Well, yes, that was what I meant. The Linux desktop itself isn't harder at all than a Windows one. Some things are even easier, like installing programs (with the help of the repositories). But when it comes to installing drivers or hardware that is not supported out of the box it's often not so simple, unfortunately. There seem to be multiple ways of doing the same thing, which may be a good thing if you're really techie, but it scares normal users away. There really should be a uniform way of installing drivers in Linux too. Mark will probaby now say "there is" , but the problem is there are always loopholes to do it in a different way, so the uniformity is compromised. (and sloppy programmers like the ones that made the driver for my touch screen get away easy). IMO they should develop a truly uniform way to do this, and also make it impossible to do it otherwise. But I don't know if this is even possible anymore due to the open nature of Linux.

That said, this whole endevour has given me the opportunity (or better: a new reason ) to tinker with a Linux distro I've never used before (in this case Mint). I must say I really like it. It's got a pretty familiar feeling to it and all I've tried (well, with the exception of getting that friggin' touch screen working) works really well. I think I'll play around with it some more.