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

["Kristian Erik Hermansen" <user=152@nabble.blu.org>]

 You know that little sticker on every pc and laptop that says 
"designed for windows xp", etc?  That means the hardware vendor 
developed their drivers and extensively tested them on that exact 
version of the OS.  No one really does that for desktop linux. 

Interestingly, one time a wifi card I bought worked (driver inserted 
for 64-bit kernel) on linux but not windows.  That rarely happens. 
Seriously, it has to do with hardware vendors and there is nothing 
that software people can do until the hardware vendors take on such a 
QA commitment.  But with so many distros, which ones do they pick? 
This is why LSB is so important.  So, go yell at hardware vendors like 
I do.  I continually piss on them when possible.  If you don't, you 
lose your vote :-) 



On 7/13/08, 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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