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Practically: I want to be using a system that I can be confident has good hardware & software support, not always double checking everything I buy to make sure

Practically: I want to be using a system that I can be confident has good hardware & software support, not always double checking everything I buy to make sure it will work. That means getting at least a few % market share so that other companies take it seriously. There's also an ideological angle: many Linux users feel that there's something wrong with a world where only the technically adept can use a free, open source operating system.

jlgreco 14y ago
> not always double checking everything I buy to make sure it will work. I feel like we've been there since... 2007? My last several purchases were made with zero caution or research anyway, maybe I've just been getting lucky. > many Linux users feel that there's something wrong with a world where only the technically adept can use a free, open source operating system. That's fine and all, I don't buy into that ideology but it is fine if others do. Perhaps someone should warn these unsuspecting masses that "Linux for your technologically illiterate grandmother" advocates are not as pragmatic as they may claim to be. I feel like these people are dressing Linux up as something that it is not in order to sell it to people who, were it presented honestly, would not pay it a second glance.
- arjie 14y ago
  Even drivers that were previously mainline have broken. So while the Intel 4965 used to work fine on Linux, it no longer does. And that is for a driver in mainline.
- takluyver 14y ago
  The hardware situation has got much better, but there are still some problems. Laptops with both integrated and separate GPUs aren't very well supported (so I hear, I don't have one). There's a relatively new scanner in my office that's not supported by SANE. I wanted an external wifi adapter for a desktop recently, and I'm not sure how many will just work with Linux. On the software side, Steam got ported recently, but there's plenty of other software that we'd like to see. Flash is no longer released for Linux, although for now at least I can still watch iPlayer with the last version of Flash that was released. Hopefully HTML5 will have killed it before much longer. Of course we shouldn't pretend that Linux is something that it isn't. If it's not good enough, we aim to improve it. But I honestly think that, if non-technical users got something like Ubuntu 12.04 pre-installed on compatible hardware, it would work perfectly well... except for the expectation, both from users and app developers, that everyone has Windows. Which brings me back to the point about market share.

jlgreco 14y ago

> not always double checking everything I buy to make sure it will work. I feel like we've been there since... 2007? My last several purchases were made with zero caution or research anyway, maybe I've just been getting lucky. > many Linux users feel that there's something wrong with a world where only the technically adept can use a free, open source operating system. That's fine and all, I don't buy into that ideology but it is fine if others do. Perhaps someone should warn these unsuspecting masses that "Linux for your technologically illiterate grandmother" advocates are not as pragmatic as they may claim to be. I feel like these people are dressing Linux up as something that it is not in order to sell it to people who, were it presented honestly, would not pay it a second glance.

arjie 14y ago
Even drivers that were previously mainline have broken. So while the Intel 4965 used to work fine on Linux, it no longer does. And that is for a driver in mainline.
takluyver 14y ago
The hardware situation has got much better, but there are still some problems. Laptops with both integrated and separate GPUs aren't very well supported (so I hear, I don't have one). There's a relatively new scanner in my office that's not supported by SANE. I wanted an external wifi adapter for a desktop recently, and I'm not sure how many will just work with Linux. On the software side, Steam got ported recently, but there's plenty of other software that we'd like to see. Flash is no longer released for Linux, although for now at least I can still watch iPlayer with the last version of Flash that was released. Hopefully HTML5 will have killed it before much longer. Of course we shouldn't pretend that Linux is something that it isn't. If it's not good enough, we aim to improve it. But I honestly think that, if non-technical users got something like Ubuntu 12.04 pre-installed on compatible hardware, it would work perfectly well... except for the expectation, both from users and app developers, that everyone has Windows. Which brings me back to the point about market share.