The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one ... or do they?

Imagine if there was only one Linux distribution.

One company or group would control the development, direction and philosophy of the operating system and the user environment. Hardware and software compatibility would be strictly controlled, both in terms of what the OS would run on, and what peripherals and programs would run with it.

Everybody's system -- at some levels, anyway -- would be exactly the same. Security patches would come weekly over the system's five years of support -- and for probably an extra five years of "legacy" support.

But would it -- or could it -- be free, like Linux is today? Even now, there's no stopping companies from selling Linux. Novell and Red Hat do it, though they each sponsor open-source, free-distribution projects on the side. The aims, I figure, are to both recruit paid corporate users by wooing their geeky IT staff and to look less like Microsoft in the process.

You could say that an OS has to cost money. How could such a major undertaking come to any kind of bootable, usable fruition otherwise? All I can say in response is to look at the open-source model and the way the Linux kernel and everything else wrapped around it have developed.

It's been said before -- and I'd sure like to figure out who said it first so I can properly credit him or her: Software wants to be free.

And while Novel and Red Hat are in the business of selling Linux, even as their open-source arms give versions of it away, those companies, along with looming Linux giant Canonical (maker of No. 1 distribution Ubuntu) know that the real money is in support.

Whether it's running Microsoft, Mac OS or Linux, equipment and software in the business world (and at home, too) need support -- and the days of dropping a PC box on a desk with OS and software installed and expecting it all to work -- on day 1, day 100 or day 1,000 -- without technical support from real people, those days were never here and never will be. And that goes for Mac, Windows and Linux.

So when we focus on the configuration issues of installing a Linux distro -- and go through it as many times as we download and burn to CD and now DVD the dozens of distributions out there -- remember that Windows and even Mac OS had and still have these same problems.

Case in point: The cheap HP printer I bought was labeled "Windows compatible." Only the look-alike HP printer that cost $40 more offered Mac compatibility.

What did I do? I took the cheaper one home, trolled the Internet and found the solution. Did I find it at HP.com? Fuck no. Amazom.com's buyer comments on the printer gave me the hack: Go to HP.com, download the Mac driver for the "expensive" printer and install. The cheap printer and the Mac itself wouldn't know the difference. It worked immediately.

And how does Apple get around the nightmare of configuring third-party Wi-Fi adapters? By only supporting Apple-made Airport, that's how. You try finding a Wi-Fi card or USB interface that supports Mac. They ain't out there. You're stuck with Airport. Nice work, Cupertino.