addendum

Disclaimer: If you disagree with my previous rant, think I'm crazy or silly or blowing things out of proportion, that's absolutely fine. Everyone has different experiences, both good and bad, with computing, which shapes their opinions. If Linux has worked fine for anyone out there, more power to you. I'm glad to see it is working for someone. It just hasn't done as well for me. I really want it to though, and I will continue to try to find a distro and configuration that works for me. But it has caused me frustration, and I hope the Linux community finds a way to prevent the same frustration for less patient users, if they ever want to be a serious competitor in the home desktop market.