Wireless networking is one of the things that works well "out of the box" now. However, the Linux community still treats the GUI and usability as if they are passing fads. Good luck getting a mouse with more than two buttons to work right. I'd love to dump Windows, but each year I try a few distributions and am disappointed. I get more lockups in a few days testing Linux distributions than I do the entire rest of the year with Windows. This year a keylogger in a "spin" of one of the more popular distributions tried to break into my email account. It does make a great rescue disk, though.
The rescue disc idea is the one reason I’ve kept a DVD of Linux around all this time. Someone has a problem booting, it may come in handy getting into the system and retrieving data.
After several hours of “playing” with two distros yesterday, I finally went and did something worthwhile; helped a friend out with a computer problem (actually two minor ones).
To recap: Ubuntu 10 recognized the wireless card on my 1 year old Dell, but not on my 6 mos old Toshiba. Mint 12 recognized both wireless cards but had no method of installing a printer. Upon doing a Google search, this was shown to be an “issue” with both Ubuntu 11 and Mint 12.
Who knows, maybe someday I’ll get a distro as a 2nd boot on one of my PCs. Maybe. But I stand with what I stated earlier; Linux in its many varieties isn’t ready for prime time. Its a tool that intrepid computer geeks may enjoy messing with, but for the great unwashed its simply too daunting to appeal to the average computer user.