Just thought I'd share the news about the formation of Linux Foundation.
Link to NY Times Article
Press Release
Link to NY Times Article
Press Release
Linux Foundation
- Thread starter yuchai
- Start date
No, what Linux needs is to work right out of the box. Ubuntu 6.06/6.10 don't install properly on my C2D laptop. Despite what anyone says, Linux, in its present state, is not suitable for the average user. To go mainstream it has to work for everyone.
Windows XP doesn't work out of the box on my home desktop system. Neither does Windows Vista for that matter.
You're missing the point. Windows is already the standard mainstream OS. Microsoft could care less if it doesn't work on your computer.
E.g. Toyota doesn't give a damn if my Corolla breaks down within a month because everyone else out there with a Corolla is fine with it. But if you're starting a new auto company and trying to sell your first model, you better make sure it works perfectly for every customer that buys it.
E.g. Toyota doesn't give a damn if my Corolla breaks down within a month because everyone else out there with a Corolla is fine with it. But if you're starting a new auto company and trying to sell your first model, you better make sure it works perfectly for every customer that buys it.
No, you're missing my point. It's not uncommon for an OS to not work OOB on a system. WinXP Pro doesn't work OOB on my main desktop or laptop. I'm not bitching - in both cases the hardware is several years newer than WinXP so it's expected. I don't know what it is in your system that isn't working with Ubuntu but I'm guessing the next version will work fine OOB
FWIW, Ubuntu Edgy does work OOB on all 3 systems in my sig. Given that Edigy is newer than my hardware that's not unexpected though.
Toyota sells Corollas. Microsoft sells Windows. Linux sells...??? You are not a customer of Linux.
Ya sure, set a impossible standard.
Windows completely fails to work out of the box, also, you know. At least just as bad or worse then Linux. Installing Windows at home, from scratch, at best, is a 3 or 4 hour affair How many 'gradmas' do stuff like that?
The thing is that Most people are comletely incapable of installing Windows and the only reason OS X has it's reputation of working well is because Apple carefully controls what hardware your allowed to use it on. That's realy all there is to it.
If you want a computer to work OOTB when you get it you have to buy it from a place that sells Linux support and pre-installs and configures it for you, just like Windows and just like OS X.
No it's absolutely not.
You say 'Linux needs to work perfectly OOTB' to be succecssfull.
I say: That's completely BS because nobody else does that either.
The point of this Linux Foundation is to make it more acceptable and easier for companies to support Linux on their hardware and to increase the ease of application developers supporting Linux.
Nothinman
Elite Member
- Sep 14, 2001
- 30,672
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What's irrelevant to this dicussion is your posts, Linux already handles new installations on new hardware 100x better by virtue of having nearly all of it's drivers included by default and being updated a lot more frequently. Who cares if it didn't install properly on your notebook? It installed perfectly fine on all 5 of my machines, one of which is a notebook.
I would point out that it's a simple issue of having drivers written specifically for platforms. For example, if I buy a Gateway, I get a full CD of drivers. A Linux laptop or desktop would have similar support, as it would be designed with Linux-friendly components. Linspire had it half right, except that they just did'nt have the marketing support.
For example, my Thinkpad X40. Edgy runs perfectly out of the box - in fact, it fixed one or two quirks under WinXP that drove me nuts. The speed is a big plus, too.
For example, my Thinkpad X40. Edgy runs perfectly out of the box - in fact, it fixed one or two quirks under WinXP that drove me nuts. The speed is a big plus, too.
Wow this degraded into a flamefest fast.
BTW in order to support systems out of the box ALL vendors need to supply "good" drivers or excellent specs. A lot of vendors refuse to do either of these for various reasons... so you are either forced to wait for them to do something about it, someone to reverse engineer the driver, or buy something else. It is a sad state of affairs and hopefully it will be over soon.
It is not Linux Kernel Developers fault that linux does not work out of the box on your system...
Unless you happen to be running a non-release build that has broken stuff everywhere, but then you should probably know what your doing as well if you managed to get to that point.
BTW in order to support systems out of the box ALL vendors need to supply "good" drivers or excellent specs. A lot of vendors refuse to do either of these for various reasons... so you are either forced to wait for them to do something about it, someone to reverse engineer the driver, or buy something else. It is a sad state of affairs and hopefully it will be over soon.
It is not Linux Kernel Developers fault that linux does not work out of the box on your system...
Unless you happen to be running a non-release build that has broken stuff everywhere, but then you should probably know what your doing as well if you managed to get to that point.
Exactly.
Almost nobody installs their own OS, unless they are a geek.
