Sean Estabrooks wrote:
In some ways Linux may be harder to configure. However, in my experience, it is usually easier.On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:00:29 -0400 (EDT) "William Hooper" <whooperhsd3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So if you buy a copy of Windows XP and your modem manufacture doesn't
provide drivers, that means Windows XP is not for you? No, it means
that you need to be careful checking your hardware compatibility.
The amount of supported hardware is likely much greater on Windows XP and most commodity hardware should work fine. Which probably is a demonstrable advantage of that OS over Linux. Of course, which OS is appropriate for any given situation is likely to depend on more than one particular modem being supported.
As I've mentioned before, Mr. Langa fails on two points:
1) He provides no specifics (that I've seen) of what hardware he is
talking about.
Fails at what? He was relaying his personal experience not making a bug report to developers.
2) He seems to be hung up on the closed-source support structure. In
other words his attempt at a solution is to call the support line, not
check out what experience others have had with similar hardware, or ask
for support on a mailing list.
Any conclusions he makes may not be valid but then you're welcome to
challenge them. Basically all i've heard people object to is his
audacity to relay a personal experience with Linux that was
frustrated by the current level of hardware support. Haven't heard anyone
disagree with him that Linux supports less hardware and can be more
difficult to configure than some other O/S's.
When was the last time you installed a driver in Windows that did not require a reboot?
What NICs can you use on Windows without installing a manufacturers driver from a separate disk?
What software packages can be installed on Windows without needing to reboot?
I do not ever remember having to reboot to install software or hardware drivers on Linux, and the last software package I installed on my XP machine required a reboot.
I have not encountered any NICs that are not natively supported by the linux distro I use, but the last NIC installed on the same XP machine required a driver diskette to install.
It has been stated that Mr Langa's story was one sided, and that it was. I cannot by any stretch view his story as unbiased.
Although Linux is not perfect, neither is any other OS. There are certainly differences in functionality, but hardly to the point that I would say the Langa story fair, and in fact with the slant toward saying that every version of Windows worked out of the box with his hardware I find much of it hard to believe. I am sure that several drivers were needed, but were never mentioned. (In fact with some equipment you cannot even use it without using different drivers for the different versions of windows.)
I have never installed ANY version of windows on any platform that did not require additional drivers to make everything work. The fact that he blames the OS and not the hardware manufacturers for being unable to get something to work is laughable. A driver is software that fills the gap between the standard OS calls to the hardware and the physical differences in the hardware. If the manufacturer refuses to provide the driver that works with your OS you certainly cannot blame the OS as failing to do its job. Instead you can look to the manufacturer as failing to make their product usable on all platforms.
If someone made a PCI adapter that worked on only one type of motherboard because it did not meet the hardware standard for a PCI interface you would not blame the OS for that, you would blame the manufacturer. By the same token, if an OS has a standard method of communicating with hardware (as all do) and the driver is not made available to interface between that standard communication interface and the hardware you cannot blame the OS for this either. You can blame the hardware manufacturer for not providing the software needed to support that standard interface.
I agree with earlier comments that Mr Langa did not provide the "backstory" as he claimed. He puts the whole blame on the OS and did not once mention the differences in driver availability between Linux and Windows.
Linux is getting to be more of a factor and some manufacturers are starting to provide drivers. Until we have equal support it will continue to be more difficult to install/use Linux on the same machines. His story should have addressed this difference if he wanted it to be fair.
Jeff
