Or is this something which strives for widespread acceptance in the broader business world, to be (if not on the desktops) on the approved list of every manager out there?
It has gained large acceptance in the business world. Large "Fortune 100" companies have been using it and continue to increase it's applicability to their business needs. Many boxes, devices, etc are being sold for whatever reason run on linux, embedded or otherwise. Hollywood movies have been edited , processed on Linux systems.
If the latter, then we're not there yet. In many ways, we're not even
close. For all we say about proprietary software, OS, etc, they have
created an expectation that things *work*. While I'm happy to answer
questions for my mother, I'm not there all the time to be her on-site IT
department. I can't take a week or two off of work to dedicate my time to
making sure that her computer functions properly with all (or even most) of
the parts. Until I can feel comfortable putting a linux machine in my
mother's hands, I can't recommend it as a solution for perhaps 75% of the
people I talk to. It's those people who maintain the MS "monopoly".MS is not a monopoly. MS has issues as well, and many users experiece a whole mess of problems over things like device drivers for one example. Run a search or look into Microsoft forums.
When I see a 1.0.x version number, I expect there to be bugs and problems.
But I expect things to work properly most of the time. It's in the 2.6
kernel? That tells me, perhaps falsely, that this is ready for broad-based
use across a wide variety of hardware. This doesn't appear to be the case.
Am I asking for the ALSA developers to obtain and test every sound boadr on
the market, every chipset? Not at all. I wouldn't mind some sort of clear
chart, as has been suggested, specifying just WHAT is *fully*
supported/tested. Another section, "should work", would be nice, as well as
a "don't hold your breath" section. This should be a reasonable request -
the developers should know against which hardware they test, what passes and
what fails. The middle section, the best-guess list, would probably be the
hardest. Oh, and as long as I'm dreaming, it would be nice to see a clear
and simple explanation of how to tell what chipset is on your ! card, so that
we can refer to that instead of the manufacturer's model number.If your using the 2.6 kernel you've accepted the bleeding edge regardless of it's release status it hasn't been out very long in the general population. If you don't like Alsa, use OSS.
I'm sure some people will tell me to stop whining, what do I want for free.
That's OK - but I'd ask in return what they're doing this for. I'm trying
to learn, and trying to be an advocate, but it is often difficult when the
responses I see to concerns such as mine take the tone of STFU.
Just one more opinion, FWIW.If one wants handholding and the type of support to walk through traces , debugs, etc, then you can still use Linux, just up your ante and pay for support and / or use commercial Linux software. Other options would be hire a developer or learn to develop on your own.
Stuart
