[plug] Fw: [plug-ctte] Modem problems

[Chris Caston]

On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 20:42, Craig Ringer wrote:
> Frankly, this illustrates one of my concerns about installfests and 
> about people telling others that "you should use linux". It's very hard 
> to properly explain to people the issues they're likely to encounter 
> such as their PCI/USB 56k/DSL modem, webcam, 3D accel, external disk 
> devices, 802.11{ag} hardware, etc possibly not working or taking 
> considerable extra effort to get working.
> 
> In particular, I think the winmodem spiel (TM) is very, very important. 
> "These things are a pain, and don't work well with Linux. I don't know 
> if your model will work and don't have time to look into it now, so be 
> aware that you may not be able to use it under Linux or it might take a 
> lot of complex fiddling."
> 
> Saying "Linux is great, it'll solve all your problems, blah blah" will 
> frequently result in disappointed, frustrated new users. Presumably 
> that's not what is desired.
> 

As a person that fixes peoples Windows (and hardware) problems 12 hours
a day, 6 days week can I easily attest that there are many many areas in
which setting up hardware and software under Linux is much easier than
it is under Windows.

Sure there's a handful of little annoying things that poke out but they
become less and less of a problem as the software develops. Add to this
that the pace of development in open source software is probably the
fastest it has ever been.Look at where Linux was 2 years ago compared to
where it is today. Now imagine it next year and the year after. The mind
boggles.

For example setting up a cd burner under Linux used to be a big pain
(especially for new users) but now with 2.6 you can just do cdrecord
-dev=/dev/cdrom without messing about installing ide-scsi modules or
playing with lilo.

Sure when you buy hardware you get Windows software and drivers with it
but it's always different and works only with the hardware it came with
and constantly changing. With Linux you have mostly the same open source
tools that will work with hardware from most vendors.  

Contrast this is Windows:

* Different vendor wireless utilities
* Different TV tuner software (that only works with the card it was
bundled with)
* Different printer and scanner utilities (all dumbed down to the point
of being almost useless) with almost no conformity
* The dopey and crazily organised Nero Express 2 as well as an earlier
version of Nero that had stupid stuff bundled like Media center that
caused XP to BSOD.
* The time you need to spend downloading drivers and wading through
manufacturers websites like the Aopen site that always seems to load
slower than XP on a PII Celeron with 64mb RAM.

 

> --
> Craig Ringer
> 
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