[kwlug-disc] interesting piece on the power of open source

[Lori Paniak]

I think hardware support is a red-herring.  It used to be the Linux
excuse for why we don't do well on the desktop.  I don't think hardware
support is appreciably worse in Linux 2.6.31 today than it is for
Windows 7. 

And yet, only 1% of desktop users are running a Linux desktop.  And the
System76 people probably barely scratch out a corporate existence.

It must be something else.

I agree getting solid OEM support is important, but only to keep people
from having to futz with iso images to get the Linux they want.

On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 14:52 -0500, Darcy Casselman wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Lori Paniak
> <ldpaniak at fourpisolutions.com> wrote:
> > Under the hood, Apple OSX is just some BSD distro.  What makes people
> > line up and pay big $$ for it?  Whatever it is is in the missing 30%.
> 
> Apple gets to focus all its testing and development effort on a known,
> small set of hardware.  I think there's room for someone to take Linux
> and do the same.
> 
> When Dell started shipping Ubuntu, I was hoping it would be part of
> that--using its clout with its hardware suppliers to wrest out decent
> drivers and contribute back to upstream. It doesn't appear to be doing
> that, but I still like the idea.  Smaller players like System76 do
> about as good a job supporting Linux.
> 
> The only way Linux has a hope in making a difference on the desktop is
> through OEMs pre-installing.  I'm all for people wokring to get
> whatever OS they happen to like to work on their machine.  That's
> great.  But I don't think you can have any sort of realistic
> expectation of an operating system working on your crazy hardware if
> the hardware vendor doesn't support it.  It's not Linux's fault you
> bought the wrong hardware.
> 
> Darcy.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc_kwlug.org mailing list
> kwlug-disc_kwlug.org at kwlug.org
> http://astoria.ccjclearline.com/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/attachments/20091201/b2252e5e/attachment.sig>