Linux Vs. FreeBSD 7125

In some ways, yes. Gnome and KDE are both much more logical than Windows explorer. More hardware works out of the box on Linux than on Windows. Provided that the package you need is in the centralized repository in the version you want, apt-get or synaptic is easier than any package management system Widnows has. It is much easier to automate tasks under Linux than Windows. However, in other ways that I've already described, Linux is simply horrible when it comes to ease of use, namely installing packages that are *not* already packaged and in some centralized repository for your distro and installing drivers that are *not* in the main kernel tree.

This is complete BS. I'm sure there are tons of people who disagree with you. This is why companies like Novell, Xandros, Mandriva and Linspire are trying to make distros that are geared toward widespread success on the desktop. Linux should not be like Windows in every respect, but you have to admit that in some respects Windows is still easier to use, and that very few users want any part of a CLI, compiling software or drivers from source, or manual package management, even as a last resort. I suspect that anyone who posts here saying that Linux somehow has no intention of widespread success on the desktop is an elitist snob who wants at least a few aspects of Linux to stay arcane and difficult just so that they can feel special and smart when they use it.

This is only a half-truth. Yes, there are only 2 package managers per se, but the real problem is binary compatibility between distros. If a distro requires its own packages and is not totally binary compatible with any other distro, it may as well have a totally separate package management system, at least from the end user's perspective, and the end user's perspective is what is relevant to this discussion.