"If Apple doesnt want to support this they can easily not do this."
On the server side, yes. On the client side, no. The client doesn't know the difference. If iChat supports jabber, and you connect to a jabber server hosted on a linux box somewher, for example, that does support the transports, your transported contacts will still show, as jabber contacts.
I do agree with your sentiment about OSX server not supporting transports. Besides the political issues, it's a potential problem as far as reputation goes. MSN and Yahoo especially change their protocols from time to time to lock out third party software.
It takes only 15 minutes or so before the transport devs have figured out the changes and updated the transports, but that plust the time it takes sysadmins to install the updated transports, will reflect negatively on Apple. The market will see that as unreliable.
Granted, I don't know that either. What I do know is if you have your transports defined, you can pretty much use any jabber client, even if they don't support setup of transports. Your transported contacts will still show.
With a jabber client you don't really need an IM that supports multiple protocols, because that can be done on the jabber server via transports.
In other words, you connect to the jabber server, and the server hooks you up to your msn, icq, yahoo, ect. accounts. You can configure your transports with a client like PSI http://psi.affinix.com
If you don't want to do it that way, gaim http://gaim.sourceforge.net can connect to a host of protocols. Mine starts and connects to six different accounts in about 4 seconds (P-III, slow disc). It supports IRC too...
In KDE you have kopete as well, that does the same thing.
I do. For one thing, I have a lot of CDs that are irreplaceable. Demo CDs of which the albums were never release, limited edition CDs, artists/bands that bought out only one CD in small numbers, CDs that I bought while travelling overseas which might still be available but almost impossible for me to get hold of.
My car got broken into once, and my CD pouch (which I hid under the seat) was stolen. It had all my favourite CDs in, many of which I could never find again anywhere.
So now any CDs that don't stay in my shelf get copied and the copies are the ones being used.
Another problem is that the life of a CD is nowhere near 100 years like they said when CDs first became available. I have many CDs that are 10 years old or older that have deteriorated so badly that I'm afraid to put them in a CD player.
Another reason is that most all CD pouches, except some of the more expensive ones that are all-cloth inside, really scratch CDs with use.
It makes sense to make copies of your CDs - its like putting sunblock on before you go to the beach.
For real, but I don't believe that's the point. The concern now is that MS did all these great things to the security and in the process broke a bunch of applications, all in the name of extra security. And as it turns out it's no better than it was, it just makes you think it is.
Although I do agree that this particular notebook has issues. It mostly complains about one of the ATi dlls. I have updated the drivers every time a new one comes out and it has not made much of a difference. HP however sent it back saying it's fine.
Just because *you* have never seen a BSOD in Win2k/XP doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I admin about the same number of 2k/XP machines (no two are exactly the same hardware, every PC a little/lot different), and I've had a few that weren't hardware related. Filesystem corruption being one of the most frequent culprits. And this is on UPS-ed machines.
No more BSODs? On which planet do you live?
True, Windows 2000 and XP features the Blue Screen Of Death a lot less often than earlier versions, but that's more a result of them being based on NT, than any new advances. To be honest, I've used NT 4 for a lot longer than 2000 and XP combined, and I've seen fewer BSODs in NT than in 2k and XP. But that's not the point.
BSODs are still with us. I got one today on a relatively new HP nx9010 notebook, with nothing much installed on it aside from the software that came with it and MS Office. Windows XP Pro on a supposedly good quality notebook. According to the owner, it happens every couple of days when he switches it on. Then he has to unplug the mains, and unplug the battery, since you can't switch it off.
Yeah, Blue Screens Of Death are still with us.
"Newsflash boys, the evil empire has no fear of Linux in the long term."
Microsoft doesn't care that it's losing server market share to Linux?
I guess that's why they're spending millions on the Windows vs Linux TCO campaign.
An for what it's worth, that campaign is doing MS more harm than good, because now everybody who's never heard the work Linux before, wants to know what Linux is. Since that campaign started, my company has experienced a massive increase in requests for linux based servers. And we don't even advertise our linux at all.
I was actually referring to the binary-only driver. They are no better than their windows versions. They introduce Windows limitations to Linux.
