On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 16:08, Derek Neighbors wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 05:41, Robert.Wultsch@asu.edu wrote:
> > In my quest to rid myself of the skerg of msft x86 operating systems I have
> > tried several distros with the best until a couple days ago being knoppix
> > based debian. There have been several problems that have plagued all of the
> > distros that have kept me from deleting the XP partitions on my main computer,
> > a Dell 2650 laptop. These problems included:
> > 1. Power managment did not work at all.
> > 2. Until a week ago I could not find drivers for my WinModem that I had to
> > figure out the model and what not manualy
> > 3. Most distros could not get a working X config file.
> >
> > SuSE 9.0 Personel Edition addressed 1 and 3 very well and made a good attempt
> > at 2 out of box. The winmodem was correctly detected but not correctly
> > configured. All is not right with the world however, SuSE had the same
> > performace with my Oranaco 802.11b card as it did with my winmodem. This is
> > unaccptable as every other distro other than straght debian configured the
> > care correctly automaticly for dhcp work. To some degree I do not mind having
> > to go to other for help on a modem. But not having either a wirless card that
> > everything else has well supported nor the winmodem is unfoutanite.
> >
> > The installations program is as pretty if not more than any other I have seen
> > and it allows many of the details to be setup automaticly. The installation
> > program made a good guess on how a normal person would want a windows box to
> > be turned into dual boot, however I am not normal and I was able to partition
> > to my liking. SuSE defaulted to resier (which is fine) and had options that
> > included both NTFS and VFAT resizing.
> >
> > The desktop defaults to KDE but Gnome is availible. KDE is well setup with a
> > significantly more powerful than stock controll panel.
> >
> > Assuming that within a days the 802.11b can be convinced to work and within a
> > few weeks I am able to convince the winmodem to work I will be freed from the
> > use of MS Windows on this machine forever.
>
> I never thought I would say this...
>
> SuSe cares about users freedom as much as Apple does. So, if you don't
> care about your freedom, you are better off moving to OS X. It "just
> works", which appears to be your primary concern. If concern number one
> is losing "the evil empire" and the mandate is it has to "just work",
> you should look at OS X.
-----
Ouch
I think that you should put OS X into the 'mostly works' category -
there is stuff that doesn't work well - at least through 10.2.8 version
and time will tell on the new Panther.
Not everyone is driven by the desire to rid themselves of the 'evil
empire' - some people don't think Microsoft is evil - just a typical
American Corporation seeking to take full advantage of domination
tactics because they can.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Red Hat with the
disappearance of most of their RHL shrink-wrapped packages, leaving only
the more expensive packages available for retail consumption. Is SuSe
really so different?
Let's face it - even corporations selling Linux are still corporations
concerned primarily with bottom line decisions.
The battleground these days revolves around the large businesses, small
businesses and home users and since we seem to be talking about the home
users - it makes sense to have the expectation that things just work.
Try sticking a winmodem in a Mac G4 and see if you can get it to work.
Apple doesn't come close to supporting the variety of hardware that most
Linux distro's support.
Craig
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