Comment Re:Linux on the desktop is dead (Score 1) 566
See, this type of argument is the exact reason why Linux on the consumer's desktop will never work.
OpenOffice is not "100% compatible" because it just so happens that Microsoft's closed document standards are, unfortunately, the "accepted" standard for documentation - this is due to clever Microsoft marketing, not a fault of OpenOffice. ODF and RTF are open formats that are supported by OpenOffice.
Whether or not Openoffice supports a file type that Office can is not the problem. The problem is as you say clever marketing. The
So you just choose your hardware wisely, that's all. I've purchased two laptops within the past 6 months, a Gateway one and an HP one. I think the only thing that doesn't work on one of them is the button above the keyboard to turn off/on the wireless network interface. Oh, and I use Gentoo and I have use of native LCD resolutions.
No consumer is going to want to have to try and match up their hardware to their OS. They want to take it out of the package install it and "It just works". The LCD resolution is just a minor thing, after hours of digging I found that you have to hack the video bios to get my native widescreen res out of the LCD. The real hard part is getting frame buffer to operate at native res. The only way to accomplish this is to load the framebuffer module after you have hacked the video bios. But because of that there is no pretty bootspash for me.
So how about doing something constructive and contacting games companies to make native Linux games ports if that's what you want? Rather than just sitting there moaning and not doing anything. If there are enough people like you, maybe some of those companies will do something.
We, as a community, have been doing exactly that for over 5 years now and we still don't have but a couple of native games and that crappy Cedega. But because the game producers don't think that Linux is even in the same league, much less the same ballpark as the other OS, we will never have the choices available to get our game on.
Most Linux people are relatively happy with the state of nVidia and ATI drivers, for example, which are closed source. Sure, sometimes they release rubbish versions and a lot of hackers (not "crackers") would love to get their hands on the source code to these but that's just the way it is. I'm just happy there is *some* support.
The state of video drivers is not the only issue here. I'm happy that these companies provide drivers for their hardware, I just wish more hardware manufactuers would do the same. The point of this argument was that the negative feelings that manufacturers get from Linux users for providing closed source drivers is about the same as not providing them at all. So what's the point in their eyes. As long as we as a community vilify software and hardware developers for writting closed source solutions Linux will remain a limp bird.
As far as my choice of distro and my level of knowledge, now it your turn to make sweeping statements with anything to back them up. I have been working professionally with Linux since 1998. And all of it has been integrating Linux with Windows based networks. I love the idea of using Samba as a PDC. I love using MySQL for our corporate databases. And apache is the only web server as far as I'm concerned. But thank you I will go back to my Windows and moan, moan about how much I'd rather have an alternative that is capable of doing the most basic tasks that consumers ask of it.