My fear is that by sharing drivers with Windows, Linux's stability will be severely compromised.
Thanks for the info on the Gatos drivers. I haven't looked at them for a while, last time I did they only supported XFree86-4.2, and that was long after most distros standardised on 4.3. Although, for my hardware, 4.3 offers me nothing that 4.2 doesn't, I've never wanted to mess around with downgrading XFree86.
As far as I understand, ATi doesn't give out *all* the specs to the newer cards, because the cards use technology licenced from other companies and ATi are not at liberty to devulge that info. Same as nVidia.
I just hope that the ATi binary drivers catch up with the nVidia ones soon in terms of stability and ease of installation. nVidia has come along way. The first time I installed it it meant doing a lot by hand, now it's just run the binary, run Sax2 (in SUSE) and you're go. I believe on Mandrake it's a similar routine, don't know about the rest.
For now I'm happy with my Radeon 7500 128MB - I don't have to do anything special to get it to work, and it's fast enough to play Doom III
"I know some of this exists for the wireless networking stuff, and nVidia and ATi's linux efforts are pretty much recompiles of the windows drivers.."
Have you looked at any of the linux forums lately? The nVidia, ATi, and ndiswrapper (sp?) are some of the most troublesome drivers.
"Hell, even forget Windows driver model.. Come up with a new, universal model."
Although I agree with the sentiment, it will be a cold day in hell before Microsoft plays along with this, and even if they do, they'll change it, "enhance" it, break it, customise it and screw it up so badly (and the whole industry will settle on Microsoft's version) that it won't work properly on any other OS in any way.
I think when ATi stopped providing specs to the open source developers for their graphics cards, they saw for the first time just how many sales their opensource support secure for them. Hence they started making the drivers. I think if nVidia drop their Linux/BSD driver support, they'll see a fair chunk of their sales disappear.
"Every driver for every piece of hardware has to be rewritten by scratch and approved by Linus to make it into the kernel."
Which is done for the same reason that MS has the WHQL driver program.
I agree with your sentiment, but it will never happen. One by one companies will wake up and start supporting OSS development or provide drivers. And when they do (if they provide quality drivers), they'll see their sales rise.
It really depends on what the rest of the hardware in the box is. AMD's (especially K6-II/III and Duron) CPUs tend to be seen as the low cost alternative and put in a box with a cheapo mobo, cheap mem and everything that goes with it, more often than Intel's CPUs. This is just my observation in dealing with a lot of SMEs, some who go all out and some who try to save where ever possible.
Shining example. We run an Astaro firewall for one of our clients. At first they didn't have machine available, when we wanted to start it as a proof of concept. We used one of our own boxes standing around the office, a Duron 800mhz on a PC-Chips board with SiS everything onboard, 512MB SD-RAM running at 100mhz. This PC worked quite nicely, and load never went past about 0.90
Later they retired one of their desktops to be the Astaro box. It's a P4 core 2Ghz Celeron, Intel board, 512MB SD-RAM (at 133Mhz). Load is constantly on 5.0. We've swapped out everything on that box, except the CPU. Even with a DDR board, it still running at an excessively high load.
Another example. I have an AthlonXP 2400+ on a SD-RAM board. A friend of mine has a 3ghz HT P4 with DDR333. He helped me once make ogg files of various quality of a movie's sound to compare. The P4 was only a fraction faster per file than the Athlon. Encoding two files at a time, we expected the P4 to be much quicker overall, but despite the HT, the Atlon was actually quicker per file. The encoding time per file stayed the same (time devided by two files), while on the P4 it took longer per file if we did two at a time.
This doesn't mean that the Athlon is always a faster CPU. My friend's gaming is a bit smoother, and he compiles KDE for example quite a bit quicker too. It's just that the performance depends entirely on what you do, and what quality hardware you use. If you put an Athlon on a good motherboard, it will kick arse. If you put a P4 on a crab board, it will suck.
Speaking of which, what's the idea of a firewall that seals off a network, when you give the clients a firewall client that allows them to push through the firewall? Seems a bit pointless to have a firewall in the first place then.