OEMs provide tested hardware and software configurations and provide that to end users. That is why you get 'restore disks' isntead of installation disks.. because OEMs know that unless they give end users a specifcly tailored version of XP for their hardware most people are going to be incapable of reinstalling Windows when the hardware fails.
this is the exact same thing with OS X and the same thing that is perfectly possible for Linux.
Take System76, for instance. They have hardware that they know specificly works with the versions of linux they supply. If drivers are not in the mainstream kernel they provide a driver package that provides all of the third party drivers and configurations nessicary to get all the hardware to work, and they try to get open source drivers for hardware that do not have any (besides Nvidia stuff).
With those things everything works. All the multimedia buttons, the wifi card, the wifi switchs, suspend, etc etc.
This is the same exact thing that Dell and HP try to do with Windows and Apple does with OS X. You get the computer, plug it in, give it a password, go into synaptic and do a update and upgrade and your finished. All the latest bugfixes, latest drivers, latest security patches.
The main difficulty that Linux faces nowadays in terms of hardware support is getting Free software drivers for new 3d video cards, some niggling wifi stuff, and the biggest technical one is due to the nature of kernel development. There are some issues with X and recognizing and adapting quickly to changing hardware (for example: say you plug in a projector to a Linux laptop. This is a issue you see people struggling with at every video of every Linux-related convention).. But that is getting solved hopefully around the 7.3 release.
The biggest unsolvable problem that is in the control of kernel and distributions developers is that getting support for very new hardware, even if they have Free software driver support is very difficult. It's a slow proccess getting drivers developed and up to the quality standards that are required for inclusion into the Linux kernel, and when drivers do get into the kernel they are not going to be avaible for any current Linux distributions the majority of the time. You have to wait for the distribution developers to release a new version with the kernel version that is required for the new driver support.
So probably distribution developers need to figure out a way to keep their end user's OS up to date with the latest kernel (without breaking stuff, which they haven't figured out yet), or kernel developers need to standardize more so that drivers can be compiled as modules for older kernels. Or something. In order to get around this Ubuntu heavily patches it's kernels, but this is a bad approach IMO. Ubuntu lacks the resources to ensure bug-free patch fest in the kernel.
For OEMs and end users, of course, this is most easily solved by good hardware choices.
Almost nobody installs their own OS, unless they are a geek.
OEMs provide tested hardware and software configurations and provide that to end users. That is why you get 'restore disks' isntead of installation disks.. because OEMs know that unless they give end users a specifcly tailored version of XP for their hardware most people are going to be incapable of reinstalling Windows when the hardware fails.
this is the exact same thing with OS X and the same thing that is perfectly possible for Linux.
Take System76, for instance. They have hardware that they know specificly works with the versions of linux they supply. If drivers are not in the mainstream kernel they provide a driver package that provides all of the third party drivers and configurations nessicary to get all the hardware to work, and they try to get open source drivers for hardware that do not have any (besides Nvidia stuff).
With those things everything works. All the multimedia buttons, the wifi card, the wifi switchs, suspend, etc etc.
This is the same exact thing that Dell and HP try to do with Windows and Apple does with OS X. You get the computer, plug it in, give it a password, go into synaptic and do a update and upgrade and your finished. All the latest bugfixes, latest drivers, latest security patches.
The main difficulty that Linux faces nowadays in terms of hardware support is getting Free software drivers for new 3d video cards, some niggling wifi stuff, and the biggest technical one is due to the nature of kernel development. There are some issues with X and recognizing and adapting quickly to changing hardware (for example: say you plug in a projector to a Linux laptop. This is a issue you see people struggling with at every video of every Linux-related convention).. But that is getting solved hopefully around the 7.3 release.
The biggest unsolvable problem that is in the control of kernel and distributions developers is that getting support for very new hardware, even if they have Free software driver support is very difficult. It's a slow proccess getting drivers developed and up to the quality standards that are required for inclusion into the Linux kernel, and when drivers do get into the kernel they are not going to be avaible for any current Linux distributions the majority of the time. You have to wait for the distribution developers to release a new version with the kernel version that is required for the new driver support.
So probably distribution developers need to figure out a way to keep their end user's OS up to date with the latest kernel (without breaking stuff, which they haven't figured out yet), or kernel developers need to standardize more so that drivers can be compiled as modules for older kernels. Or something. In order to get around this Ubuntu heavily patches it's kernels, but this is a bad approach IMO. Ubuntu lacks the resources to ensure bug-free patch fest in the kernel.
For OEMs and end users, of course, this is most easily solved by good hardware choices.
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