Slashdot Mirror
The Linux Desktop and ISVs/OEMs
olau writes "Michael Meeks, who's worked on GNOME and LibreOffice integration for many years, now for SuSE, has some really interesting thoughts on the recent Linux desktop debate and suggestions for possible strategies. He points out that regarding independent software vendors (ISVs), the real issue isn't actually the quality of the tools but the size and attractiveness of the market, and perhaps that a solution could be lower barriers for paying or donating. Regarding OEMs selling hardware with software preinstalled, he points out that while a free OS + software sounds good for consumers, it's actually a problem for OEMs on razor-thin margins, since they lose the cut they get from the preinstallations. A possible countermove could be nailing robustness and hardware diagnostics for good, lowering OEM support costs."
Linux SERVERS already manage to hit the "cost $500 less" metric. That's not the topic of discussion here. This was an article about DESKTOP Linux.
Servers are an entirely different kettle of fish and an area where Microsoft isn't nearly as dominant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Run windows in a vm on her machine, automate snapshots and that way you can roll it back for her.
Old folks don't play video games or need tons of storage.
Face it, if you don't run windows, you'll never, never, never ever have 100% office compatibility. Never. .
If you run Microsoft Office you've never had 100% Office compatibility. Open a docx document with Office 2003. You can look at it ( with a helper program), but you can't edit it unless you save it as a .doc document.
Just today somebody gave me a TV tuner and video capture card because it doesn't work on Win7. In my workplace we have expensive machines with weird backplanes that were purchased this year and are running win98 due to some digital signal processing hardware that won't run on anything newer. Some HP printers were abandoned when win7 came out, never mind the stuff from far smaller companies that don't have the resources to rewrite drivers.
The 100% bullshit really just shows a lack of experience in your pet subject. With closed drivers you have to hope that they people producing them give a shit or otherwise you run the risk of having to get new hardware when the software is upgraded. That's not a big deal for one person, but when there are large collections of hardware or niches where you depend on one bit of odd gear to do a task you end up with the legacy gear in the corner for a specific task and far more machines than you have users.