I could have told you this just by looking at the time when the spam starts rolling in - the start day in the U.S. east coast.
I'm in GMT+2 zone, all day is quiet, until around late afternoon when the U.S. day starts. Then all the spam starts rolling in. Same goes for virus mails.
"i have a geforce fx graphics card, very popular card, when i installed fed my monitor was all fuzzy, it required me to download latest nvidia drivers and figure out how to install them correctly"
Having to download the drivers is nothing special, you have to do that in Windows too to get 3D. I will agree that having had trouble with an nVidia card in Fedora is unnecessary, seeing as it is well supported by the nv driver (2D only equivalent of Window's driver for nVidia cards). But then I'm not surprised. I have not installed Fedora anywhere without having to hack a few things by hand to have everything working - especially on desktops. Fedora is a half baked product, I'm sorry to say.
I cannot speak for much of the other commercial distros, except the ones I work with a lot. the nVidia drivers come as an executable binary these days (same as in Windows). You shut down X, run it and start X. That should be all. You might have to run your distro specific graphics setup tool if it will give you extra settings.
I know on Mandrake you simply run the nVidia installer and go. On SUSE you can have YOU (YaST Online Update) download it for you. Run Sax2 (SUSE's graphic setup tool) which will let you position your display, choose and try out different resolutions/colour settings, setup multiple screens, ect. Before the driver came as an executable, you installed the two rpms and ran Sax2 - same story, I've never had any hassles. I know some people do, and that's unfortunate, but in all fairness, most of the trouble I've seen had to do with the presence of onboard graphics, in addition to an AGP card, and the nVidia driver trying to us it instead of the add-on card. This is a fault on nVidia's part.
I agree with you on the sentiment about Linux fanboys. I am not a Linux fanboy, never will be. I work for an all Microsoft company, spend more time working on Windows machines than Linux ones (except my workstation). I know both sides of the story. We have replaced most of our clients mail servers with Linux+Postfix, as well as installed Linux firewalls. This has given them a lot more money to spend where it's more necessary. Most have a Windows server too, mostly because they need it as an application server for accounting packages. So the Windows server usually take over as a DC too, although we have one Linux DC that hasn't given any trouble since we installed it.
There's a right tool for every job. Sometimes Windows is right for the job, sometimes it's not, somethimes it's the vastly more expensive alternative. You get to choose.
"Havn't you just described linux's shortcommings brillaintly?"
No, I described the reason for perceived difficulty in USING Linux.
"most people dont care because windows will do what they want fine, and if it all fails, even if you never installed windows, its much easier than linux."
I don't see how Windows is easier to install than Linux. Take a PC with mainstream hardware and a blank hard disc. Stick in your Windows CD. Answer all the questions (mostly with "Yes"/"OK").
Now take the same PC, blank disc and all, stick in a Linux CD from a mainstream commercial distro (I'll use SUSE 8.x or 9.x for example). Boot of the CD, answerk all the questions (mostly with "Yes"/"OK"). How is this more difficult?
The only real difference is that once your linux has finished installing, you have all your mainstream applications immediately available for use, where you'll have to install them first in Windows.
Of course, Debian, Gentoo and the like is a bit tougher to get going, but they are not or beginners. That's why we have commercial distros.
"take a routine task such as dvd burning, i went searching for the linux alternative for fedora, seeing what i had to do, i thought, why waste my time with this kernel BS, or waiting for a fecking key in the mail(still aint got) when nero is sitting pretty on my ntfs partition. as if the linux software available could match nero anyway."
Fedora doesn't ship with k3b? Dude, get yourself another distro. I've never had to fool around with anything on a kernel level to get CD/DVD writing. Fedora doesn't represent all of linux (it isn't a very well rounded distro as far as I'm concerned, a lot of things don't work by default). Both SUSE and Mandrake ship with a CD/DVD writing tools that work out of the box and will rival any windows program out there. And if you can overcome your fear of the command line and reading a little bit of user documentation, the CD/DVD writing tools provided with linux will beat the pants of any windows ap as far as functionality goes (although not in a point and click fashion).
