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



 Tom Metro wrote: 

> That was a good explanation for the situation 10 years ago. Now Linux 
> development is heavily sponsored by large corporations like IBM, Novel, 
> and RedHat. So the real question is why isn't new hardware supported 
> more quickly by these commercial OS vendors? 
> 
> The answer is probably that there is just too much hardware to cover 
> even by these large companies with deep pockets. With Windows, Microsoft 
> writes drivers themselves only for a minority of the hardware. The 
> vendors do the rest. 
> 
> So we're back to the usual chicken-and-egg problem where vendors don't 
> feel compelled to support a platform that doesn't have a big market 
> share, and consumers aren't drawn to a platform that doesn't support the 
> hardware they want to use. Of course this is slowly changing in Linux's 
> favor, but is still a far way from the "tipping point." 


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