John Cooper wrote: > So you are questioning my expertise in Linux? Things improved many years > ago with the 2.6 kernel. Today they have surpassed Windoz making Linux > far superior and laptops are no longer problematic. John, without wishing to put words into anyone's mouth, I don't think Mark is questioning your expertise so much as the scope of your statement to the effect that you have not 'seen Ubuntu fail to discover all of the components and configure them correctly'.
Whilst that may be true in your case, there is evidence to suggest that this does still happen, my daughter's Acer 5735z being a good example, and before that my wife's Dell i1300. There has always been a lag between the introduction of new hardware and the subsequent arrival of the relevant drivers on a given Linux install disc, and in my experience no area shows that better example than the laptop market. Agreed, that lag may be shorter than ever before, and subsequent install problems fewer, but it is still present. No doubt Jaunty will correct that in my particular case, but until then it's a show stopper for anyone not as experienced as you or I in identifying the hardware and then navigating the forums and manufacturer's sites for drivers. Don't get me wrong here, since I am certainly not championing Windows, and I was dead pleased that Ellie insisted on Ubuntu. However, I believe that there is more effort involved in getting Linux on to a laptop as a rule, not least because manufacturers have typically made laptops primarily with a Windows OS in mind (older Apple products and recent Netbooks aside), with some like Dell offering a specialist service where they solve the problems of installing a select, supported flavour of Linux onto a machine for you. It's testament to the skills present in the Linux community and the tenacity of its advocates that, as quickly as the problems arise, they are solved, and /that/ is where Linux beats Windows IMHO. Sean -- The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows. Frank Zappa -- Dorset LUG: http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ irc://irc.blitzed.org:6667/dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wednesday 2009-04-01 20:00