"you talk about bitchy n00bs, look at yourself, a bitchy vereran, why expect new users to settle for less when you want them to convert to linux?"
I never claimed to want people to switch to Linux. People should use the best tool for the task or whatever they're comfortable with. At the same time I'm very active in linux user groups, helping folks out wherever I can, always patient with the noobs.
BUT
It grates me that people want Linux to work like Windows. Linux is NOT Windows. It does NOT work like Windows. It does NOT pretend to be like Windows. It does NOT have to be or work like Windows. The only people who want Linux to be like Windows (again, read my first post) are people who want to have what Linux offers them, but don't want to have to learn to use it. It doesn't work like that. If you want the Windows way of doing things, stay with Windows.
I'm so tired of these misconceptions. It's like saying a car is difficult to drive because replacing a flat tire involves putting the car on a jack, unscrewing the nuts, switching wheels, screwing the nuts back on, taking the car off the jack and putting the equipment back in the boot. Or like saying a car is difficult to drive because adding an air conditioner is not a snap-in DIY job. Driving a car involves making it move forward, around bends and making it stop. That's all. The rest is mechanic's work. If people want to work on their own cars, they had better be prepared to learn a thing or two and follow the instructions. And not try to apply instructions for one brand of motor to another.
Same with software. Installing Windows and installing/removing software should not be the avarage user's concern - that's why we have IT guys. If people want to setup their own computers, they have to be OK with learning new stuff.
Remember that not all browsers and applications that access http:// sites identify them as themselves. Last time I checked (a long time ago though) Opera identified as IE by default.
Some applications that uses http to access updates/other info identify themselves as IE too, some as Mozilla. I've seen a antivirus package that access updates from an http site (mirrored locally) that identified as Mozilla.
Mail clients also access web pages (when images ect. are embedded into mails). Again, many mail clients identify themselves as IE, some you can select. I can't remember wich, but I remember seeing one that can be set to identify as Mozilla or Opera.
So the figures are a rough estimate. I'm often surprised when I visit one of my seemingly non-tech browser-ignorant clients and they have FireFox or Opera running because they like it more and/or find it faster/more stable ect. Without me having told them about it.
"It's not necessarily that Windows users are lazy - it's that they have a different set of priorities centered around the activity they want to complete, rather than the process of getting where they can do the activity they want to complete."
Of course, you're right. But that brings us back to the issue about the "Linux is difficult" line that really bothers me. If you are using a system and you know the system, it's easy to work. Now you find out about this new system that's more powerful/faster/whatever but it works a little differently. You learn how to use it. Now that you know how to use it, it is easy to use.
I find a lot of things easier to do on my linux system than on Windows. Because I know my linux system. I don't know Windows as well. But that doesn't justify me accusing Windows of being difficult to use.
Also, comparing apples to apples, ease of installation is NOT an indicator for ease of install. It's NOT the same thing.
"It's not necessarily that Windows users are lazy"
Well, the only people who are constantly bitching about Linux being so difficult are the Windows users who expect it to be exactly like Windows and don't want to learn anything new. It's like computer=Windows and if anything dares to be different, it's branded "difficult" and "not ready for the desktop."
And of course, this whining is almost always the result of someone having trouble installing something (hardware or software). No one cares to mention that once you have all your apps and hardware running, your desktop is - if you go with what most distros install as default - point and click easy (just like Windows), and you have a lot less to worry about (virus,spyware - I don't have to go into datails here).
Also, please remember that the vast majority of packages out there in their source form, are apps written by the authors for their own use. There's no commercial incentive, like with MS and Apple.
I write an app for myself, and from the goodness of my heard decides to make it available for free, thinking that someone might find it useful. Doing this costs me time and money, which means by making it available, I'm actually making a loss. I would be most annoyed if I'm flooded by noobs who bitch and moan because my app is not as "easy" as what they're used to.
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"If Apple doesnt want to support this they can easily not do this."
On the server side, yes. On the client side, no. The client doesn't know the difference. If iChat supports jabber, and you connect to a jabber server hosted on a linux box somewher, for example, that does support the transports, your transported contacts will still show, as jabber contacts.
