It doesn't change anything who bundles what. Only the fact that the product is a bundle matters. If MS ships a "Windows Computer" for $400 whose hardware costs $200, there will be a competitor next door who sells a "GNU/Linux Computer" for $200. The essence is that they can't compete with that. They can rise or lower the price as they see fit, just like they do today, but as long as the cheaper alternative has an entry point they're doomed to fail. The big question is whether that entry point will stand long enough to leverage their dominance based on propietary "standards".
So instead of paying the tax with money, you can redeem your tax obligations by either:
- Moving to USA, Australia or somewhere that Dell or Lenovo ship to (and actually buy them online instead of from a store like everyone else).
- Doing the work of installing the OS yourself AND arranging a deal with your vendor to sell you a "naked PC" (almost impossible for laptops).
- Ressorting to lower quality (hardware-wise) options.
You see, in my case, when I had to buy a laptop without paying the tax, I had to arrange the "naked PC" deal with a RESELLER, because it was completely impossible to buy a naked laptop in any normal store.
You paid for the so-called "Microsoft tax" when buying your laptop. You probably thought you were paying it for nothing, right? Well, it's actually worse than nothing. You were paying for this.
So, until a small upstart from Germany or Mexico fills the niche by selling 3D cards with available specs or maybe even FOSS drivers, we are pretty much stuck with this situation.
Things such as a stable ABI for loadable modules for instance might mean they can support more architectures.
They can support all architectures with a free driver that can be recompiled on ABI change and easily adapted on API change. Providing a stable ABI would only archieve reducing the incentive they have to release that free driver. Even worse, it would mean the community accepts the binary blob, and make liberation of that code much more difficult in the future.
Their closed drivers will probably always have superior 3D performance, and that is why people buy Nvidia cards.
In my case, I buy nvidia cards because intel cards are not available in stores (I'm in Europe), and ati cards have exactly the same problem. I don't care if performance is bad if there's a free driver I can use, because any card without a working free 3D driver is worth as much as a 2D card to me (I'm writing from one of those "2D cards" atm..).
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It doesn't change anything who bundles what. Only the fact that the product is a bundle matters. If MS ships a "Windows Computer" for $400 whose hardware costs $200, there will be a competitor next door who sells a "GNU/Linux Computer" for $200. The essence is that they can't compete with that. They can rise or lower the price as they see fit, just like they do today, but as long as the cheaper alternative has an entry point they're doomed to fail. The big question is whether that entry point will stand long enough to leverage their dominance based on propietary "standards".
- Moving to USA, Australia or somewhere that Dell or Lenovo ship to (and actually buy them online instead of from a store like everyone else).
- Doing the work of installing the OS yourself AND arranging a deal with your vendor to sell you a "naked PC" (almost impossible for laptops).
- Ressorting to lower quality (hardware-wise) options.
You see, in my case, when I had to buy a laptop without paying the tax, I had to arrange the "naked PC" deal with a RESELLER, because it was completely impossible to buy a naked laptop in any normal store.
So good to know redemption is possible!
How ironical. According to Wikipedia, Darin is a propietary software developer.
Next time, don't pay.
Is this one of those countless examples in which an otherwise completely useless activity is carried out just because it "generates employment" ?
intel already does this.
They can support all architectures with a free driver that can be recompiled on ABI change and easily adapted on API change. Providing a stable ABI would only archieve reducing the incentive they have to release that free driver. Even worse, it would mean the community accepts the binary blob, and make liberation of that code much more difficult in the future.
In my case, I buy nvidia cards because intel cards are not available in stores (I'm in Europe), and ati cards have exactly the same problem. I don't care if performance is bad if there's a free driver I can use, because any card without a working free 3D driver is worth as much as a 2D card to me (I'm writing from one of those "2D cards" atm..).
That's what I did ;)
Just that instead of loadlin, it's grub4dos (loadlin doesn't support win >2k). And instead of a silent script, it's a GUI script.