Can Linux beat XP in homes yet or NOT?

[Ashley Pritchard]

"I have looked at Dell's initiative with
Ubuntu Linux but i guess a user would have to contact Ubuntu forums for
any kind of support"
Yes Dell is supplying OS support for Dell systems sold w/ Ubuntu Linux under
their warranty service.

Will Linux ever be on the desktop mainstream? NO it will never be on the
desktop because the open source community is not unified enough to
accomplish this. There is not standardized distribution that will work ...ie
w/the ability to play DVDs, MP3s etc out of the box (even individual users
will argue just over the pettiest of commands such as how to su to root).
The conflicts between DMC, Patton laws & GPL & no one willing to compromise
on either side of the issue continues to make linux a pain in the rear to
install & configure. Even though incorporating multimedia support to work in
the distribution may be in conflict with the philosophy of "free" (as in
free speech) software not incorporating multimedia support limits my freedom
to listen to music & watch movies on the system with the OS of my choice.
You can install F7 in an afternoon & then spend the next 4-5 months
configuring & trying to figure out how to get things to work. Just to have a
usable system for multimedia & simple browsing is complicated for the lack
of flash & java support (I still have not gotten java to work on my system &
I installed F7 almost 2mo ago). I had to edit all of the GDM themes to have
Welsh language support & that took the better part of 2 days to sift through
all of the xml files. I am still configuring my system but almost have to
where I like but by then they will have a new version out & the cycle will
start again.

No linux will never win over Windows for the desktop on PCs. If you want a
system with an open source OS get a MAC which is basically Free BSD.

On 7/13/07, Srikanth Konjarla <srikanth.konjarla at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Les Mikesell wrote:
> > Srikanth Konjarla wrote:
> >> Interesting subject as always. To me, yes Linux beats XP/Vista etc.
> >> Last time i have run windowZe for business was NT4 (i go to customers)
> >> since then i have started running Linux on laptop (started with RH7.0,
> >> no dual boot either).
> >>
> >> But, for many out there it may not beat XP because there is no vendor
> >> stands behind "Linux" to support. Also, Linux has become very general
> >> term and i guess these days we gotta be specific about a Linux
> >> distribution (F7, Ubuntu, SuSE etc). If there is a vendor who is ready
> >> to pre install Linux (any distro) and extend it to full supportability
> >> while providing all the drivers (video, wireless specifically) then it
> >> can beat any OS (in my opinion OS X also).
> >>
> >> The question, who is gonna do that.
> >
> > Maybe these are US-only links, but they are to PCs with RedHat and
> > Ubuntu factory installed.
> >
> >
> http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/precn_n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&redirect=1
> >
> >
> http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
> Sun,IBM,HP also shipping RH,SUSE based Linux servers for quite a while.
> But, on the desktop side of the Linux, there is no vendor who can
> "extend" a supportable Linux. I have looked at Dell's initiative with
> Ubuntu Linux but i guess a user would have to contact Ubuntu forums for
> any kind of support. Also, Dell is not known to contributing any code
> that might augment the functionality of Linux or works better on their
> hardware with complete support of hardware. But, i guess it is a good
> start from Dell.
>
> Most of the hardware vendors have a mailing list that is specific to
> Linux but when it comes to actual support they contribute nothing
> (specially Toshiba). This need to change for a big push into
> desktop/laptop market.
>
> Srikanth
> >
> >
> >
> > But, installing your own is trivial if the hardware is recognized by the
> > installer.
> >
>
> --
> fedora-list mailing list
> fedora-list at redhat.com
> To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>



-- 
Diolch yn fawr, Ashley
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20070713/5588d06e/attachment-0002.html