I do agree with your sentiment about OSX server not supporting transports. Besides the political issues, it's a potential problem as far as reputation goes. MSN and Yahoo especially change their protocols from time to time to lock out third party software.
It takes only 15 minutes or so before the transport devs have figured out the changes and updated the transports, but that plust the time it takes sysadmins to install the updated transports, will reflect negatively on Apple. The market will see that as unreliable.
Granted, I don't know that either. What I do know is if you have your transports defined, you can pretty much use any jabber client, even if they don't support setup of transports. Your transported contacts will still show.
With a jabber client you don't really need an IM that supports multiple protocols, because that can be done on the jabber server via transports.
In other words, you connect to the jabber server, and the server hooks you up to your msn, icq, yahoo, ect. accounts. You can configure your transports with a client like PSI http://psi.affinix.com
If you don't want to do it that way, gaim http://gaim.sourceforge.net can connect to a host of protocols. Mine starts and connects to six different accounts in about 4 seconds (P-III, slow disc). It supports IRC too...
In KDE you have kopete as well, that does the same thing.
The Lord of the Rings 8: ???
The Lord of the Rings 9: Profit.
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Only some of us are fortunate enough to learn from other people's mistakes. The rest of us has to be the other people....
Now I can afford that new notebook after all!
I do. For one thing, I have a lot of CDs that are irreplaceable. Demo CDs of which the albums were never release, limited edition CDs, artists/bands that bought out only one CD in small numbers, CDs that I bought while travelling overseas which might still be available but almost impossible for me to get hold of.
My car got broken into once, and my CD pouch (which I hid under the seat) was stolen. It had all my favourite CDs in, many of which I could never find again anywhere.
So now any CDs that don't stay in my shelf get copied and the copies are the ones being used.
Another problem is that the life of a CD is nowhere near 100 years like they said when CDs first became available. I have many CDs that are 10 years old or older that have deteriorated so badly that I'm afraid to put them in a CD player.
Another reason is that most all CD pouches, except some of the more expensive ones that are all-cloth inside, really scratch CDs with use.
It makes sense to make copies of your CDs - its like putting sunblock on before you go to the beach.
A Soviet Russian company? It bugs me that the post didn't end in "profit" ...
For real, but I don't believe that's the point. The concern now is that MS did all these great things to the security and in the process broke a bunch of applications, all in the name of extra security. And as it turns out it's no better than it was, it just makes you think it is.
Although I do agree that this particular notebook has issues. It mostly complains about one of the ATi dlls. I have updated the drivers every time a new one comes out and it has not made much of a difference. HP however sent it back saying it's fine.
Just because *you* have never seen a BSOD in Win2k/XP doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I admin about the same number of 2k/XP machines (no two are exactly the same hardware, every PC a little/lot different), and I've had a few that weren't hardware related. Filesystem corruption being one of the most frequent culprits. And this is on UPS-ed machines.
No more BSODs? On which planet do you live? True, Windows 2000 and XP features the Blue Screen Of Death a lot less often than earlier versions, but that's more a result of them being based on NT, than any new advances. To be honest, I've used NT 4 for a lot longer than 2000 and XP combined, and I've seen fewer BSODs in NT than in 2k and XP. But that's not the point. BSODs are still with us. I got one today on a relatively new HP nx9010 notebook, with nothing much installed on it aside from the software that came with it and MS Office. Windows XP Pro on a supposedly good quality notebook. According to the owner, it happens every couple of days when he switches it on. Then he has to unplug the mains, and unplug the battery, since you can't switch it off. Yeah, Blue Screens Of Death are still with us.
"Newsflash boys, the evil empire has no fear of Linux in the long term."
Microsoft doesn't care that it's losing server market share to Linux?
I guess that's why they're spending millions on the Windows vs Linux TCO campaign.
An for what it's worth, that campaign is doing MS more harm than good, because now everybody who's never heard the work Linux before, wants to know what Linux is. Since that campaign started, my company has experienced a massive increase in requests for linux based servers. And we don't even advertise our linux at all.
I was actually referring to the binary-only driver. They are no better than their windows versions. They introduce Windows limitations to Linux.
