On Friday, October 3, 2003, at 09:22 AM, Michael L Torrie wrote:
On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 09:07, Dan Reese wrote:Does anyone know how Mac systems (the new UNIX-based ones, to stay on
topic for the list :-) compare in this regard? Do they really Just Work?
Or do they have these same sorts of problems?
<snip>
Linux has good hardware support these days. It's almost as good as Windows and in many cases exceeds Windows' support for slightly older hardware. Things just work. No messing with driver wizards. I would say Linux has much better hardware support than Mac.
What do you mean by better support? If you mean wider (i.e. the number of devices it supports) then I would say that this is true. Linux does support a lot more hardware than Mac does. If we are talking quality of support (i.e. how well the hardware/drivers work), I would say that your statement is false. While the Mac may not support all the old esoteric hardware, the hardware it does support is supported better than Linux or Windows, hands down. Take my Powerbook. I just got a Firewire enclosure, and 200 GB drive. I plugged it in, Disk Utility came up, I partitioned it, and away I went. In 10 minutes, I had set it up and transferred 30 GB to it. Ok, it's Firewire, you say. Of course the Mac supports it. Ok, lets go with Digital cameras. I've used two different cameras with my laptop, a Fuji FinePix and a Kodak. For both of them, I just plugged them in. The memory card showed up as a drive mounted on my desktop, and iPhoto opened and allowed me to import my photos. Same story with a USB CF/SD card reader. No driver installation, no configuration necessary. I've had the same ease of installation with a USB floppy, USB keyboard, mouse, etc. I haven't had to install a single driver, mess with a config file, or anything. I call that excellent support.
I echo what most others have said. Linux is getting better, and I hate troubleshooting hardware in Windows.
Grant
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