Bub McZombieFace wrote:You said it best with "Many people don't mind because they don't want to spend any time with configuration or thinking about their computer." I am hands on with every thing. I really never understood how people are so comfortable with ignorance. As for my PC, I love trying out OS's. I have had many distro's on my box, but it's hard to find a favorite with so many options. I love when a forum that has so many great communicating, knowledgeable people. Thank you very much for all the info.
You're welcome Bub
Also, I didn't mean to imply that you were the sort of person who avoids configuration, or
that there is anything wrong with not wanting to troubleshoot problems like driver issues.
I agree that this can be a minus for many people.
Many people are not tinkerers and would prefer to spend their time on important problems
like writing great software, or spend their time with their families or other hobbies.
For example, XKCD's author who is a cult geek figure today
thinks that editing his xorg.conf file (graphical desktop configuration file--perhaps the answer to your ATI problem) is inversely related to happiness:
http://www.explainxkcd.com/2011/10/12/x11/
So-called creative people as well as business people, (non-computer) professionals and any number of other computer users, prefer to spend their time doing what they love and not so much time thinking about their computer and I think that's fine. For the most part people just want something that works and won't give them troubles. It makes no difference to them what the operating system is as long as they can accomplish what they need to without too much fuss. I think for them, not having any problems is a good thing in that they will then enjoy their computers more and maybe someday want to learn more about them.
However, thinkpads have a reputation for nearly 100% hardware support in linux,
which is why so many linux users gravitate towards them and why I was briefly considering
acquiring one last week. I would be very surprised if your driver issue has not been solved
elsewhere due to the fact that you have a thinkpad and so many other linux users have
probably encountered the same issue and found the solution.
As to ignorance, we all have it and all have various amounts of toleration of it.
Even the linux kernel contains millions of lines of code (11.4 million at last count).
No one person can read or understand all of it completely.
The main modern book describing only the API to the kernel system calls
is 1500 pages of hard but rewarding reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Programming ... 1593272200
The source code for the kernel plus userland is conservatively a few gigabytes compressed.
No one person will read much less study all of it in his or her lifetime. In my opinion,
the last time unix was comprehensible as a whole was the so-called 7th Edition of Unix from 1979
where the kernel code was only about 100 pages long and could be studied along with the userland, manuals, whitepapers, and various other writings of the creators like the famous K&R C book.
To make the situation more complicated, linux is in constant flux trying new approaches,
solving the same problem in different ways, and creating numerous alternative applications.
BSD is much more stable in its code base and it's maintainers are much more conservative
in what they allow to be committed with the extreme case being OpenBSD.
All modern unixes are somewhat humbling due to their complexity
and the complexity of the mostly GNU userland but Linux especially so.
Which is just to say that linux is extremely powerful (and there are competitive advantages to having this power) but also somewhat harder to learn, and something that will never be completely
mastered in all its aspects. Since there are so many additional worthy things to know about,
even among computer hobbyists (for example the ardunio is very fun!), I think that the greatest appeal of linux must be to the systems hacker hobbyist.
I say this not to discourage you or anyone else--far from it--but just to let you know the
type of beast linux is. It's a wild, sprawling, free-wheeling, high-performance, stable, infinitely tweakable and adaptable, somewhat innovative fork of unix under the aegis of benevolent dictators with inputs from big business, scientists, software companies free software hackers, governments, IT admins, and academia from every part of the world.
It's not the best operating system or even the best one that anyone has
thought of (for example the LISP systems of the 1980s were better but died the early
painful death of all proprietary operating systems) and perhaps it's not as well suited to some people's tastes as BSD or Apple's version of it, but many people think it's good enough to spend their time at, and I think many people can enjoy using it. Once one tastes some of the power it gives versus operating systems like windows, it becomes almost impossible to ever run windows seriously again.
Best of luck!
