Let's stay on topic and leave political remarks out of it.

Thanks.

Everything except your question about drivers can be answered positively. Drivers will depend on whether the manufacturer uses a standard protocol to support their device (ie: USB HID for mice and keyboards, USB audio, etc), has provided support to the Linux kernel or whether the community has figured out how to use it on their own. No guarantees there.. but it might be reassuring to know that lately, out of the box, Linux does support a LOT more hardware than Windows.

is there a way to check if my hardware is compatible with Linux, almost like a list i can pick and choose from?

i should just google it really

ubuntu half downloaded, cd ready for burning of iso image!


feckle it, im just guna install it!! muhahahaha i laugh in the face of danger!!!

ok, im prob going to spend all evening mucking about with my pc rather than spend "quality time" with my girlfriend! but heyho! just wait till my new tv and laptop come at the end of the month!

Generally speaking, I've had a lot better luck with hardware just working on Linux. Here's a partial list of what works for me on Linux out of the box and not on windows: All HP printers I've ever tried (worse in that windows would jam one of the printers after installing their massive driver), my sound card (an annoying hour to install on windows), scanner (never did work on Vista or 7), sata controller (was able to use driver cd for windows). Of course proprietary drivers on Ubuntu are nicely collected by the hardware drivers GUI, so you don't have to hunt down drivers on a website.

Mrebanza, this was an impressive story.

Do you know what the ending was?

Hm, I couldn't wait and decided to get Wubi right away...it's been 'stuck' on about 60% complete at the stage "modify_bootini" for a good 20-30 mins now. Hmm....

brought to my attention my post was deleted due to "political" incitement. also notified it was posted twice...however i only posted it once.


i guess the truth just has to stand out some times.

maybe this post will be deleted as well.

maybe ill be call some right-winged nut that collects branches?

would that be politcal? or mentioning of a bird? uh oh...that may be political too! yikes. i better be carefull. it would be almost as bad a distributing FREE copies of a Linux OS in a government run school.

Your crazy is showing. And this the -third- time you've made a post along these lines. It is at best offtopic, and at worst needlessly inflammatory.

I respect the ideas of the teacher in the first post. Maybe she exagerated, but maybe it's dangerous to let chidren know that there are things which are free. I am not a psychologist, but maybe it's true that they have to learn the value of maney when they are young and that life is hard and not easy.
Maybe the new generations don't know the meaning of words like work, effort, earn the money. They cannot expect that everithing is free. They cannot expect their parents to buy them iphone or n900! I bought it with the money I got working. Behind my n900 there are efforts!
That's why, even if I don't agree with the teacher about linux itself, I understand her educative project.

I have also always been a Windows user and only tried Linux recently, just before I got my N900 (I now have a dual boot with XP and Ubuntu). I appreciate the benefits of Linux but I still think that on balance Windows is an easier environment, maybe I'm just more used to it.

I had problems with drivers for dual screens, yes there was a work-around but it took me a while to get it figured out. I also found that trying to start programming on Linux was way more complicated than on Windows, compiling still seems to involve lots of X terminal use. Even after downloading supposedly full IDE programs I still ended up doing lots of googling and having to go through the terminal to get all of the dependencies in place and configured correctly. To be honest I don't expect to have to use terminal at all, that just reminds me of dos boxes in win98...

Still now with the development for the N900 its all scratchbox and command line compiling with switches to set and lots of stuff to remember. Yes I could take the time to learn it all but I'd rather have a nice gui based ide with a button to click to compile the project. Qt on Windows is a much nicer option in my opinion. Maybe I have missed something that makes it just as easy on Linux.

Although I have a dual boot I still find myself using Windows way more that Ubuntu. I'm not trying to knock Linux, like I say I can see that there are some benefits and completely agree with the whole "don't let MS rule your life" philosophy, however I still think Windows is easier.