Subject: Re: Ease Of Use and Hardware Support (WAS: Linux Laptops)
From: Iain Stevenson (iain@iainstevenson.com)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 10:26:18 MST
Here, here! It's taken me 2.5 years of hobbyist effort to get my linux
server working as I want it (and the tape still doesn't go properly).
It now far, far, far exceeds the performance of the same machine acting as
a server/firewall. If you want Linux to replace MacOS/Windoze as a desktop
it's not for you (yet). If you want a gateway device, learn quickly.
Iain
--On Thursday, March 7, 2002 11:56 am -0500 Stefan Jeglinski
<jeglin@4pi.com> wrote:
> After being involved in Linux on PPC for a good 3 years now (still a
> newbie!), it is obvious to me that Linux is a hobby effort perpetrated by
> hobbyists. Now before everyone goes and gets their panties up in a bunch,
> it's also obvious that there are some damn serious hobbyists involved.
> And some of them make their living from it. And in large measure, this
> hobby effort runs the internet. IOW, I'm not disparaging hobbyists in the
> least.
>
> OTOH, to learn/do Linux, in my experience you simply must be willing to
> become a hobbyist. A serious one. And do it for the same reasons that you
> do any hobby - because you love it or are enthralled or fascinated by it,
> and by some measure which may be different from someone else's measure,
> it "gets you somewhere."
>
> And unless you know you have found an expert to help, claims of "we
> support this" or "this works," especially when made by an organization
> with a financial interest (e.g. Terrasoft and others) should be viewed
> skeptically. Generally, the list of supported machines is suspicious at
> best. I'm not at all sure the 6500, for example, should be listed as a
> supported machine, because there are reasons to believe that Apple's
> design has motherboard bugs, because getting ethernet reliably working on
> it is a complete crapshoot (or worse), and because at least one serious
> kernel hobbyist has told me the 6500 is a special machine with evil
> tendencies. But everyone says they support it, and it ain't no new
> machine. But I persevere with it, god knows why.
>
> So become a hobbyist, be frustrated and sometimes happy, and to do OOTB
> productive mundane work on a daily basis, consider buying MacOS or even
> Windows. Someday, Linux may, or may not, provide the same experience.
>
>
> Stefan Jeglinski
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Thu Mar 07 2002 - 10:45:23 MST