Well, if you have hardware which is a few generations old then you generally have 2 choices: "a driver that works fine if you don't care about performance" "hardware that doesnt work at all"
Considering that a video card which is a few generations old can still be a useful device for most purposes except gaming, i'd rather use the fully working card i already have than be forced to buy a new one. Also if your using an old card, you probably aren't concerned with performance.
Having open source drivers in the kernel is better for 99% of people...
If you are a user, things are more likely to work out of the box, your hardware will be more widely supported and is likely to continue working for a lot longer.
If you are a developer then you can fix bugs in the drivers, and make improvements to the system without being constrained by needing compatibility with an old abi (note even microsoft have changed their driver abi several times, because what seemed sensible 10 years ago no longer does)...
If you are a hardware manufacturer then open source drivers means wider support for your hardware, translating to more sales.
The reasons some manufacturers have for not releasing open drivers are generally detrimental to users, eg.. forced obsolescence - drivers no longer available, forcing you to buy new hardware. something to hide in the driver code something to hide in the hardware that would become obvious with open drivers driver contains third party code they cannot open source a paranoid desire to "maintain control' drm schemes (which will get cracked sooner or later anyway)
Even without left foot braking, when you apply the brake, the engine drops to idle... When you then switch back to the gas pedal there's a delay before the engine revs up again, some engines lag more than others too.
Take reliability statistics with a pinch of salt...
Different brands and types of cars are bought by different types of people... For instance the type of people who buy typical "boy racer" cars are also more likely to drive in an aggressive manner that puts more stress on the components of the car, while those who buy expensive luxury cars are more likely to drive sedately and follow the recommended maintenance schedules. Someone who buys an expensive cars is likely to take care of it, while someone who buys a cheap car is more likely to treat it with contempt... Also someone who buys a more expensive car is likely to be picky, and demand to have minor faults fixed while drivers of cheaper cars will often put up with minor faults rather than go to the expense of having them fixed. Similarly an expensive car will have more features, and thus more that could go wrong even tho most of the features are not critical to the operation of the car.
That can be quite annoying if you are rapidly switching between accelerator and brake, for instance on a roundabout i will accelerate onto the roundabout, brake gently to go round and then accelerate away as i leave it.
I have driven several VW/Audi vehicles and found this quite annoying, although i guess its more a case of my driving style being incompatible with the design of the car... I don't have problems in cars which don't behave this way.
In Europe, the vast majority of cars on the roads have manual transmissions, and all but high end luxury cars generally have the option (if not the default) of a manual.
Automatic gearboxes may be prevalent in the US, but in the UK and most other european countries the vast majority of cars have manual transmissions, and most people learn to drive in one because then their license allows them to drive both.
Turning off the engine with the car still in gear could damage the gearbox and/or engine, as the gearbox and engine will now be being driven by the wheels due to existing momentum of the car.
Modern cars have rev limiters which will prevent the engine from going too far into the red, also you will only redline the engine for as long as it takes you to pull off the road and stop, then you can turn the engine off too.
Bouncing off the ref limiter with no load on the engine for a couple of minutes isn't going to do much damage, if any.
Powered steering is for lower speeds, as a car without power steering accelerates the steering gets lighter, and in some cars the power steering actually works in reverse at high speed to add some resistance to the steering wheel... So if your car is moving, you will have steering... You should be able to steer yourself to the side of the road at least, since you won't need to make tight turns.
You dont need to turn the engine off tho, just put the gearbox in neutral and let the engine rev (most modern cars have rev limiters anyway)... If you turn the engine off while the car is still in gear you will slow down very quickly due to a severe case of engine braking , which in itself could be quite dangerous... Better to let the car coast and apply the brakes as you need them.
And closed source software also continues to have large numbers of security bugs... The fact that the source is open doesn't change the number of bugs that exist, although it can make them easier to find and/or fix.
It also must be said that the linux development process happens in the open... Many bugs are found during the early stages of new code being introduced, in both open and closed source code... The difference is that you never hear about bugs which were fixed during the early development stages of closed source code because the development process is kept secret.
Consider ARM based phones, ARM/MIPS/PPC based set top boxes routers and wifi access points, PPC based games consoles, PPC based macs from just a few years ago, MIPS/ARM based netbooks and tablets etc.
They are also common in larger businesses, i see a lot of PPC and zSeries boxes from IBM, some of which are running Linux, especially in places like banks. There are also a lot of Sparc boxes around, although those are usually running Solaris.
