Linux is Easier to install than Windows!

It is not secret that installing Linux on your machine is always more difficult than installing Windows. At least that's what I have believed up until yesterday when I bought my new PC. I have previously tried installing Linux in my machine years ago. I know that installing it is usually not smooth, sometimes it misses the monitor, other times it cannot figure out the modem. I remember the hell of trying to make Linux connect to the Internet via a dial up modem. One might argue that it was not fault of Linux, but that such internal modems have been designed for Microsoft Windows and blaming Microsoft for monopolizing the market. Yet the point was still valid, if you tried going online using those dial up modems you could be lucky after some hard work to succeed. I remember having to recompile the kernel, an older version of it, in order for the dial up modem to work.

When I bought my new computer, I did have in mind putting Linux on it, at least as one of the options. The old miseries of trying to install Linux and making it figure out all the hardware came to my mind. I hoped that I can ask those who have tried and select hardware that is Linux-friendly. Yet I did non of that. I just bought the hardware and prayed it would work smoothly with Linux.

It seems that my prayers have been answered. Yesterday I installed Novel's SUSE 10.1 distro of Linux on my new machine. In below an hour Linux was setup and all hardware configured except just for the wifi card. The following day I decided to scrap Linux and install Windows just to check if the wifi card was working or not. The wifi card had a CD with it which said it has software and drivers for Windows only. Not so nice of them, but that was the case. Anyway, I installed windows, but guess what. After installing Windows it did not detect by itself the sound card, the LAN card nor the video card! I had to use the CD that came with the motherboard to set them up. Linux had done that the previous day by itself and did so very smoothly! That was the time when I realized, and for the fist time, that installing Linux can be easier than installing Windows!