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On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 12:25:00PM -0400, Rich Braun wrote: > Matt Shields wrote: > > You should read the article about some private school in this month's Linux > > Journal. They converted to linux 99.9% 5 years ago. > > OK OK I give up trying to bring up a point on this list. This point is > interesting but completely besides the point that I was trying to make. > > A private school converting to Linux simply isn't likely to run into the > problems that I raised: getting a two-monitor setup configured with rotation, > getting sound to work, and whatever else comes up every single time I've > switched to a new Linux distro. > > I'm typing this on the new system (complete with Firefox 3.0 out of the box) > with both monitors set up. The portrait-mode one has a sluggish performance > but it otherwise looks fine, just as long as I don't go into certain of the > *THREE* or maybe even four different display-related system management menus > buried in different places. > > My point is this: display setup is controlled from exactly one menu in > Windows (accessible two different ways, control panel or right-click anywhere > in the background), and it's been fully debugged to the point that a neophyte > can accomplish any setting without having to resort to googling for parameters > that have to be entered into a kernel boot prompt or somewhere equally > obscure. Criticize M$oft (or Apple for that matter) all you want--but they > have a QA department responsible for eliminating the .0001% rate of customer > complaints related to things like buggy display drivers in dual-head rotated > mode for blind people living in Latin America needing to run a 10 year-old > version of Quickbooks with whatever other oddball requirements they might > have. When you have a billion customers, that small percentage adds up to a > lot of customer-support work if the code ain't right. > > Linux has a huge number of users too: why do we have to live with this kind > of stuff? Googling error messages for two weeks every time we upgrade? > > Item #5: > > 5) > If I activate certain of the screen-"savers", the motherboard eats 30 watts > (!) of additional electricity in order to perform the 3D calculations. (Maybe > they need an Energy Un-star icon next to these selections. ;-) > > -rich >
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