Can Open Source Save Hardware?

Culexus writes "Tom's Hardware has a interesting story about Open Source saving the hardware industry. Pretty good read all in all. Hopefully chip makers and vendors won't have to bend to the iron might of Microsoft any longer." Some good comments on how early-adopters and enthusiasts are being marginalized by the industry, too.

Comments

Misleading summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"Doesn't look like it right now."

I think Linux will really push the hardware market forward because it is SLOW AS ASS in KDE and Gnome compared to any version of Windows. Everything is much slower and less responsive, other than resizing windows after a program has crashed. That's about it.

I can't imagine how painfully slow Linux would be on a $200 PC. Yeah, I'm sure some 1337 H4>0R can remove the new, appealing, and usable DEs and install something from 1992 and make it faster, but that's not realistic now, is it?

Until you guys get over your hate for commercial software and user friendliness, Linux is going NOWHERE.

Re:Linux helps hardware vendors?

[LordNimon]

I agree completely. I've worked as both a Windows and a Linux driver developer. Developing a driver for Windows is way easier. Linus doesn't even want anyone to use a kernel debugger! How stupid is that?

Then of course, there is the problem of not supporting binary-only drivers. Not only does it make it almost impossible to protect a company's IP by closing the source, but it's extremely difficult to ship just a driver and have someone just install it on his system. If the user is using a lesser-known distribution, or has compiled his own kernel, the only way he can add your driver is to recompile it himself!

Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts

[SN74S181]

MacOS? What's that? Didn't Apple give up on MacOS and just put some cheap makeup on NeXTStep and pretend it was version 10?