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

["Jarod Wilson" <user=74@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 23:48 -0400, Tom Metro wrote: 
> Derek Martin wrote: 
> > Remember that Microsoft is a near monopoly, and that hardware 
> vendors 
> > code drivers that work to Microsoft's specifications before they 
> > release a product.  With Linux, some vendors do this, but many 
> simply 
> > still don't care about the Linux platform, leaving the job to be 
> done 
> > by the thousands of developers who volunteer their free time to do 
> so. 
> 
> 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.