My fear is that by sharing drivers with Windows, Linux's stability will be severely compromised.
Thanks for the info on the Gatos drivers. I haven't looked at them for a while, last time I did they only supported XFree86-4.2, and that was long after most distros standardised on 4.3. Although, for my hardware, 4.3 offers me nothing that 4.2 doesn't, I've never wanted to mess around with downgrading XFree86.
As far as I understand, ATi doesn't give out *all* the specs to the newer cards, because the cards use technology licenced from other companies and ATi are not at liberty to devulge that info. Same as nVidia.
I just hope that the ATi binary drivers catch up with the nVidia ones soon in terms of stability and ease of installation. nVidia has come along way. The first time I installed it it meant doing a lot by hand, now it's just run the binary, run Sax2 (in SUSE) and you're go. I believe on Mandrake it's a similar routine, don't know about the rest.
For now I'm happy with my Radeon 7500 128MB - I don't have to do anything special to get it to work, and it's fast enough to play Doom III
"I know some of this exists for the wireless networking stuff, and nVidia and ATi's linux efforts are pretty much recompiles of the windows drivers.."
Have you looked at any of the linux forums lately? The nVidia, ATi, and ndiswrapper (sp?) are some of the most troublesome drivers.
"Hell, even forget Windows driver model.. Come up with a new, universal model."
Although I agree with the sentiment, it will be a cold day in hell before Microsoft plays along with this, and even if they do, they'll change it, "enhance" it, break it, customise it and screw it up so badly (and the whole industry will settle on Microsoft's version) that it won't work properly on any other OS in any way.
I think when ATi stopped providing specs to the open source developers for their graphics cards, they saw for the first time just how many sales their opensource support secure for them. Hence they started making the drivers. I think if nVidia drop their Linux/BSD driver support, they'll see a fair chunk of their sales disappear.
"Every driver for every piece of hardware has to be rewritten by scratch and approved by Linus to make it into the kernel."
Which is done for the same reason that MS has the WHQL driver program.
I agree with your sentiment, but it will never happen. One by one companies will wake up and start supporting OSS development or provide drivers. And when they do (if they provide quality drivers), they'll see their sales rise.
It really depends on what the rest of the hardware in the box is. AMD's (especially K6-II/III and Duron) CPUs tend to be seen as the low cost alternative and put in a box with a cheapo mobo, cheap mem and everything that goes with it, more often than Intel's CPUs. This is just my observation in dealing with a lot of SMEs, some who go all out and some who try to save where ever possible.
Shining example. We run an Astaro firewall for one of our clients. At first they didn't have machine available, when we wanted to start it as a proof of concept. We used one of our own boxes standing around the office, a Duron 800mhz on a PC-Chips board with SiS everything onboard, 512MB SD-RAM running at 100mhz. This PC worked quite nicely, and load never went past about 0.90
Later they retired one of their desktops to be the Astaro box. It's a P4 core 2Ghz Celeron, Intel board, 512MB SD-RAM (at 133Mhz). Load is constantly on 5.0. We've swapped out everything on that box, except the CPU. Even with a DDR board, it still running at an excessively high load.
Another example. I have an AthlonXP 2400+ on a SD-RAM board. A friend of mine has a 3ghz HT P4 with DDR333. He helped me once make ogg files of various quality of a movie's sound to compare. The P4 was only a fraction faster per file than the Athlon. Encoding two files at a time, we expected the P4 to be much quicker overall, but despite the HT, the Atlon was actually quicker per file. The encoding time per file stayed the same (time devided by two files), while on the P4 it took longer per file if we did two at a time.
This doesn't mean that the Athlon is always a faster CPU. My friend's gaming is a bit smoother, and he compiles KDE for example quite a bit quicker too. It's just that the performance depends entirely on what you do, and what quality hardware you use. If you put an Athlon on a good motherboard, it will kick arse. If you put a P4 on a crab board, it will suck.
They already have - "ISA."
Speaking of which, what's the idea of a firewall that seals off a network, when you give the clients a firewall client that allows them to push through the firewall? Seems a bit pointless to have a firewall in the first place then.
