> after years of sub-standard drivers, laptops that don't turn on when you open them, cpu fans buzzing out of control, etc, etc, I'd rather spend my time doing things instead of screwing with things.
You left in '04, this nonsense ended in '06, '07. Partly because no one is really changing the hardware much, partly because we have first class support from Intel now.
If you cherry pick laptops these days, you can even surpass Mac OS or Windows. My MacBook Air from 2012 has longer battery life and stays cooler using a stock Linux kernel than with it's Mac counterpart.
The trick is that it has very well supported Intel components. As a matter of fact, Linus used this laptop for some time.
I run a MacBook Pro (Retina), and love OS X... but I completely agree. At some points, running Ubuntu/Debian on various machines I've used worked better OOTB with Linux that Windows itself did, with far less "find a random driver binary around the web somewhere, on a companies unmaintained FTP server, that probably no longer works with the latest changes in Windows" faffing around.
I hear this a lot, somewhat-technical people inserting 'macs are for dum people that don't know computers'. Truth is, a lot of mac users do know computers (obviously), and it's not that we can't mess with drivers and tweaking, it's that WE DONT WANT TO.
I moved away from Windows/Linux 6 years ago, not sure how things have changed, but I have no intention on going back to that.
Video drivers are still unacceptably bad on Linux. Docking, sleep etc fail for no reason understandable to even experienced users. I use Linux at work because it's still better than Windows but dream I would have a Mac.
You left in '04, this nonsense ended in '06, '07. Partly because no one is really changing the hardware much, partly because we have first class support from Intel now.