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Re: Linux on the desktop - it's come a long way, but is it there yet?



 See I believe this particular problem stems from the birth of all of the 
above OSes. *IX was meant to be a server power house. Hell, the CLI was 
beautiful for alot of what typical people need to do with it. Windows and 
apple came from a totally different angle. Windows decided that they were 
going to make a fantastic UI and support everything under the sun which is 
why hardly anything works that great. Apple took a different approach  and 
wanted to become a multi-media giant with a slick UI. In order to get around 
the problems of windows they put their stuff out on a very few supported 
platforms. So the long and the short of it? I think it was fedoria 8 which 
really didn't have many kernel changes but has tons of accessibility options 
and UI work done to it. Not to mention all that working on like, all 
hardware... seriously thats the exact reason open source started. You have a 
unique setup or one that people really didn't think about or you are an edge 
case and they needed to hit a deadline and said, screw it we will release 
now and people with edge case stuff can code up their own solutions or we 
will work it in later. Linux is rapidly moving to a common desk top OS and 
in the 3 years i've seriously used it it's made wonderful progress. 
Basically the message is this: It's open sourced for a reason, if there is a 
problem with it submit a bug or code up the solution and submit the code 
changes for a review. 

As far as like money management stuff, have you looked at gnu cash?  I 
haven't used it yet but from people who have they say it's great once you 
get use to it. IT IS NOT QUICKEN! ~Ben 

On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 4:47 PM, Rich Braun <[hidden email]> wrote: 

> David Hummel <[hidden email]>: 
> >> If you just expect it to work, then before buying the hardware, you 
> >> should investigate whether the type and level of operation you are 
> >> expecting is supported by the available (preferably open source) 
> >> drivers for that hardware.  I personally won't buy hardware unless I 
> >> know it's well supported ... 
> 
> Derek Atkins <[hidden email]> 
> > Also, you might want to try other distributions.  OpenSuse is not then 
> > end-all, be-all of Linux Distros.  Before tossing out the baby with the 
> > bathwater I'd also look at Ubuntu and/or Fedora.  They may have better 
> > support or better tools for said support. 
> 
> Thanks:  both of you addressed the actual point I was making. 
> 
> To David, I respond:  Linux has long had a hardware cross-reference list 
> that, 
> I suppose, one could look up every item.  The reality for most of us is 
> that, 
> as experienced users, we have access to lots of different hardware of 
> different vintages that we use to cobble together systems; or as neophyte 
> users, they simply won't be looking up any cross-reference sheet before 
> buying 
> a system.  My posting concerned brand-new equipment of the biggest name 
> brands; I'm sure the device drivers "support" what I have, but the 
> internals 
> have not been sufficiently tested and polished to support the 
> configurations 
> that I want to use (and that I have been using without trouble on the chief 
> competition, Win XP, for years on a very wide variety of hardware 
> configurations). Sure, what I'll wind up doing is going into my xorg.conf 
> file 
> whenever I have a whole day to deal with it and get the X settings set up 
> precisely how they need to be, and then figure out which apps break things 
> so 
> I can tweak them as well--but this is 2008, why is this even necessary? 
> 
> To Derek:  at the office I have most every Linux, Windows and Mac distro 
> under 
> the sun.  (No, we don't have any Sun boxes. But that's about the only one 
> I'm 
> missing ;-)  As it happens, the latest openSUSE has more stuff working out 
> of 
> the box than any of the others I wrestle with from one day to the next, in 
> particular the desktop stuff is relatively good.  But for only a narrowly 
> defined set of desktop configurations, and not at all as easily 
> reconfigured 
> as the average Apple or Microsoft desktop. 
> 
> I'm challenging y'all to look at this from the eyes of the neophyte and 
> imagine sending a box of PC parts and a URL to your grandmother to download 
> an 
> image, build a system, and set up her own Linux box from scratch with all 
> the 
> familiar browsing, word processing, and financial management apps.  My 
> grandmother born in 1919 can do that--and she effectively has--with 
> Microsoft 
> environments, but openSUSE, kubuntu, et al are not ready for her yet. 
> 
> -rich 
> 
> 
> -- 
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> 
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