My solution to the printing problem (i have similar usage patterns to you, maybe a handful of sheets a year) is to buy an old but still fully functional laser printer which supports postscript. I can pretty much guarantee that any os i try to print from will support postscript, and will continue to do so many years from now, so no need for drivers. Also being a laser printer, the ink doesn't dry out like it would in an inkjet. It has a paper tray which holds 500 sheets, i filled it when i first got the printer 4 years ago and its 3/4 full still, and the toner is good for a few thousand more sheets.
While it's somewhat greedy of MS to force people to upgrade like this (after all, many products continue working for much longer than this), the blame is firmly placed on the users... If you bought XP, then you did so knowing that support for it would end no sooner than a given date. If you bought a product with a finite lifespan, and then failed to make appropriate plans for a replacement before the end of that lifespan then its entirely your own fault.
The problem is that lots of people did this... There is a lot of short sighted thinking out there.. Now normally noone else would care if someone shot themselves in the foot like this, but with us all being interconnected over the internet, one person's stupidity can easily affect others.
Windows only really has drivers for hardware that was intended for use with x86 compatible systems. I have various PCI cards that were designed for use on Sparc, Alpha or MIPS based machines and for which there are no windows drivers, but linux handles them just fine... Sun ethernet cards being just one such example. And then there is the hardware itself, windows either does not run at all on other platforms, or only has an ancient long abandoned version... MIPS and PPC support were cut off after NT4 SP1, Alpha support ended after NT4, IA64 support is going away and ARM support is not released yet, and will be very limited compared to what linux has.
I also have a number of headless servers that cannot boot windows because they don't contain any video hardware (linux boots fine on serial)...
I have an old HP all in one scanner/printer, HP only produced closed source drivers upto 32bit windows xp and macos 10.4 (ppc), the linux drivers are open source so not only do they still work, they come by default on most desktop oriented distros. Incidentally, the printer component still works by default on windows/osx using a generic deskjet driver, but the scanner component does not work at all.
I used to have a DEC Tulip NIC in my workstation, none of the 64bit versions of windows support it (unless you count the old version for the alpha cpu), and yet linux continues to support this card in the latest kernels.
For one, the upgrades are free, and there are still sufficiently light weight versions available that you should be able to run a modern version on your old hardware should you need to.
Also most Linux applications are open source. Most old applications still run fine on new Linux versions, some may work just fine with as little as a recompile (and chances are someone has already compiled anything used by more than a handful of people), and even in the worst cases it's possible to modify the code to get it working (and again someone else is likely to have done that already)... I regularly use a handful of programs which have not been updated since the mid 90s, running on a modern 64bit linux system.
And finally if all else fails, linux is open source... So just because one distributor has ceased providing support, doesn't mean you can't find someone else willing to maintain it. If there were as many users stuck on RedHat 7 as there will be on XP then there would be more than enough demand for several companies (and probably non profit groups too) to spring up and provide such support.
On the other hand, considering all the above, how many people do you really think are truly stuck on old linux versions? Most ancient Linux installs i've seen were down to laziness, where the system is not deemed critical enough to bother updating, and could be updated just fine if someone would bother. By contrast, i regularly see NT4 systems around which cannot be upgraded.
It is possible to make win7 use the xp style taskbar...
Also, if you don't qualify for a corporate volume xp license then you won't be able to get one legally... You could probably claim that after it reaches end of support xp is abandonware, but you'd still need to resort to a warez corporate version or an activation crack.
And the end of support date is not a secret, it has been published for years and even extended i believe... If someone paid for XP without first understanding what they were actually getting then that's their own fault.
Installing a firewall is not a sensible answer, it's just hiding the problem... Sooner or later there will be a pinhole breach through the firewall wether it be removable media, vulnerable clients, a vulnerable service that is explicitly let through etc. Once that happens, all the easily exploitable machines inside become easy fodder...
There have been many documented cases of old worms getting into a network of never-patched boxes which is just hidden away from the world, and causing absolute chaos.
Irresponsible of them to create such a system on a general purpose third party and closed source os... It should be running on an embedded device, where they control the entire software stack. And you should have taken that into account before you bought the device... Far too much short term thinking.
