>>>>> "David" == David Fisher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Judging from our experiences and those I read about in this list
> every day, Linux is "very intolerant" of every single brand of
> computer made, including all the big names. Our problems have
> occurred on both big-name machines, e.g., Compaq, and home-made,
> e.g., Yokohama Storm Door and Motherboard Works, Ltd. Just whose
> "kit" is acceptable to Lord Linux? And whose specs are relevant?
> Is Linux the tail which deigns to wag the cybernetic dog?
Maybe we should all tone down the rhetoric here a bit. First of all,
it's hard to determine the flakiness of a platform by looking at a
mailing list. The mailing list contains an abnormally high percentage
of people with problems -- that's why they're using the mailing list.
Secondly, different systems are differently tolerant of hardware. The
"best" user of x86 hardware is probably Win95, because that's what
most everything is designed for. NT has more problems, because it has
a smaller user base (for instance, I was unable to install NT on my
machine, on which Linux installed just fine. After much work, I
discovered it was a problem with the floppy driver. Go figure.)
Linux has an even smaller base, and so it has more problems, although
they are in part ameliorated by the active and open development of
drivers.
> Is this intolerance supposed to be a virtue? Do all other OSes
> of equal competence exhibit the same intolerance? Is this
> intolerance, which is costly and annoying, worth tolerating?
Intolerance of "flaky" hardware is not a virtue -- it's a result of
the fact that the hardware wasn't designed with Linux in mind.
Hardware that isn't up to spec usually works in NT anyway, just
because it was tried out with NT. The same doesn't hold for Linux,
and so linux is unavoidably less tolerant of buggy hardware. It's
more a problem of the hardware than of linux, but it's a problem
nonetheless.
But that's not all that "stability" means. If you have hardware that
makes Linux happy, linux is extremely stable. The standard fix for an
NT machine is to reboot. Linux machines, on the other hand, can be up
and running for hundreds of days at a time.
> In short, sir, what substitute is there for reliability?
Well, from the point of view of MS, it seems that availability of
software is a pretty good substitute for reliability :).
Seriously, though, linux is quite reliable when it's on good hardware.
It's frustrating when you have trouble with hardware, I know, but
Linux has benefits to make up for the holes in its hardware support.
And the hardware support it has is really quite good, despite its
problems. Things seem worse for Linux in part because it doesn't come
pre-installed. If you bought a system from VA Research, I bet you'd
have far less hardware troubles.
One question, though: if you don't like Linux, and you don't see the
benefit to your business, then why are you using it? Linux certainly
isn't for everyone, at least not yet. If it doesn't satisfy your
needs, maybe you should just stick to NT.
y
--
|--------/ Yaron M. Minsky \--------|
|--------\ http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/yminsky/ /--------|
--
PLEASE read the Red Hat FAQ, Tips, Errata and the MAILING LIST ARCHIVES!
http://www.redhat.com/RedHat-FAQ /RedHat-Errata /RedHat-Tips /mailing-lists
To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
"unsubscribe" as the Subject.
