24th June 2013, 9:07 PM
Open sourced code is only a PART of the problem (and being open source is overall a massive plus to the OS). The rest of the issues I listed are what make it become a major issue. Ubuntu, for example, is an OS built for PCs and doesn't suffer from this sort of driver issue. Oh yes, you'll need drivers, but you don't need to recompile Ubuntu for every last variation of hardware out there. With Ubuntu, it generally just works, and then maybe you'll install a video card driver (Ubutu's built in driver database is pretty vast, so that also helps). Ubuntu has a lot of fragmented versions, but that's not an issue if the hardware support is there.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)