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Re: free vs commercial



On Wednesday 05 January 2005 05:04 am, ken keanon wrote:

> Starting with the maxim "To beat MS you have to be as good as, if not 
> better than, MS", I am constantly comparing the Linux I had installed 
> with WinXP.   

Well, we're already better than MS, it's just a matter of time now.
 
> With Konqueror, the Window Management, File Management, Web Browsing 
> is on par with WinXP. 

Heh, you haven't played around with it enough, then.  When you have, 
you'll start seeing how rigid MS Explorer really is.

> What I find wanting in Linux is Device Management. With plug-in, 
> adding new devices to WinXP is a breeze but not in Linux. 

lspci gives you *way* more detail than Windows device manager.  The 
hotplug package and udev filesystem will make you wish it were this 
easy in Windows.  It's just a different approach.  You need to remember 
that you put learning into Windows.  MS's approach isn't the only 
approach, and it's not right to think their design is the only one out 
there.  You need to unlearn some Windows habits to use other OSs.

> I used a Prolink ADSL bridge/router for my broadband service. 
> Installing it was plain easy and the gui to operate it is superb in 
> WinXP. But in the case of Linux, I managed to locate a driver, free  
> of course, called 'amedyn'. Installing it was a long and arduous 
> process.

Chintzy, USB network interfaces should only be used as a last resort 
when you can't use Ethernet anyway, even in Windows (sadly, I've even 
heard of win-bridges for DSL now).  Get a real bridge.

> Hopefully work is being done in this area. 

Yup.  It's called "Don't use hardware that sucks."

-- 
Paul Johnson
baloo@ursine.dyndns.org
http://ursine.dyndns.org/~baloo/

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