And a consulting company will happily fill the gap and provide maintenance for a 2.0 kernel, it makes no difference to them... Money is money, and the code is still available. With closed source you simply don't have the option of hiring a consulting company, it's the original vendor or nothing and it would be utterly irresponsible to make critical systems depend on something you don't have the source of and are utterly beholden to a single vendor for.
Most people i know have more linux boxes (Without realising it) than windows...
Most non geeks will have 1 computer, maybe its a laptop or maybe they have a laptop aswell... They are also likely to have a cellphone, if its android, webos or meego then it runs linux. They probably also have an internet connection, which uses a router and/or wifi ap, that could easily be linux. They almost certainly have a tv, and if its relatively modern its highly likely to be running linux. Most people also have a (cable/sat/ota) set top box with their tv, again many of these run linux. Many navigation devices are also linux based...
Just in my house, i have 2 linux based STBs, 1 linux based tv, 1 linux based wifi ap, 2 linux based gps units, 1 linux based phone... 7 linux boxes in my house without even trying. My old STBs were linux too, although i haven't counted those because i don't use them anymore.
We have 3 laptops, one of which belongs to the company i work for, and none of which run windows.
The issue here is that windows is blatantly in your face on 99% of laptop and desktop computers... Linux may be running on thousands of other devices, but people don't even know it's there.
From a technology standpoint that's a good thing, you want the equipment to work not be in your face... But from a marketing standpoint it's terrible, there are literally millions of linux users out there who have never heard of linux.
People don't develop Linux purely out of an altruistic desire to give something to someone else... It is a collaborative effort between a large number of individuals and organisations who realise that doing their small part (with many others doing the same) is much cheaper for them than having to develop an entire system from scratch.
Very true... Everyone filing in the same way would make it much easier to track errors and investigate how someone came to a particular calculation, while having the code open would allow people to see exactly how the software came to its conclusion. It would also be a fair system, since every tax payer would have equal access to the same software.
They could also try simplifying the tax system. A simpler system makes for less errors, less loopholes, less scope for tax evasion and much easier prosecution of anyone found breaking the rules.
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Well, if you have hardware which is a few generations old then you generally have 2 choices:
"a driver that works fine if you don't care about performance"
"hardware that doesnt work at all"
Considering that a video card which is a few generations old can still be a useful device for most purposes except gaming, i'd rather use the fully working card i already have than be forced to buy a new one.
Also if your using an old card, you probably aren't concerned with performance.
Having open source drivers in the kernel is better for 99% of people...
If you are a user, things are more likely to work out of the box, your hardware will be more widely supported and is likely to continue working for a lot longer.
If you are a developer then you can fix bugs in the drivers, and make improvements to the system without being constrained by needing compatibility with an old abi (note even microsoft have changed their driver abi several times, because what seemed sensible 10 years ago no longer does)...
If you are a hardware manufacturer then open source drivers means wider support for your hardware, translating to more sales.
The reasons some manufacturers have for not releasing open drivers are generally detrimental to users, eg..
forced obsolescence - drivers no longer available, forcing you to buy new hardware.
something to hide in the driver code
something to hide in the hardware that would become obvious with open drivers
driver contains third party code they cannot open source
a paranoid desire to "maintain control'
drm schemes (which will get cracked sooner or later anyway)
Even without left foot braking, when you apply the brake, the engine drops to idle... When you then switch back to the gas pedal there's a delay before the engine revs up again, some engines lag more than others too.
Take reliability statistics with a pinch of salt...
Different brands and types of cars are bought by different types of people... For instance the type of people who buy typical "boy racer" cars are also more likely to drive in an aggressive manner that puts more stress on the components of the car, while those who buy expensive luxury cars are more likely to drive sedately and follow the recommended maintenance schedules. Someone who buys an expensive cars is likely to take care of it, while someone who buys a cheap car is more likely to treat it with contempt...
Also someone who buys a more expensive car is likely to be picky, and demand to have minor faults fixed while drivers of cheaper cars will often put up with minor faults rather than go to the expense of having them fixed. Similarly an expensive car will have more features, and thus more that could go wrong even tho most of the features are not critical to the operation of the car.
That can be quite annoying if you are rapidly switching between accelerator and brake, for instance on a roundabout i will accelerate onto the roundabout, brake gently to go round and then accelerate away as i leave it.
I have driven several VW/Audi vehicles and found this quite annoying, although i guess its more a case of my driving style being incompatible with the design of the car... I don't have problems in cars which don't behave this way.
