After 4 days - undecided on whole Linux thing

After installing Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) on my Compaq Presario x1000 laptop after I replaced the hard drive, I was initially very impressed with Ubuntu. It ran perfectly.

Eventually I wanted to tweak some stuff. Like the touchpad on the laptop. It was set by default to interpret finger taps as clicks. That drives me crazy and confuses my kids. Being a lifelong MSDOS/Windows user, I figured tweaking the touchpad settings would be pretty straightforward. No such luck.

After Googling for some time, I downloaded the qsynaptics GUI application. It installed okay (after I switched to root) and told me that I needed to install the Synaptics Touchpad Driver. Nice. Why would anyone design software that says "Hey you need X, I'm not going to tell you where to find it, and I'm not going to get it for you. Good luck."?

I located the driver (again, thanks Google) and read the Install file (no easy install - I'm not sure why they don't build automated install packages). It starts with this:

Requirements
------------

1. You need X include files. On RPM based systems, they are usually
included in the XFree86-devel package. On Debian systems, you need
to install the packages x-dev, libx11-dev and libxext-dev.

2. For use with kernel 2.6.x you need to enable synaptics touchpad
support when configuring the kernel (CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2). You also
need support for the evdev interface (CONFIG_INPUT_EVDEV). If you
compile evdev as a module, make sure it is loaded before starting
the X server, as it will not be auto-loaded.

3. If you use XFree86 version 4.0 or 4.1, you will need the XFree86
source code to compile the driver. See the "How do I compile the
driver?" section in the FAQ in the README file for details.

4. Using with kernel 2.4.x for x <>
(pc_keyb.c.diff.2.4.3).

What? Seriously? This is dumb. Software can be designed to check for the existence of file X and offer the option of installing it if it doesn't exist. In fact... It isn't a complex function to implement.

Why don't they implement it? Because in their minds, users should know how to do it themselves - and that is why Bill Gates is as rich as he is. He understands that a very large majority of users aren't interested in how the box works - they just want it to work.

In spite of my frustration with this, I'm happy with the Ubuntu install. It's free. It works very well. From a work perspective, I'm fully functional. I'm happy - and I'll learn the complexities behind getting non standard apps installed eventually.