This article is a ridiculous waste of ink. The guy obviously has no idea what goes into PC hardware manufacturing & support - how much time and energy software & hardware developers, integraters, and testers spend getting the umpteen zillion parts of a PC working with the various OSs the system has to support. He seems to think that manufacturers develop their hardware, then ship it - end of story. Nope, we (I'm in the business) spend a godawful amount of time supporting the various operating systems we are required to support. And get this: the OSs with the largest user base get the most energy & resources. We spend countless person-hours making sure our hardare and software works on WinXP. WinME and OS/2 - not so much. Win2000 is ramping down, and Vista is ramping up. Linux is another bottom feeder: there's no great business reason for supporting anything but the barest of hardware functionality. Honestly, you can *thank* the few PC manufacturers that require at least some semblance of Linux support. If it wasn't for those PC manufacturers then most Independent Hardware Vendors wouldn't bother supporting Linux at all.
Slashdot Mirror
This article is a ridiculous waste of ink. The guy obviously has no idea what goes into PC hardware manufacturing & support - how much time and energy software & hardware developers, integraters, and testers spend getting the umpteen zillion parts of a PC working with the various OSs the system has to support. He seems to think that manufacturers develop their hardware, then ship it - end of story. Nope, we (I'm in the business) spend a godawful amount of time supporting the various operating systems we are required to support. And get this: the OSs with the largest user base get the most energy & resources. We spend countless person-hours making sure our hardare and software works on WinXP. WinME and OS/2 - not so much. Win2000 is ramping down, and Vista is ramping up. Linux is another bottom feeder: there's no great business reason for supporting anything but the barest of hardware functionality. Honestly, you can *thank* the few PC manufacturers that require at least some semblance of Linux support. If it wasn't for those PC manufacturers then most Independent Hardware Vendors wouldn't bother supporting Linux at all.