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Stopping Linux Desktop Adoption Sabotage
Mark Brunelli, News Editor writes "Outspoken IT consultant John H. Terpstra believes that Microsoft and electronics manufacturers are working together to hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop. In a three part series, he tells a story about how two guys trying to buy Linux desktops found they were overpriced, and lacked certain tools. He then describes how Microsoft uses its considerable resources and the law to create such roadblocks. (Part 2, Part 3)"
That opening line was written by the editor of the piece. John Terpstra is a good author and more importantly, a long time contributor to FOSS, namely samba. See "Samba-3 by Example: Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment".
This is not true. In fact, the distros are each trying to beat the others silly by making package management such a breeze.
All Debian derived systems (like ubuntu) use apt/dpkg, Fedora/RedHat uses yum (or apt4rpm), Suse uses YaST and Gentoo uses portage. All of these will find dependancies for you and generally do the right thing - if the package is available, it will be installed and configured properly.
The only place where this is not true is when there are legal roadblocks (like DVD playback) to using the software in a free OS. Most commercial distros are able to bypass this however, since they pay a fee to the IP rights holder for the use of that IP.
In any event, you can't have checked software installation very recently. Today it's easier on linux than it's ever been on Windows.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
People for who I installed linux, say the following is missing:
Good MSN with all smileys, filetransfer, videochat.
Support for all streaming media in your webbrowser.
All multimedia files supported (without having to add (unofficial) repositories to have support for win32codecs and such).
Oh yeah, for the transition, full NTFS writing support.
Apart from that, my friends, mother, sister and girlfriend really like linux.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
It's fud fud fud fud. Consperiacy bullshit, I figure.
n _Page
I LOVE Linux. Long time Debian user, I know that I simply couldn't use computers and be as happy with them if I was stuck with only choosing Windows and propriatory applications.
I am a GNU, Free Software, ra-ra-ra type of guy. I probably seem like a nut to many people.
But I don't beleive that it's a consperiacy against Linux. I beleive it's just complacency, laziness, apathy, and other crap like that.
It's not that they care and conspire, it's that they don't give a shit and MS nudges here and there very rarely.
Hardware manufacturers work their asses off making sure the everything works with Windows well. They generally dont' do jack shit about Linux because it doesn't contribute to their bottom line. (it could if they felt like it. No linux support = no Linux-related money = no reason to support linux = no linux support, etc etc etc.)
This is why it's important to support hardware manufacturers that support Linux. Stuff like Ralink-using Wifi cards that use the rt2500 and related chipsets. http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Mai
And specificly requesting Linux support is the only way to go. Seriously. Buying random hardware and expecting it to work in Linux or expecting that your Dell laptop will work 'just because' is foolish.
This guy is spreading fud. There are certainly hardware companies that dislike the idea of free software. They dislike having to tell end-users how to use the hardware or releasing minimal REAL documentation on the hardware. Well then, fuck them. Don't buy their shit and if you do don't cry when you can't get it to work with ndiswrapper.
PS. Don't buy wifi cards with Conextent, Broadcom, Texas Instruments using chipsets. Avoid them like the plague. Modern 802.11g that work in Linux well are Intel Wifi setups and Ralink rt2x00 based chipsets. Intel 'Sonoma' platform with Intel Video and Intel wifi should work well in a modern Linux setup. Avoid ATI and Nvidia if you can, and if you can't and need the 3d horsepower always choose Nvidia.
What Linux needs for the 'average' user however is pre-installed support from a major manufacturer. The most likely canidate would be HP right now, but it seems to me that it's going to take a relative unkown to realy break through and start making buckets of money from this sort of thing. Maybe a successfull company that produces hardware specialized for Linux clustering or server work can step up to the bat and do it. (not talking about IBM.)
It is certainly possible to get a very nice computer for inexpensive that will work in Linux without having to resort to e-crappo hardware to make it cheap.
XP is up because they stopped "selling" the other Windows operating systems.
Most "sales" of XP come from pre-installed setups.
People go out to buy a computer that can run all the software in the local PC world or game store - at the moment, that is a Microsoft OS.
Times are changing though, and more space is being given to the alternative OS's.
Its kind of like the time when "PC" software was nowhere to be found and all the stores were filled with Amiga/ST stuff.
Windows will not be dominant forever, it will be replaced just like everything else.
liqbase
"but we still can't get drivers installed. I'm likely to agree with the author that there are roadblocks not of our making that is causing this."
In most cases it's illegal to try and write drivers for hardware you don't have specs and permission for. DMCA sees to that.
If you have problems with drivers then you need to yell at the hardware manufacturer.
evil is as evil does
My niece began with XP at age four. Windows is in her home and in her hand every day. Something she can touch.
Get her a copy of Knoppix and by age seven she will be knocking out bash scripts.
Linux is what my daughters started with and what they prefer to use. One is sixteen and the other is eleven.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"