On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 21:10, Soumen Dass wrote:
Btw, I love OSS, consistently use linux at home, try to contribute by occasionally murmuring few words of help based on my limited knowlege to newbies & buying Linux distros.
Regards, Soumen
I have tried to promote linux in my friends circle, telling them about the benefits like a stable and secure file system, immunity to viruses etc. but everything boils down to hardware compatibality. If all the devices don't work or work partially, it beats the purpose. When I looked for a modem driver for my int. modem in P4, there were about 5 or 6 driver versions just for the RHEL OS, depending on the numbers after the kernel version. The total drivers for that device for different Red Hat versions and with other linux flavours was quite a large number.
It is difficult but not impossible to persuade people to use alternate operating systems, if they get the added benefits of security and stability. Even in my XP, I use Open Office as an alternative to M$ Office. All my other software is free. Later versions of Linux have great desktops and the envirnment is similar to windows, so switching over is not very difficult, at least for SOHO users who don't use dedicated or custom software. The brakes are applied only in the hardware installation process where some devices don't work properly in linux. Since I am into hardware, I don't write programs or make drivers as that is not my field. Once the hardware compatibality obstacale is overcome, I will promote linux left, right and centre to everyone. Technology and free software collection and 'prachar' is my hobby and I promote a lot of that on the windows platform.
It would be nice if the linux programmers could get together and create a common system platform standard for linux where a common device driver will work for all the different linux flavours released in the same time period, so the device drivers that need to be written would have better flavour-compatibility and more devices can be covered in less time. Printing is also an area that needs attention. Please try to make printer installation and configuration as simple as in M$.
Best Wishes,
Rony.