@Vaj2 :-
Ayup. I agree with m'colleague whole-heartedly.
This is of course one of the primary complaints new users often have with Linux. "Why does there have to be so MUCH 'choice'"?
Coming from a Windows background as so many do, there's ONE desktop. ONE file-manager. ONE way of setting things up. And everyone is "singing from the same hymn-sheet". Everything is developed, written, produced and tightly integrated with each other by the same organization.....Microsoft.
These are decisions no Windows user needs to make.....because it's ALL been taken care of FOR them. Linux, on the other hand, is a patchwork smorgasbord of different components, all of which have been developed by widely disparate groups/'teams' of people from all around the globe. Some of these components are even the work of single individuals.
As for the distros themselves, well; the descriptions given on the websites are going to mean next to nothing to beginners.....and with the best will in the world, there is only SO much information you can impart via the written word/pictures, even videos. At some point, you
have to give these things a 'test drive', and experience them for yourself......which is one enormous "plus point" in Linux's favour, given the ability of most distros to run totally in RAM, in what's called 'Live' mode from external media. And that lets you test out hardware compatibility, and see if your computer and the OS are going to "play nice" together......and more importantly, whether you could see
yourself being able to live with it for any length of time.
(You try doing THAT with Whinedoze...hmm?)
This one fact alone - along with the tireless work of the kernel development team (which is what ties so much of everything else together) - has helped drive Linux adoption levels steadily up and up.....because it's so
easy to "try it out", with NO 'commitment' of any sort (apart from your time, of course).
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As an aside, with regard to your comment about how many of the printers all seem to use the same driver? Epson are a prime example of this; despite having produced literally hundreds of different models (along with multiple "variations on a theme") over a nearly 50-year period, in all that time they've only supplied something like a dozen or so different 'core' printer drivers/filters/ppa files.....primarily because the same chipsets get re-used across so many of the model ranges.
And it's the chipset that is the very item the drivers 'talk to'.
I'd never pretend that any forum like ours is able to help with absolutely every possible question that can be asked regarding the many & varied aspects of Linux, However; the membership DO have a pretty broad range of experience between them, and can usually help those with queries to achieve satisfactory results in MOST scenarios.
They're a good bunch.
It goes without saying, I think, that for anything that's particularly specific to any given distro, then that distro's own community is
always going to be the best place to get the kind of help you'd be looking for.
Mike.
