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The article is correctThe article is correctPosted Mar 30, 2012 22:49 UTC (Fri) by fre (guest, #83851)In reply to: The article is correct by scientes Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
Just an anecdote. Or a Rant. Around last October went shopping for a new laptop. For the budget i had my choices were between two similar ones except for:
a) Intel CPU and Wifi, Nvidia graphics card Option B was 50€ more expensive, but thinking that AMD released specs and Broadcom is funding open drivers i decided to go for this option. As a result, my wifi cant work with the open source drivers and i wasn't able to make the closed ones work with custom compiled kernels. The graphics card somehow works, but with the closed drivers is crashy, with the open ones i can fry eggs in my laptop. Now, i know the fault isn't much on Linux kernel. But whatever, so much for hardware support in linux, 2012 AD.
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The article is correct Posted Mar 30, 2012 23:09 UTC (Fri) by tpo (subscriber, #25713) [Link]
I think that's unfortunately not the way to shop Linux computers.
The way to shop Linux computers is to take your latest beta home distro live CD and go for a walk around the computer shops.
Or if you want to internetshop, then the laptop on offer must *explicitly* support Linux (there are many sellers that have Linux compatible machines).
:-/
The missed opportunity Posted Mar 31, 2012 19:36 UTC (Sat) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] This is where the likes of Canonical have dropped the ball completely. To fix bug #1 or whatever it is called, you have to target the hardware vendors, if necessary becoming one yourself. There are plenty of people selling computers with Free Software operating systems installed, although you have to do some legwork to find them and see what they are actually offering, but these people are not the same people who have the resources to actively fix and improve the software in order to actively support a device. Sure, Canonical certify some devices, but that doesn't guarantee anyone on this planet being able to buy them, especially if Dell is involved. And without people actively promoting, selling and supporting computers with Free Software operating systems, there will always be a certain difficulty in reaching the masses and a disconnect between available hardware and fully supported hardware.
The missed opportunity Posted Mar 31, 2012 20:28 UTC (Sat) by scientes (guest, #83068) [Link]
Linaro does this to some extent with ARM dev boards, but this is partially cause this is basically the only way to get a ARM device working these days, as the ARM tree in the kernel is in such a bad state (improving alot, and the flexibility afforded to ARM licencees make it harder) however the prices are not exceptional
http://www.linaro.org/engineering/getting-started/low-cos...
Also guys like the Marvell SheevaPlug, DreamPlug, etc, where the manufacture actively work with the Linux devs, and they are not the only hardware manufactures. CPU vendors have been contributing to Linux and gcc, etc (AMD even to coreboot) for a long time.
The missed opportunity Posted Apr 1, 2012 17:25 UTC (Sun) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Yes, but there's a huge difference between organisations maintaining component-specific features in the Linux kernel and offering a complete, fully-supported system.
The article is correct Posted Mar 31, 2012 1:52 UTC (Sat) by charris (subscriber, #13263) [Link]
Ah, so Radeon still runs hot with the open drivers? I went back to NVIDIA for just that reason. The NVIDIA drivers may be closed, but they are better maintained for compatibility than fglrx.
The article is correct Posted Mar 31, 2012 14:58 UTC (Sat) by pataphysician (guest, #73773) [Link]
The Radeon driver in KMS mode has power saving turned off by default if your kernel 2.6.35 or less, it can be turned on if you want, then no more hot laptop. If you have the 3.0 kernel or greater it should be turned on by default in KMS mode.
The article is correct Posted Apr 2, 2012 15:45 UTC (Mon) by jedidiah (guest, #20319) [Link]
Wifi a problem on Linux? Sure. It comes with it's own challenges. That's something that's vastly different as something absurd like printing being broken by an update. They are not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
Dial back the hyperbole a little bit. Otherwise people are bound to not take you seriously at all.
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