Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 16th Dec 2005 22:28 UTC
"Linux works. This is a very matter-of-fact statement, but it is one many people (myself included) make every day when they boot up their computers. It is not a perfect product, it would not be sensible to expect something as complex as an operating system to be flawless, but fact remains that Linux does work. On the software side of things the open source community has done a very good job of making this clear, but the other half of computing, hardware, this movement has not been as successful. Every day Linux users encounter driver and compatibility issues which Windows users have not had to deal with for years."
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Member since:
2005-10-02
Well, it depends on how lucky you are.
Linux is as easy as it should be, when drivers work. The problem arrises when they don't.
Personally it's not a problem for me. I just plug it in and it works - and I had to do nothing for this to work. With one exception... My webcam. That one won't work for me.
However, the problem isn't really all that Linux-specific. It's not a hard job to find peripherals that won't work with Windows either. I've had quite a few issues with laptops incapable of recognizing webcams and usb-sticks - without any way to solve it.
And on my former PC, my Riva TNT card wouldn't work in Windows, no matter what. Only in DOS and Linux. Apparently this was a known problem with the CPU+mobo combination, and no fix for it.
Linux does however suffer more from it than Windows, and there are two possible solutions:
1) Reengineering (open source solution)
2) Costumerpressure on companies (to come up with proper closed source solution).
But to be honest, the problem isn't that big.
Check out forums for 3D Games, and see how many persons having trouble with Windows and drivers, and you can see it's not that different from the issues known from Linux.