[Gllug] Re: Open Source Lobbying

[Pete Ryland]

On 16/10/06, John Hearns <john.hearns at streamline-computing.com> wrote:
>
> Christopher Currie wrote:
>
> >
> > Sorry to pick out just one message among the optimistic buzzes. My view
> is
> > that FOSS for home users is about to start to decline, and could be dead
> in
> > five years, because people want to be able to use Wifi connections at
> home
> > and while travelling, in hotels, caffs etc. That means Windows XP, for
> all
> > practical purposes.
>
> I agree with what you say. My laptop's wireless card works with
> ndiswrapper and now with bcm43xx
> When I'm out and about, using Windows XP is just so much easier as you
> get a point-and-drool interface for changing the ESSID and keys.
> Yes, I'll be upgrading to Fedora 6 soon.


It's probably worth pointing out that some distros are better than others at
this.  A certain distro starting with U deals well with a whole host of
laptops/wireless cards out of the box.  Then again, for a lot of these, they
rely on ndiswrapper which is not so ideal, but at least works as a
reasonable interim until drivers are written.

Talking about regular users and Linux, I bought my better half a computer
recently, and got it dual booting (actually tri-booting with Solaris 10 as
well for me to play with).  I spent about 2 hours getting everything working
sweetly with Linux: essential stuff was browser, gaim, MythTV frontend,
wireless card, sip and skype (with bluetooth headset).  I also had no
problems with the webcam it came with.

Now with Windows, it took several days to get the wireless card to work and
I had to re-input the (longish) WEP key at random intervals, I spent so much
time trawling websites for the right drivers, I never got the bluetooth
headset to work, and it can't even play the mythweb .NUV streams.  Without a
microphone Skype and sip are useless, but she can still use my laptop for
that.  But in her mind this was the decision:

Windows:
* Proper Windows Live MSN thing - important because you can "send" cool
animations when you're chatting

Linux:
* Lots of cool games

I kid you not, it was the number of cool little games under Linux that was
the clincher.  She's not into big games, but the fact that it had Gweled
especially meant that she didn't really have a need for Windows and insisted
on its removal.

Stranger things and such...

Pete
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