Sam Watkins wrote:
On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 11:56:06AM -0500, Christian Convey wrote:As much as I like Linux and its ideals, I thought to myself, "I've never had to deal with issues like these in Windows. I buy a product, plug it in, and almost always, it just works."Well, PC hardware is designed to work with windows, and the people who make the hardware write windows drivers, and ship them with their product. Open-source developers have to do all that work for all the different hardware so it can run on Linux.
OK, that makes sense for those products that have problematic drivers. E.g., nVidia chips, Dell-customized SoundBlastr cards, etc. But the majority of the hassles I've had dealt with hardware that Linux has perfectly good drivers for: USB flashdrives, my Kodak digicam (it uses the standard PTP protocol), etc. -- Christian Convey Computer Scientist, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, RI