Linux is about freedom "free as in speech" so you are welcome to express any idea you have!
I do not however agree with you. If you just install XP without any additional driver, you will see that *many* things do not work (sound, network card, screen ,etc..). (Maybe there is OEM version of XP containing all the driver for your *specific* machine, I speek about a generic XP CD). Fact is that if you buy a computer, you have also an accompying CD with all the drivers but for XP only. For linux you do not receive anything so that linux itself has to make it work. Sometimes the constructor of some hardware does not even publish any specifications on its hardware and only release a Windows driver!
I personnaly was astonished how Mandrake has detected automatically my sound card, network card, graphic card, etc... but maybe it is more problematic for some other hardware.
Olivier Esser
I would like to second that , my own experience with Windblows , W98,W2K, and XP were all installs that required OEM drivers already supplied , and that made post install config easy. Nothing much to do but customise the appearance and install 3rd party apps.
Mandrake is not so simple. It does an astonishing amount of installation which will in most cases work reasonably well on first desktop, anyway better than the average windblows install without OEM drivers. After that there is a fairly steep learning curve to configure it better, which before the days of these lists was not easy to acquire. You were largely on your own, just you and your own wit, and whatever you could glean from technobabble speak on the net.
All is not yet perfect. but it is becoming better and better, though there is no room for complacency or covering up less that adequate results. I think in time open source will excel beyond commercial apps, both in terms of performance and speed of application of new and more exciting things. The very nature of it's gung ho , lets get started, try this, try that without fear of failure, and rejection ,is bound to favour it. By it's very nature commercial apps are slow to inovate test and make available new ideas and apps.In the commercial world everything has to be tested to the 'n'th degree before release for fear of a costly failure and rejection. In open source it doesn't matter today that something failed, it can be remade tomorrow and tried again the next day till it works perfectly, and your free to test it and report your findings and where it fails your free to say so. It is only with reporting less than good results that improvements can be made, therefore silence is useless and counter productive, indeed positively futile. Nobody should be shy to report less than good results. All software has to be experimented with, tested, and deployed . Nobody can produce perfect code first time.
Just my two pennies worth. rant over.
John
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John Richard Smith
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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