The Move to Linux - Netbook Remix

I've been running Pardus on my netbook for the last two months alongside VectorLinux and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. n Pardus has the simplest installer I've seen yet. OK, it's not exactly flexible but it installed a vanilla Pardus system with minimal user interaction. After a reboot a wizard called Kaptan came up and walked me through the rest of the system configuration. It really was simple enough so that anyone with even half a brain should succeed.

Why am I impressed with Pardus? Everything, and I do mean everything on my netbook worked out of the virtual box. Webcam, wireless, wired networking, video, sound, you name it... It just worked. No other distro has done that on my Sylvania netbook.

Easy? It couldn't be easier.

Every Linux I've tried recently has been easy to install. I suspect our friend has been going out of his way to find difficult installs.

@tracyanne: I suspect if you tried Slackware or Arch Linux you'd still find something a bit more challenging, at last for someone who isn't Linux savvy. By offering more flexibility they add a bit of complexity. I'd even include Red Hat/CentOS in that category to a lesser degree,

> I suspect if you tried Slackware or Arch Linux you'd still find something a bit more challenging,...

Well, Slackware installation is drop dead easy, assuming you know how to partition a disk. Slackware configuration is another matter. That's nitpicking though, since most people seem to consider them to be one process.

But even Slackware just works for the majority of systems. There will always be hardware issues, but they're actually getting hard to find.

> There will always be hardware issues, but they're actually getting hard to find.

I agree, save for bleeding edge where reverse engineering has not been possible yet.

What will break the logjam of hardware makers to either provide Linux drivers up front, or at least document sufficiently well for real development to occur?

Maybe only after Microsoft has fallen, or is seen to be falling.

> What will break the logjam of hardware makers to either provide Linux drivers up front, or at least document sufficiently well for real development to occur?

From what I've seen, and a healthy amount of guesstimation, a 10% market share should do it for most manufacturers. A 20% market share should do it for almost everyone. Of course, if current trends are any inidcation, that will actually need to be 50% market share before anyone will admit to it being 10%.

Most hardware does work with Linux, and in fact much better than with Windows. Most printers are just plug and play on Linux. Wireless is moving in that direction, improving a great deal over the last few years. There's not much plug and play with Windows.

The problem for the last few pieces of hardware is the question of what percentage of users run Linux. If you really need your hardware, and have stuck with Windows this long, the hardware company probably isn't worried about you leaving now. Video card manufacturers, wireless card providers, etc. don't have that luxury because there is too much competition.

Similarly, 0% of Photoshop users run Linux, because there's no Linux version, allowing Adobe to gleefully proclaim that there is no demand for a Linux port.