I don't know if anyone has mentioned the problems often encountered when installing Linux on a shiny, new, state-of-the-art machine. The hardware will have been designed with Windows in mind, and some of it may not work out of the box with Linux. And if the machine, like most new machines, can talk to the outside world only through usb ports (and perhaps an ethernet connection), all manner of adapters will be required to use old peripherals. Each of these adapters will also need to be Linux compatible.
A time lag frequently exists between the introduction of new hardware and the availability of suitable Linux drivers. And even when these drivers or kernel patches become available, a significant time lag can exist before the changes make it into a distribution. Especially one as conservative as Slackware, my personal favorite. I had been hanging on to a 12-year-old computer, primarily because it had KDE3 and could run Rosegarden classic. The machine was barely fast enough to run Rosegarden, took hours to compile Rosegarden, but it did work, so I was reluctant to replace it. However as the hard drive filled up with uncompressed music files, it became clear that I would have no choice but to upgrade. Simply upgrading the hard drive would have been more trouble than it was worth, as new drives are no longer compatible with old hardware. I decided to buy a new machine. I spent a month or two locating and compiling drivers, tweaking a new kernel, and modifying favorite applications to run on a 64-bit system. This was expected, and the new machine mostly works now. I do still experience occasional instability with the usb keyboard and mouse, which I blame on a not fully compatible usb gameport adapter that I need for my outside-temperature display (a thermistor in place of a joystick). <rant> What I did not expect was the Hell that I would go through getting KDE4 to work. It took much Googling and experimentation simply to put icons on the desktop and a few simple applications on the task bar. I still don't know what "plasma" is or what an "akonadi server" does, but I disabled as much that stuff as I could. If I wanted some in-your-face desktop environment running processes behind my back and getting between me and my work, I would not have blown away the Windows system that came installed on the box. After much work, I finally have a desktop with about 80 percent of the functionality of KDE3, along with a lot of unused, gratuitous eye candy. I want something slightly more sophisticated than XFCE but nothing like the monstrosity that is KDE4. Perhaps something more like KDE3. </rant> I like Linux and had been administering Linux servers for years before making the switch to a Linux desktop. Linux, once set up, works well, at least until advancing technology forces an upgrade. Linux is not for everyone. I would not recommend it to casual users, unless at least one person in the household were knowledgeable or interested in becoming knowledgeable in debugging obscure computer problems. On the other hand, Linux desktop systems might be a good choice in an engineering or corporate environment, provided there were at least two people (in case one of them quit or committed suicide) who knew something about Linux. Tim ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-user mailing list [email protected] - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
