-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 30 May 2002 4:56 pm, Tom Brinkman wrote:
> Harware is becoming more'n more a stumbling block to wean users > off Windoze and to any other alernatives. Yes, a lot of the latest > and greatest high end hardware has poor to no Linux support. M$ > enforces this situation thru licensing agreements, and just plain > illegal arm twisting and bullying of the vendors. > > OTOH, low end hardware is also becoming a much greater problem as > more'n and more win-hardware is used in ready made (Dell, Gateway, > Compact, etc) systems that all come with Winblows pre-installed. > This junk also has poor to no Linux support also because it can't be > supported, and most people buy these kinds of systems. An even bigger problem is Windows-only hardware that doesn't say it's Windows-only. My Lexmark printer is a case in point; from my reading of newsgroups and sites like linuxprinting.org it seems to be very hard to write drivers for it because Lexmark won't fully disclose what the printer does (there's a suspicion that some functionality, which would normally have been perfomed by the printer, has been hived off to Windows). Fortunately the Z42 drivers print out OK in black. Next time the ink cartridges run out (£36 for a pair) the printer is going in the bin and I'm buying an HP; it understands Open Source and even has a supported Sourceforge project for drivers. Quite often, that Linux works at all with J. Random Hardware is often a miracle ... Alastair - -- Alastair Scott (London, United Kingdom) http://www.unmetered.org.uk/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE89mp3Cv59vFiSU4YRAn3pAJ4lOCGIUfpU7EQlieyDj5T2Nyaq4wCfRVXX nArlBDZ+Is8blZp61Llzgu4= =5DKx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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