> > I guess what I am reacting to is the difficulty I had a year ago when > > I struggled for about 2 weeks to get a DVD burner to work with my RH 9 > > server. The drive manufacturer did not specifically support Linux, > > and I was unable (with lots of help from others) to get it to work. > > So I can only imagine that getting Braille readers to work might > > involve similar difficulties.
Different Linux distros do indeed erect higher or lower learning curves for first-time Linux users, as well as driver support and whatnot. Before I came to CodeWeavers, I'd never used a Linux OS on the desktop. My first experiences with Redhat were sometimes difficult. Since then, I've gone through a couple flavors of Redhat, SuSE, and am now on Ubuntu. We use a lot of Ubuntu currently. We think it's pretty slick, and it makes things like wireless networking pretty easy, even for a relative technical neophyte like myself. Xandros is another distro that also gets good marks for usability. Of course, I understand that there's a difference between "usability" and "accessibility." Bottom line: I think *all* of the main desktop distros have gotten better in the past three years. But are they at the level of OS/X yet? Or even Windows? Uh uh. The gap is narrowing, though. And just as with the increasing adoption of OpenOffice, at some point the gap gets narrow enough that users begin to look at price point. In the OS wars, though, it's a long, slow, slog for Linux on the desktop. Cheers, -jon parshall- COO CodeWeavers ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
