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posted by
janrinok
on Sunday April 06 2014, @08:46PM
from the but-not-the-year-of-the-Linux-desktop dept.
from the but-not-the-year-of-the-Linux-desktop dept.
A recent poll by The Inquirer asked, "Which operating system will you use after Windows XP support ends on 8 April?"
Among respondents, 33 percent said they will move to Windows 7, 17 percent will stick with XP, 13 percent will switch to Linux, 11 percent will get Windows 8, and 5 percent said OS X.
So most will switch to Windows 7, but many would rather stay with Win XP without support than switch to Linux.
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Poll: More Will Switch to Linux Than to Win8
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A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.
Buy the negatives at any price.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @10:24PM
I assume that at the time the GP bought his kit, the reputation for a lack of support for that gear was common knowledge.
People who buy single-purpose gear then whine when that doesn't work outside those narrow bounds get no empathy from me--only scorn.
Standard practice to determine if the gear that has caught your eye is open/compatible is to take your bootable ISO with you to BuyMore.
Boot-to-a-usable-desktop media has been available all of this century. ...and even before. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
(Anyone who isn't aware how far back KNOPPIX goes has been living in a cave.)
Indeed, this meme goes back to the Lose95 era. [googleusercontent.com] (orig[1]) [linuxjournal.com]
The ultimate form of this test is to use a doesn't-support-any-closed-code distro for that. [soylentnews.org]
That distro is called Trisquel.
[1] The significant text for your text search is Fall '95.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by monster on Tuesday April 08 2014, @07:11AM
Usually it's not so simple. When you buy new hardware it's common to go near the 'bleeding edge', at least in some components. Many times the hardware isn't supported at that moment, but gets a driver later (we have to assume it, Linux is a second class citizen for many companies, specially on consumer hardware). In those cases you are betting that your hardware will get the drivers you need, but you really don't know. If later the company decides to not support Linux properly you are screwed, but you had no way to know it before.
Also, company reputation for support is not always the same. Take HP, for example: Their old printers worked flawlessly with Linux, with many of them you could send a PS file to it and call it done. Then, new models arrive and the support is somewhere between defective and half-assed, like the HPLIP ones, or the drivers are crippled and don't support all the functionalities of the printers.