Some of the bundling of stuff with Linux is nice as a time saver on initial install. Having recently spent two days rebuilding a Windows machine (of which a la

Some of the bundling of stuff with Linux is nice as a time saver on initial install. Having recently spent two days rebuilding a Windows machine (of which a large chunk was just tedious fetching and installing chrome, flash, shockwave, air, acrobat type stuff) this sort of thing is significant. I've never found OS X to be problematic for installs but the basic act of gathering stuff up to put on the machine is basically dead time. But the comment "if you pick your chipsets sensibly" - frankly most people don't want to have to do that sort of research. There are enough variables in the basic specification / vendor decisions without having to drop down to this level.