Not mine, but it certainly echoed parts of my experience:

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37742

Fair?

Pointless article. In other news, a Ubuntu user installs Vista and gives up because they cant make multiple work spaces work properly.

Seriously, there was no mention of even making a bloody effort.

not really fair no.  He didnt exactly give it much of a chance, and i bet installing OSX would cause him the same issues.  Ny SUSE install was flawless except for the wireless card, and that was more down to the fact XP is ussing the wrong driver (Dont ask me why, but it prefers the Intel driver to the Cisco one).

The problem i find with most folks is that because they are used to windows, and can get it working straight away, they cant be arsed with Linux.  I like it, but then again i have the time to tinker and learn its foibles.  If i didnt have the time, then I peobably wouldnt bother with Linux either.

Not Ubuntus fault, Samba doesnt currently support NTLMv2 (although it is actively being worked on),
all he had to do was spend 2-3 minutes at most switching his network to NTLMv1. :?

I use *free* software every day and for most of it I would at least consider paying if I needed to. Im not just talking about video players zone alarm and active virus shield but First Draft and Open Office for word processing. I use several other bits and pieces occasionally.

Its obvious that if you end up with a problem you work on it, I know of people who have spent weeks trying to sort out windows issues and problems with software packs for windows, occasionally they have to give up simply because there is an incompatibility that cannot be worked around. In his case he hasnt bothered trying enough.

OK it might not work every time with every bit of hardware, but that isnt necessarily the fault of Linux, sometimes Windows is to blame and sometimes its the hardware.

Most people would have just used USB memory to transfer stuff in his case.

Quote from: Andrew ThomasFREE ADVICE IS WORTH EVERY PENNY as someone once famously said.

I was going to compare that with the advice from people on here, which is usually good stuff. Except his advice is exactly what the quote warns you about, its worthless.

Quote from: Andrew ThomasIve only been playing with computers since 1972 and I couldnt make it work.

Well perhaps he should do some actual *WORK* on one.

Quote from: Andrew ThomasMaybe Ill try Linux again in another ten years. Maybe by then it will have grown up.[

And maybe by then he will have grown up too.

QuoteOK it might not work every time with every bit of hardware, but that isnt necessarily the fault of Linux, sometimes Windows is to blame and sometimes its the hardware.

When people say "Linux sucks cos it doesnt support  my [random unnamed] hardware" it annoys me no end.

9 times out of 10 its the hardware itself that is to blame. More and more manufacturers are offloading processing to the drivers and dont support standards.

Take printers for example, find a printer that will talk postscript and you will have no problems. Get some cheap crappy printer that offloads all the processing to the computer and you should expect problems. Ever wondered why windows computers often have performance and stability problems ??

Now we are getting new, much worse, wave of hardware. The type that doesnt think for itself at all. What often happens now is that the firmware for the hardware is contained in the driver, and this is uploaded to the hardware when the driver is loaded (or used).

Hardware manufacturers are, of course, doing this to cut costs. The problem is that they dont have a good development team to support it. The result is crap hardware and even crap software. Havnt people noticed that many printers and wireless cards come with their own tools rather than using the standard windows ones ?!

Dont be fooling into thinking its because it provides "extra features". Its be cause its cheaper. Its so they dont have to spend as much time learning how to do it properly or making their hardware properly.

I remember writing some very basic printer drivers years ago in pascal. You just sent a bunch of commands to the printer to describe the formatting.

Now there are loads of abstraction layers in the drivers making them much more buggy.

Anyway, rant over.

Cornet

Quote from: cornet

QuoteOK it might not work every time with every bit of hardware, but that isnt necessarily the fault of Linux, sometimes Windows is to blame and sometimes its the hardware.

When people say "Linux sucks cos it doesnt support  my [random unnamed] hardware" it annoys me no end.

9 times out of 10 its the hardware itself that is to blame. More and more manufacturers are offloading processing to the drivers and dont support standards.

Take printers for example, find a printer that will talk postscript and you will have no problems. Get some cheap crappy printer that offloads all the processing to the computer and you should expect problems. Ever wondered why windows computers often have performance and stability problems ??

Here here! Needed to be quoted so it sinks in. There are valid criticisms to be made of Linux based OSs for sure, but the "not supporting my printer/tablet/automasturbator" crowd is full of it.

I do eat my own dog food, in the sense that I have a Canon 3:1 unit that does not work with Linux--but I dont bitch about it. I rarely print documents, mostly use it to print directly from the camera and copy. When I need its computer functions, I boot into XP and get a cup of hot beverage.