WOW respect! Hi found a girl that's not only a geek, but also shit hot. I have yet to find both those awesome qualities in one package!
"Why doesn't spam come under the same scrutiny and attempts to shut it down as P2P?"
Because the guys who have the power to do this' secretaries are deleting all their spam, so they don't even know about it.
I could have told you this just by looking at the time when the spam starts rolling in - the start day in the U.S. east coast.
I'm in GMT+2 zone, all day is quiet, until around late afternoon when the U.S. day starts. Then all the spam starts rolling in. Same goes for virus mails.
"i have a geforce fx graphics card, very popular card, when i installed fed my monitor was all fuzzy, it required me to download latest nvidia drivers and figure out how to install them correctly"
Having to download the drivers is nothing special, you have to do that in Windows too to get 3D. I will agree that having had trouble with an nVidia card in Fedora is unnecessary, seeing as it is well supported by the nv driver (2D only equivalent of Window's driver for nVidia cards). But then I'm not surprised. I have not installed Fedora anywhere without having to hack a few things by hand to have everything working - especially on desktops. Fedora is a half baked product, I'm sorry to say.
I cannot speak for much of the other commercial distros, except the ones I work with a lot. the nVidia drivers come as an executable binary these days (same as in Windows). You shut down X, run it and start X. That should be all. You might have to run your distro specific graphics setup tool if it will give you extra settings.
I know on Mandrake you simply run the nVidia installer and go. On SUSE you can have YOU (YaST Online Update) download it for you. Run Sax2 (SUSE's graphic setup tool) which will let you position your display, choose and try out different resolutions/colour settings, setup multiple screens, ect. Before the driver came as an executable, you installed the two rpms and ran Sax2 - same story, I've never had any hassles. I know some people do, and that's unfortunate, but in all fairness, most of the trouble I've seen had to do with the presence of onboard graphics, in addition to an AGP card, and the nVidia driver trying to us it instead of the add-on card. This is a fault on nVidia's part.
I agree with you on the sentiment about Linux fanboys. I am not a Linux fanboy, never will be. I work for an all Microsoft company, spend more time working on Windows machines than Linux ones (except my workstation). I know both sides of the story. We have replaced most of our clients mail servers with Linux+Postfix, as well as installed Linux firewalls. This has given them a lot more money to spend where it's more necessary. Most have a Windows server too, mostly because they need it as an application server for accounting packages. So the Windows server usually take over as a DC too, although we have one Linux DC that hasn't given any trouble since we installed it.
There's a right tool for every job. Sometimes Windows is right for the job, sometimes it's not, somethimes it's the vastly more expensive alternative. You get to choose.
"Havn't you just described linux's shortcommings brillaintly?"
No, I described the reason for perceived difficulty in USING Linux.
"most people dont care because windows will do what they want fine, and if it all fails, even if you never installed windows, its much easier than linux."
I don't see how Windows is easier to install than Linux. Take a PC with mainstream hardware and a blank hard disc. Stick in your Windows CD. Answer all the questions (mostly with "Yes"/"OK").
Now take the same PC, blank disc and all, stick in a Linux CD from a mainstream commercial distro (I'll use SUSE 8.x or 9.x for example). Boot of the CD, answerk all the questions (mostly with "Yes"/"OK"). How is this more difficult?
The only real difference is that once your linux has finished installing, you have all your mainstream applications immediately available for use, where you'll have to install them first in Windows.
Of course, Debian, Gentoo and the like is a bit tougher to get going, but they are not or beginners. That's why we have commercial distros.
"take a routine task such as dvd burning, i went searching for the linux alternative for fedora, seeing what i had to do, i thought, why waste my time with this kernel BS, or waiting for a fecking key in the mail(still aint got) when nero is sitting pretty on my ntfs partition. as if the linux software available could match nero anyway."
Fedora doesn't ship with k3b? Dude, get yourself another distro. I've never had to fool around with anything on a kernel level to get CD/DVD writing. Fedora doesn't represent all of linux (it isn't a very well rounded distro as far as I'm concerned, a lot of things don't work by default). Both SUSE and Mandrake ship with a CD/DVD writing tools that work out of the box and will rival any windows program out there. And if you can overcome your fear of the command line and reading a little bit of user documentation, the CD/DVD writing tools provided with linux will beat the pants of any windows ap as far as functionality goes (although not in a point and click fashion).
