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LinuxWorld Response to 'How to Kill Linux'
aneroid writes "In response to John Dvorak's "How to Kill Linux" column, LinuxWorld has a riposte to the columnist's assertations. From the article: "Because most of the time, with mainstream devices, I work out of the box. For the "savvy user" and OEM builder, the Linux driver "problem" isn't the problem it was. The days when my poor user had to sweat blood to get me onto a laptop are long gone. Sure, if I get slung onto some random old machine there are still wrinkles, but from what I see on the Windows support forums, that's hardly unique." <update> The story is actually from GrokLaw originally - credit where credit is due.
Driver support on Linux is fine. I have always bought bleeding edge hardware I only run Linux and everything works fine. The last time I had a problem was when I bought my IBM Thinkpad T40, only the wireless card wasnt support, which wasnt even a problem for me since I didnt have a wireless router. It is now fully supported by an open source driver(ipw2100). I fix computers as a part time job and I run into driver hell more often on win then any other os. The other day I was updating a win xp computer and it said the ATI drivers had to be updated, so I let windows update update them. A few min later I could only get 4bit color. I had to uninstall the driver from windows update and revert to the old one. Going to ATI.com and downloading the offical driver said that I was getting a driver for the wrong graphics card. Even if a peice of hardware is reconized on win you have to track down the driver and many times if you lost the cd your screwed.
I have been using Linux for many, many years, I am really not the one who needs to be converted. But I have to admit that just this weekend I spent I dunno how many ours with kernel-recompiles and trying every possible settings, drivers to get MIDI working on my box. And I failed.
On my Windows XP I fired up the utility which came with the driver and hit "Test MIDI" and there it was, out of the box.
Thus while it might be true that the for most of the people and for the most generic cases the driver hell is hopefully gone, there is quite a bit left to go until hardware manufacturers ship drivers which work out of the box just as easily as for Windows.