Printer drivers is really an odd issue, but scanners can come into that area too, along with a few other bits and pieces. The fact that a printer, or other piece of equipment is a Windows one should make no difference - providing the supplier has written the drivers for it correctly.

All a Windows printer does is offload the processing of the document onto the system, technically its a dumb printer, but then again almost all of the dot matrix printers were dumb too. TBH this can speed things up and save money, if you are using an old printer then the processor in it will be slower by far than the one in your computer, not having one means that the cost can be reduced. In the end I would rather have more money for general use CPU cycles than a specialist unit on the printer that only gets used while Im printing. All it requires is a suitable bit of software to convert into the format that the printer recognises and all will be fine - your printout will be pretty much damn perfect and your computer wont crash.

Some companies provide absolutely no drivers for Linux, others minimal or buggy ones. A few supply very good drivers. When you get a printer with a good driver it should work with pretty much no problems whatsoever.

Except linux isnt the only one to suffer, XP64 still has missing and buggy drivers, even some XP32 drivers can cause horrible problems. It isnt a Linux problem but getting properly encoded drivers to suit the hardware. When xP came out plenty of companies refused to supply new drivers for old equipment, the same thing happened to a larger extent with XP64, it looks like its going to happen again with Vista too.

Unfortunately the companies dont make money from writing drivers.You dont have to be mad to work here but it helps

*YAWN*


stop bitching about your sh*t 3rd party device with no drivers, just because you are the unlucky sap to discover no one in teh linux world has come across your strange hardware, who gives a sh*t about your bullsh*t opinion.

quit your bitching and stop being such a girl.

if you want to use your stuff, code a driver.

Quote from: cornet

QuoteOK it might not work every time with every bit of hardware, but that isnt necessarily the fault of Linux, sometimes Windows is to blame and sometimes its the hardware.

When people say "Linux sucks cos it doesnt support  my [random unnamed] hardware" it annoys me no end.

9 times out of 10 its the hardware itself that is to blame. More and more manufacturers are offloading processing to the drivers and dont support standards.

Take printers for example, find a printer that will talk postscript and you will have no problems. Get some cheap crappy printer that offloads all the processing to the computer and you should expect problems. Ever wondered why windows computers often have performance and stability problems ??

Now we are getting new, much worse, wave of hardware. The type that doesnt think for itself at all. What often happens now is that the firmware for the hardware is contained in the driver, and this is uploaded to the hardware when the driver is loaded (or used).

Hardware manufacturers are, of course, doing this to cut costs. The problem is that they dont have a good development team to support it. The result is crap hardware and even crap software. Havnt people noticed that many printers and wireless cards come with their own tools rather than using the standard windows ones ?!

Dont be fooling into thinking its because it provides "extra features". Its be cause its cheaper. Its so they dont have to spend as much time learning how to do it properly or making their hardware properly.

I remember writing some very basic printer drivers years ago in pascal. You just sent a bunch of commands to the printer to describe the formatting.

Now there are loads of abstraction layers in the drivers making them much more buggy.

Anyway, rant over.

Cornet

Except those pieces of hardware work flawlessly in windows with a few clicks in a wizard. So what if it BSODS once in a while, at least someone is able to get a use out of the cheap webcam they bought, or utilise the canon 3 in 1 printer max has thats sitting on the shelf.

If you end up having to do what max did and buying a copy of XP, whats the point in using linux in the first place considering you just purchased an operating system and most linux based software is being ported over to windows.

Thing that annoys me the most is the "what do you do with linux" line, well... wtf do you do with windows? er.. nothing? thats right!... linux... its just an operating system, nothing special. Its a means to an end.

Max: As you love to bring this up, in the above and any further discussions "Linux" refers to "Linux distribution" i.e. Kernel + toolkit + WM + anything else it comes with.

Oh and that article... reads like it was written by a 15 yr old. No valid points really in it whatsoever, he had no idea what to do, his mates gave him crap advice with regards to getting samba working, and then he threw it out cause he couldnt be arsed to think about it for a bit.

XP came with my box and Linux is a kernel. End of.

Someone rated my post as one star for posting an article and asking for opinions?  Talk about linux fanboys

I rated it as one, because it was simply a wasted read. If it had been critical in an informative way, I wouldnt have minded.

Woah, I didnt write it!  So you rate things as one star if they dont interest you, is that it?  Dont shoot the messenger comes to mind