Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 15th Jan 2006 23:32 UTC
"Linux has made major inroads on servers and in data centers running both open-source and proprietary applications on millions of computers worldwide. We've recently seen the rise of Linux on mobile devices. But the Linux desktop remains elusive. We know it's out there, but it only now seems to be approaching the tipping point."
Thread beginning with comment 86115
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Member since:
2005-07-06
You highlight something very interesting. Linux gets a lot of flak for its hardware support, while OS X is touted as "just working" with hardware. In reality, there is little difference, technically, between the two in terms of hardware support. Both Linux and OS X depend primarily on first-party drivers. Linux is often criticized for not having stable kernel APIs, but few people note that OS X didn't either until Tiger came out. People complain loudly when drivers break on new Linux versions, yet new OS X versions break kernel extensions all the time and nobody utters a peep. The difference here isn't a technical one, but one of user expectations.
People expect Linux to be like Windows; people don't expect OS X to be like Windows. New Linux users often go in thinking that Linux should support their hardware, while OS X users know that they have to buy hardware supported by their OS. I don't know what can be done aboue this. There is no technical solution, since even if Linux had stable kernel APIs, the odds of vendors releasing high-quality binary drivers for alternative platforms is almost nil (something OS/2, BeOS, etc, should have proved by now).