Re: free software mini pc
On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:14:50 -0600
green <greenfreedom10@gmail.com> wrote:
> Stefan Monnier wrote at 2012-02-15 20:25 -0600:
> >
> > If your machine is supported by the stock kernel, all these
> > problems are pretty much absent: you can expect to simply "aptitude
> > upgrade" for the next ten years.
>
> This is *precisely* why I prefer to purchase devices with full kernel
> support.
>
> The question is, how can I be reasonably sure before the purchase?
> In many cases the information is unavailable or difficult to find.
Because it mostly doesn't exist. If you were given one of these machines
and an Internet connection, how much time would you expect to need
before you were willing to issue a guarantee, on which other people
would base purchasing decisions, that *everything* worked as expected?
For how long would you issue the guarantee, given the slight but
non-zero chance that something is dependent on a bug which has security
issues, which might therefore change even in Stable?
When you do settle on something, will you test it exhaustively and
document the results on the Net? Because that's where the information
comes from which you're looking for at the moment, and you can help
future Debian users if you do. We'll get no help from manufacturers,
until they get desperate enough to scratch around for the last few
percent of potential customers.
Hardware compatibility happens in the MS world because the boot is on
the other foot, in that manufacturers have no choice but to engineer
their products to work with Windows, and modify them if problems are
found. No such incentive exists (yet) for Linux compatibility.
--
Joe
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