In Europe, the vast majority of cars on the roads have manual transmissions, and all but high end luxury cars generally have the option (if not the default) of a manual.
Automatic gearboxes may be prevalent in the US, but in the UK and most other european countries the vast majority of cars have manual transmissions, and most people learn to drive in one because then their license allows them to drive both.
Turning off the engine with the car still in gear could damage the gearbox and/or engine, as the gearbox and engine will now be being driven by the wheels due to existing momentum of the car.
Modern cars have rev limiters which will prevent the engine from going too far into the red, also you will only redline the engine for as long as it takes you to pull off the road and stop, then you can turn the engine off too.
Bouncing off the ref limiter with no load on the engine for a couple of minutes isn't going to do much damage, if any.
Powered steering is for lower speeds, as a car without power steering accelerates the steering gets lighter, and in some cars the power steering actually works in reverse at high speed to add some resistance to the steering wheel...
So if your car is moving, you will have steering... You should be able to steer yourself to the side of the road at least, since you won't need to make tight turns.
You dont need to turn the engine off tho, just put the gearbox in neutral and let the engine rev (most modern cars have rev limiters anyway)... If you turn the engine off while the car is still in gear you will slow down very quickly due to a severe case of engine braking , which in itself could be quite dangerous... Better to let the car coast and apply the brakes as you need them.
And closed source software also continues to have large numbers of security bugs... The fact that the source is open doesn't change the number of bugs that exist, although it can make them easier to find and/or fix.
It also must be said that the linux development process happens in the open... Many bugs are found during the early stages of new code being introduced, in both open and closed source code... The difference is that you never hear about bugs which were fixed during the early development stages of closed source code because the development process is kept secret.
Non x86 hardware is actually very common...
Consider ARM based phones, ARM/MIPS/PPC based set top boxes routers and wifi access points, PPC based games consoles, PPC based macs from just a few years ago, MIPS/ARM based netbooks and tablets etc.
They are also common in larger businesses, i see a lot of PPC and zSeries boxes from IBM, some of which are running Linux, especially in places like banks. There are also a lot of Sparc boxes around, although those are usually running Solaris.
My solution to the printing problem (i have similar usage patterns to you, maybe a handful of sheets a year) is to buy an old but still fully functional laser printer which supports postscript. I can pretty much guarantee that any os i try to print from will support postscript, and will continue to do so many years from now, so no need for drivers. Also being a laser printer, the ink doesn't dry out like it would in an inkjet.
It has a paper tray which holds 500 sheets, i filled it when i first got the printer 4 years ago and its 3/4 full still, and the toner is good for a few thousand more sheets.
Your seeing this from the wrong angle...
While it's somewhat greedy of MS to force people to upgrade like this (after all, many products continue working for much longer than this), the blame is firmly placed on the users...
If you bought XP, then you did so knowing that support for it would end no sooner than a given date. If you bought a product with a finite lifespan, and then failed to make appropriate plans for a replacement before the end of that lifespan then its entirely your own fault.
The problem is that lots of people did this... There is a lot of short sighted thinking out there..
Now normally noone else would care if someone shot themselves in the foot like this, but with us all being interconnected over the internet, one person's stupidity can easily affect others.
Windows only really has drivers for hardware that was intended for use with x86 compatible systems. I have various PCI cards that were designed for use on Sparc, Alpha or MIPS based machines and for which there are no windows drivers, but linux handles them just fine... Sun ethernet cards being just one such example.
And then there is the hardware itself, windows either does not run at all on other platforms, or only has an ancient long abandoned version... MIPS and PPC support were cut off after NT4 SP1, Alpha support ended after NT4, IA64 support is going away and ARM support is not released yet, and will be very limited compared to what linux has.
I also have a number of headless servers that cannot boot windows because they don't contain any video hardware (linux boots fine on serial)...
I have an old HP all in one scanner/printer, HP only produced closed source drivers upto 32bit windows xp and macos 10.4 (ppc), the linux drivers are open source so not only do they still work, they come by default on most desktop oriented distros. Incidentally, the printer component still works by default on windows/osx using a generic deskjet driver, but the scanner component does not work at all.
I used to have a DEC Tulip NIC in my workstation, none of the 64bit versions of windows support it (unless you count the old version for the alpha cpu), and yet linux continues to support this card in the latest kernels.
Linux is a different beast entirely...
For one, the upgrades are free, and there are still sufficiently light weight versions available that you should be able to run a modern version on your old hardware should you need to.
