Jim Salter

I was referring to your comment regarding difficulties using Fedora - Fedora vs RHEL being the difference between "bleeding edge" and LTS.

EVERYTHING is much harder than it should be right now in IT, not just Linux, or Windows, or Apple - this is largely because computing, and particularly personal computing, is still a fledgling industry. (You might be initially inclined to scoff at this, but - obligatory car reference here - compare a Studebaker or Packard to a modern car. That's a BEST case age-of-industry comparison; it gets worse if you start from the first PERSONAL computers rather than the first industrial ones.)

"Linux is the better option" is a personal opinion, not a statement of fact, and it was certainly too broad - either Windows or Apple are better options for a lot of people and for a wide range of reasons.

I personally don't believe hardware support is really one of them, though; there's plenty of hardware fully supported by Linux and it isn't more expensive than unsupported hardware. When you get right down to it, very little hardware is *supported* by Microsoft, and even less (a bare pittance) by Apple - you're left at the mercies of whatever random vendor happened to put out the hardware, and the experience is frequently a long way from good, much less consistent.

As far as support goes... it's a false dichotomy to say there's little or no support for Linux; in fact you can purchase support contracts from Linux vendors just as you can purchase support from MS or Apple.

David:

<ul><li>In my opinion [Linux] is still much much harder than it should be.</li></ul>

I'll certainly agree with this one. EVERYTHING's still much harder than it needs to be, when it comes to IT. :)