"you talk about bitchy n00bs, look at yourself, a bitchy vereran, why expect new users to settle for less when you want them to convert to linux?"
I never claimed to want people to switch to Linux. People should use the best tool for the task or whatever they're comfortable with. At the same time I'm very active in linux user groups, helping folks out wherever I can, always patient with the noobs.
BUT
It grates me that people want Linux to work like Windows. Linux is NOT Windows. It does NOT work like Windows. It does NOT pretend to be like Windows. It does NOT have to be or work like Windows. The only people who want Linux to be like Windows (again, read my first post) are people who want to have what Linux offers them, but don't want to have to learn to use it. It doesn't work like that. If you want the Windows way of doing things, stay with Windows.
I'm so tired of these misconceptions. It's like saying a car is difficult to drive because replacing a flat tire involves putting the car on a jack, unscrewing the nuts, switching wheels, screwing the nuts back on, taking the car off the jack and putting the equipment back in the boot. Or like saying a car is difficult to drive because adding an air conditioner is not a snap-in DIY job. Driving a car involves making it move forward, around bends and making it stop. That's all. The rest is mechanic's work. If people want to work on their own cars, they had better be prepared to learn a thing or two and follow the instructions. And not try to apply instructions for one brand of motor to another.
Same with software. Installing Windows and installing/removing software should not be the avarage user's concern - that's why we have IT guys. If people want to setup their own computers, they have to be OK with learning new stuff.
Remember that not all browsers and applications that access http:// sites identify them as themselves. Last time I checked (a long time ago though) Opera identified as IE by default.
Some applications that uses http to access updates/other info identify themselves as IE too, some as Mozilla. I've seen a antivirus package that access updates from an http site (mirrored locally) that identified as Mozilla.
Mail clients also access web pages (when images ect. are embedded into mails). Again, many mail clients identify themselves as IE, some you can select. I can't remember wich, but I remember seeing one that can be set to identify as Mozilla or Opera.
So the figures are a rough estimate. I'm often surprised when I visit one of my seemingly non-tech browser-ignorant clients and they have FireFox or Opera running because they like it more and/or find it faster/more stable ect. Without me having told them about it.
"It's not necessarily that Windows users are lazy - it's that they have a different set of priorities centered around the activity they want to complete, rather than the process of getting where they can do the activity they want to complete."
Of course, you're right. But that brings us back to the issue about the "Linux is difficult" line that really bothers me. If you are using a system and you know the system, it's easy to work. Now you find out about this new system that's more powerful/faster/whatever but it works a little differently. You learn how to use it. Now that you know how to use it, it is easy to use.
I find a lot of things easier to do on my linux system than on Windows. Because I know my linux system. I don't know Windows as well. But that doesn't justify me accusing Windows of being difficult to use.
Also, comparing apples to apples, ease of installation is NOT an indicator for ease of install. It's NOT the same thing.
"It's not necessarily that Windows users are lazy"
Well, the only people who are constantly bitching about Linux being so difficult are the Windows users who expect it to be exactly like Windows and don't want to learn anything new. It's like computer=Windows and if anything dares to be different, it's branded "difficult" and "not ready for the desktop."
And of course, this whining is almost always the result of someone having trouble installing something (hardware or software). No one cares to mention that once you have all your apps and hardware running, your desktop is - if you go with what most distros install as default - point and click easy (just like Windows), and you have a lot less to worry about (virus,spyware - I don't have to go into datails here).
Also, please remember that the vast majority of packages out there in their source form, are apps written by the authors for their own use. There's no commercial incentive, like with MS and Apple.
I write an app for myself, and from the goodness of my heard decides to make it available for free, thinking that someone might find it useful. Doing this costs me time and money, which means by making it available, I'm actually making a loss. I would be most annoyed if I'm flooded by noobs who bitch and moan because my app is not as "easy" as what they're used to.