Also most Linux applications are open source. Most old applications still run fine on new Linux versions, some may work just fine with as little as a recompile (and chances are someone has already compiled anything used by more than a handful of people), and even in the worst cases it's possible to modify the code to get it working (and again someone else is likely to have done that already)... I regularly use a handful of programs which have not been updated since the mid 90s, running on a modern 64bit linux system.
And finally if all else fails, linux is open source... So just because one distributor has ceased providing support, doesn't mean you can't find someone else willing to maintain it. If there were as many users stuck on RedHat 7 as there will be on XP then there would be more than enough demand for several companies (and probably non profit groups too) to spring up and provide such support.
On the other hand, considering all the above, how many people do you really think are truly stuck on old linux versions? Most ancient Linux installs i've seen were down to laziness, where the system is not deemed critical enough to bother updating, and could be updated just fine if someone would bother. By contrast, i regularly see NT4 systems around which cannot be upgraded.
It is possible to make win7 use the xp style taskbar...
Also, if you don't qualify for a corporate volume xp license then you won't be able to get one legally... You could probably claim that after it reaches end of support xp is abandonware, but you'd still need to resort to a warez corporate version or an activation crack.
And the end of support date is not a secret, it has been published for years and even extended i believe... If someone paid for XP without first understanding what they were actually getting then that's their own fault.
Installing a firewall is not a sensible answer, it's just hiding the problem... Sooner or later there will be a pinhole breach through the firewall wether it be removable media, vulnerable clients, a vulnerable service that is explicitly let through etc. Once that happens, all the easily exploitable machines inside become easy fodder...
There have been many documented cases of old worms getting into a network of never-patched boxes which is just hidden away from the world, and causing absolute chaos.
Irresponsible of them to create such a system on a general purpose third party and closed source os...
It should be running on an embedded device, where they control the entire software stack. And you should have taken that into account before you bought the device... Far too much short term thinking.
Having the sourcecode doesn't seem to help people create malware targeted at linux or bsd users...
And a consulting company will happily fill the gap and provide maintenance for a 2.0 kernel, it makes no difference to them... Money is money, and the code is still available.
With closed source you simply don't have the option of hiring a consulting company, it's the original vendor or nothing and it would be utterly irresponsible to make critical systems depend on something you don't have the source of and are utterly beholden to a single vendor for.
Most people i know have more linux boxes (Without realising it) than windows...
Most non geeks will have 1 computer, maybe its a laptop or maybe they have a laptop aswell...
They are also likely to have a cellphone, if its android, webos or meego then it runs linux.
They probably also have an internet connection, which uses a router and/or wifi ap, that could easily be linux.
They almost certainly have a tv, and if its relatively modern its highly likely to be running linux.
Most people also have a (cable/sat/ota) set top box with their tv, again many of these run linux.
Many navigation devices are also linux based...
Just in my house, i have 2 linux based STBs, 1 linux based tv, 1 linux based wifi ap, 2 linux based gps units, 1 linux based phone ... 7 linux boxes in my house without even trying. My old STBs were linux too, although i haven't counted those because i don't use them anymore.
We have 3 laptops, one of which belongs to the company i work for, and none of which run windows.
The issue here is that windows is blatantly in your face on 99% of laptop and desktop computers...
Linux may be running on thousands of other devices, but people don't even know it's there.
From a technology standpoint that's a good thing, you want the equipment to work not be in your face... But from a marketing standpoint it's terrible, there are literally millions of linux users out there who have never heard of linux.
People don't develop Linux purely out of an altruistic desire to give something to someone else... It is a collaborative effort between a large number of individuals and organisations who realise that doing their small part (with many others doing the same) is much cheaper for them than having to develop an entire system from scratch.
Any such programs run on linux? or freebsd? or openbsd?
Or is it actually $20 plus cost of windows or osx plus cost of compatible hardware?
Out of interest, what happens if you get audited, and the auditor finds that you have actually been over paying your tax?
Very true...
Everyone filing in the same way would make it much easier to track errors and investigate how someone came to a particular calculation, while having the code open would allow people to see exactly how the software came to its conclusion.
It would also be a fair system, since every tax payer would have equal access to the same software.
They could also try simplifying the tax system. A simpler system makes for less errors, less loopholes, less scope for tax evasion and much easier prosecution of anyone found breaking the rules.