That "missing" wifi driver is not there because it's proprietary. It doesn't make sense to blame a free operating system for faulty hardware. In any case, I know that in Ubuntu, the user is informed of nonfree drivers being available and it's trivial to install the drivers from that point.

This mindset is toxic because it does not adequately think about the end user. I mean--drivers? What's a driver? Why do I, a user, care that it's difficult for Ubuntu to do something that Windows does? It doesn't work, that's all I care about.

It's not Ubuntu that can't do it. It's the hardware manufacturer that refuses to do it.

I personally choose to vote with my feet. I only buy computer hardware/software that works with Linux. If someone refuses to support Linux, they don't get my business.

If everyone does this, eventually everyone will support Linux or go out of business.

There isn't anything that Linux can't technically do. It's simply a matter of who is willing to support Linux.

Thanks for the explanation, but I've written (very simple) Linux device drivers before, I am aware. :) But my point was that you are making a distinction that simply does not matter to the end users that are under discussion. That a hardware manufacturer doesn't produce drivers for Linux doesn't change that, to a user, "Windows can do this and Linux can't."

It's great that you buy stuff that works with Linux. Linux's problem for normal people is that it doesn't work with everything. Windows does work with everything that a normal person is likely to run into and OS X comes pretty close to the same.

When my wife sees that her iPhone is a pain to connect to the computer, to her car, can't mirror to our TV, etc..., yet her Android tablet does perfectly, she doesn't blame the computer, car and TV...

For Windows, at best everything is working except for graphics. Even then though, the drivers are usually not the same one's the OEM used, and you have to go Googling to find the correct stuff and current versions.

I don't disagree with you though, installing an OS is not something a normal user should be doing, even if the install dead easy. But as far as installing goes, I've always found Ubuntu and similar Linux's to be miles ahead of Windows at this point when considering ease of install and usability after install.

I doubt my parents would be able to install a fresh copy of either OS without my help.

You can have exactly the same problems with drivers. Especially on laptops which came with one type of Windows, while you are trying to installer some newer one. Most non technical people can't install Windows themselves anyway. So installation has zero advantage against Linux, especially these days when Linux installation is easy. The main advantage of Windows is like before - it comes preinstalled in the vast majority of cases.

Actually, in the majority of cases your OEM or your IT department does this. It's not uncommon to have missing drivers when doing a clean install from the stock image on the retail DVD.

(Disclaimer: I have some history with this as I used to work in the team that created Windows Setup.)

It's actually been quite a while since I've had to do the driver hunt for Linux, but it's been routine with windows (unless you use the default oem install, obviously).

LOL! I recent had to reinstall Windows 7 on a machine that was shipped with it. The manufacturers recovery disk didn't have the drivers for system. It took a couple of hours jumping through hoops to get the system up, then a couple of more hours to wait for Windows Update.

I had Linux Mint installed in less than one third the time the time with some minor issues with the wireless configuration.