[members at lugog] Fwd: [LUG] Number 10 Petition

[Sean Miller]

Is this something that should be driven by government?  Would we
petition the Prime Minister if Tesco were not stocking a certain type
of apple, or would we ask Tesco (in numbers) if they could consider
stocking it?

The Labour Government since 1997 has introduced more new laws, I
believe, than any government before it.  Increasingly we find
ourselves living in a "nanny state", where everything you do from the
moment you wake up until the moment you sleep is controlled in some
way by the government.  Do we really want to encourage the government
to interfere any more than it is already doing so?  How would the law
being requested actually work??  What "alternative OS" would be
proposed?  Are we expecting these "alternative OS" machines to be on
the shelves, ready to take away?  Or do these shops have to change
their business model, so that when you go into PC World you pick your
PC, choose the OS (from a list of hundreds, presumably) and then come
back a few days later to pick it up??  Is the consumer going to
consider this a "move forward"??

The fact is that the reason most stores stock Windows is "supply and
demand" - people want Windows.  Increasingly, though, people are
looking at Linux which is why Dell etc. now supply machines with
Ubuntu.  Personally, though, I think that rather than petitioning the
government to make shops sell "alternative OS" machines we would do
better to petition the printer manufacturers to supply Linux drivers.
Printing is one of the few remaining areas where Linux lags behind the
Windows/OS-X world - we see discussions on the Ubuntu Mailing List all
the time where people are saying "help! how do I make this printer
work" only to find they can't.  If the manufacturers can't be
persuaded, why isn't there a package similar to "ndiswrapper" that
would allow Windows drivers to be installed on Linux?

Sean