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Alright, so tonight I just had another experience that once again proved to me how much better Ubuntu 11.10 is than Windows 7.

What I was trying to do was install a webcam onto my mom's computer so she could basically do Skype with her long-distance friend. The camera is a bit dated, but still works perfectly. Here, I will re-tell my experience EXACTLY as it went on both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10. Now, Windows 7 is the primary operating system that's already installed on my mom's computer's hard drive by default, but just out of curiosity, I quickly set up a bootable USB drive that had the Ubuntu 11.10 Live Installer on it. So I will now show you in steps, starting with Windows 7, the effort I went to get this webcam to work.

Windows 7 Procedure:

- I plugged in the webcam into the USB port, which resulted in Windows 7 detecting it, and attempting to install drivers.
- After about 50 seconds, a box came up indicating that the installation of the drivers for the wiebcam failed, because no suitable drivers were found.
- So I did a google search for drivers for the particular model camera I had.
- After coming across a page that looked like it had matching drivers, I clicked on the download link and went through the installation procedure. After it was finished, a message came up saying that the drivers were installed successfully (or so it said....)...
- So I tried the webcam out in Skype, and....... nothing. "No camera detected."
- Upon looking in the Device Manager, I noticed the USB camera had a yellow exclamation mark, indicating that the proper drivers were missing. What are you talking about, I just INSTALLED them a minute ago!
- So I decided to go back to Google, and try a different link this time. After looking through numerous forum posts, I found one in particular that seemed to be a known working solution, so I went with that.
- Once again, I downloaded the set of drivers specified on the thread post, and tried installing them, this time using the "Have Disk" option in the Windows driver installer.
- This time, the drivers actually appeared to install successfully! But wait a minute...... OH s**t..... Blue screen of death! -.-;; "Dumping Physical Memory Cache", or some s**t... Then, the computer reboots......
- After waiting 5 tedious minutes for the computer to finally start up, I get these weird boxes asking me about running some exe files... Okay.... Don't know what THAT'S about. I hit "cancel" on both of them...
- So I finally manage to load Skype up, that works. Now I try testing the webcam again..... ANNNNND............... Nothing........

WINDOWS 7 FINAL GRADE:
F- for ********.

Not counting the steps to reboot the computer into Ubuntu's Live desktop from the USB drive, here's the procedure I used to get the webcam working under Ubuntu. Again, this is the SAME webcam, and the SAME machine that I used for the Windows 7 procedure.

Ubuntu 11.10 Procedure:

- Upon entering the desktop, I look up at the webcam and notice that its built-in Power LED is already glowing green, signifying that it's been detected and set up onto the computer already.
- Just to try the camera out, I installed a simple app called "Cheese!", which is basically an Ubuntu version of Apple's PhotoBooth.
- I clicked on the gear icon in the top-right corner of the screen, selected "Webcam" from the drop-down menu.
- Almost immediately, the webcam was detected by Cheese! and working perfectly.

UBUNTU 11.10 FINAL GRADE:
A++++++ for Amazingly Awesome! biggrin

Now, aside from the webcam working PERFECTLY under Ubuntu, the mere SECOND Ubuntu's desktop finished loading, I saw two notifications stating that a connection with my wireless internet had been established, and my HP printer/scanner combo had been detected and installed. HOLY s**t!!!

So once again, it stands very clearly which operating system is the superior. While I struggled for literally 45 minutes and failed to get the webcam to work under Windows, installing it under Ubuntu was a breeze. All I had to do was install an application that makes use of a webcam, and it worked perfectly. On top of that, Ubuntu recognized and installed my mom's WiFi adapter, and her printer all at bootup, without ANY user intervention! If that isn't user-friendly, then I have no ******** clue what is!

That is all I have to say. Good ******** night.