On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Richard Todd Carlson wrote:
> important. Its true that Linux has Windows beat hands down as far as
> stability, but what about hardware support? Spending hours trying to
> configure the Linux kernel for specific needs might be an adventure for
> geeks [*] , but the average end user doesn't want to deal with such
> situations. I have yet to find an free solution that can match the
Everybody's got stories, but just as a reality check, I've spent over 10 hours
in the last few days trying to get a friend's sound and modem working on his
WinME box. The sound and modem that came with the machine, and were working
for several years. After installing and uninstalling drivers and hardware in
various configurations, the sound card started working for no apparent reason.
The modem remains hosed, however, and I can't even uninstall the drivers for
it once I remove it from the system. Worse, I can't install *any* modems, not
even my *external* USR 28.8k (shudder). It just fails silently. So the major
difference is that in Linux, when something fails to install you can at least
dive under the hood and see why. Windows? Reinstall the OS. In either case,
most users are going to be just as helpless.
AFAICT, computers are still too complicated to be maintained by normal users,
period. They need administration - security updates, firewalls, maintenance,
and that requires time and experience.
-J
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