems to be with networking, especially wifi. A wired LAN
adaptor not working with Linux is quite rare and the situation you refer
to is a temporary bug, not a conscious decision by manufacturers to drop
support as is the common case with Windows drivers. Having to use an
older or patched Linux kernel for a while isn't as drastic as never
being able to run the version of Windows you want on it. And why doesn't
Windows XP include network drivers for one of the most common brand of
chips, nForce? You'd better have them handy on disc in case you need to
reinstall Windows, because you won't be able to download them until
they're already installed. As for wifi, if you're adding a card, one
supported by Linux costs and performs much the same as one that isn't,
and if you're buying a laptop you'd struggle to find a reason to get
something other than Intel, which is no problem with Linux.

Buying a Windows machine really is a lottery: whether it'll work
properly after you've tried to get rid of the factory-installed malware,
and your licence key is probably tied to a special version that can't be
reinstalled without said malware.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk