A lot of Linux guys seems to fall in that category. Present party excluded cause they also have a lot for the more artistic and experimental OS's. 
Said Linux distros are trying to hard to appeal to the Windows crowd. If you want to appeal to the Windows crowd you need to write an OS that not only has a Start Bar, but also invades your privacy, must remind you often that it is busy thinking, and...
...well just don't work quite as stable as a Linux environment.
Sounds like the latest Ubuntu lol. If you look back over recent years there has been a massive push to make the whole experience more user friendly. And yes it is to attract more of the Windows users that just want things to work. More and more generic drivers, which a lot of major manufacturers use in their products, are built into the kernel. I remember when wifi was still a new tech how much of a pain in the arse it was to get USB dongles to work. Now most work straight out of the box because they all use generic chipsets. Same applies to webcams, sound cards and a whole host of stuff. (On a side note I also remember when the do it yourself ADSL kits, 512kbs, came out in the UK and the sodding modem would not work with my rig at the time and I had to wait till I could get my old V92 modem back to download a random hack to make it work. Even then it was hit and miss. :anger:)
OK, to say something positive about Windows that I can't say about Linux, at least I can "generally" install my drivers without issues "generally". Likewise, if I want to run something all I have to do is download it and install it, I don't have to download "X" amount of Mb worth of dependencies just to make it work, which sometimes becomes the case with Linux. Too many dependencies, too many files that need constantly updated and this and that. At least that was my experience when I used to keep it around all the time. Maybe with AEROS I will not have to worry about that crap as much cause I just want to set up WINE and I am using AROS as my GUI instead of some Start Bar based KDE variant or what ever.
Again drivers for most generic chipsets are built into modern kernels. I have run into very few items that I have needed specific drivers for except my Nvidia card. But in Ubuntu there is a dialog that opens wich downloads a choice of stable or testing drivers. Also in Ubuntu there is a pack of stuff called restricted extras which you can dowload that adds more support. It's got a set of goodies that doesn't exactly fall into the realm of open source so it can't be given as standard with Ubuntu, though other distributions tend to stick them in anyway.
As for dependencies then the package manager should resolve dependency issues for you automatically. If your trying to compile source yourself then yes you need to be aware of the dependencies more. But it's like any new install of any new OS it takes time to get things up and running. Windows will generally need to download c++ or .NET libraries in order to get games to run or certain bits of software. Once the dependencies are there then you no longer need to worry. Most share common dependencies so it's all good. And if the dependencies aren't needed after software removal then the package manager will even handle that for you.
And really most Linux distros come with the KDE/Gnome setup because they are the popular ones. But there are some great window managers out there and I don't use KDE or Gnome these days.
Of course again, the down side to Windows is it sucks. It is boring to use, and the history behind the success of the company behind it relies heavily upon the shattered dreams of others.
Can't argue with you there lol. but Windows is a bit of a nessesary evil if your into gaming. Until Valve get their act together and get more developers onto Linux we are going to be stuck. Since Steam went public on Linux more games have started to turn up.
