I give the Ubuntu (and Linux) people points for completeness, but I have to retract them for the sheer aggravation required to get it working. To be scrupulously fair, a generic PostScript printer will typically work as-is, but those of us whose devices aren't that universally supported may have to go through a similar ordeal.
Generic Plug-and-Play (PnP) devices in Ubuntu fare a lot better, but there are still some shortcomings. Most devices like cameras, external hard drives, or storage cards are recognized as-is when you plug them in. Ubuntu also has a central interface for handling PnP device events: the Removable Drives and Media Preferences console. Here you can set behavior preferences for removable storage and CD/DVD discs, as well as many other classes of removable devices: cameras, PDAs, printers, scanners, and input devices.
However, it's not like Windows where you can pick a device type and then assign one of a number of predefined actions from a menu; each device action is just a reference to an executable. And the default action didn't always run: when I plugged in my scanner (a Canon CanoScan N1240U), the default scanning application, XSane, didn't launch. That said, I launched XSane manually and it identified the scanner immediately and worked fine with it. A Dell A920 multifunction printer (made by Lexmark), however, wasn't recognized by XSane at all -- so a lot of what is and isn't supported often comes down to how much information about the device is available or has been provided by the manufacturer.
Power management, in both Vista and Ubuntu, is another topic about which there's been plenty of controversy. I could name about as many people in both camps who have had power-management issues, and I could name about as many more who haven't, so I will simply describe my own experiences. With Ubuntu, suspend and resume, as well as hibernate and resume, did work on my notebook, albeit very slowly. In Vista, the same functions worked as well and took a great deal less time. My desktop would not enter sleep mode in Ubuntu, although it did hibernate; Vista, however, slept and woke up without a hitch. So I suspect people's mileage will vary across the board.
| The Winner: | On the whole, Windows still deals with hardware more elegantly and efficiently than Ubuntu. |
Ubuntu has two basic ways to deal with adding software: the the Add/Remove Applications tool (easy) and the Synaptic Package Manager (for experts). Add/Remove Applications lets you search the entire directory of applications recommended for Ubuntu -- dozens of programs in 11 categories -- and install them with little effort. I added applications like Adobe Reader and the Thunderbird mail client without too much difficulty. It all compares pretty favorably to Windows's Add/Remove Programs system, which should be familiar to everyone reading this. (Linspire's CNR digital software delivery service is also set to be offered for Ubuntu in the future.)
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