[Sussex] An interesting article (well I thought so!)

[Steve 'Dobbo' Dobson]

Desmond

On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 09:37:44PM +0100, Desmond Armstrong wrote:
> 
> >Just spotted this on slashdot.
> >
> >http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20070913/linuxs-free-system-is-now-easier-to-use-but-not-for-everyone/
> >
> >I thought it was quite interesting, given the apparent quest for factory 
> >installation from Dell (after reading various articles recently).
> >
> >What I was suprised with, was the negative side of the article.
>  
> Some interesting comments which we should all take on board.

It's nothing that hasn't been said before elsewhere.

> My preferred distro, which I keep coming back to, is Mandriva and the 
> several negative comments are not negative with this.

My is Debian, which after all is the distro on which Ubuntu is based.

> Specifically:-
> 
> Touch Pad adjustment.
> Certainly there are adjustments for mouse sensitivities and the touchpad 
> works very well for me.

In his defence there is no separate control for the touch pad.  My
Inspiron 8200 has both touch pad and nipple and you can't adjust the
sensitivity independently.  He does have a point.

> Volume control crashing.
> I have never had such problem.

No I but then I can't use suspend and resume.  The open source driver
works find, but it doesn't drive the GPU to the fullest, and as I need
use this computer to drive a projector from time to time (like at Moots
and when on site) I therefore am forced to use the closed source driver
to the the functionality I need.

Now that AMD have released GPU documentation I am hopeful that the 
drivers within XOrg while now be progressed to driver the hardware
the way I need.
 
> mp3 playing.
> They play very well in Mandriva.
> 
> DVD playing.
> No problems here and I normally install VLC together with it's multi 
> region capabilities.

These problems are legal more than technical.  The problem for any Linux
distro that isn't going to charge for each download is the bundling of
software (codecs in this case) that has American broken IP laws in its
way.

Did you buy your Mandriva box pre-installed?  Remember this guy did and
do you think that Dell is going to ship code that is covered by US patents?
If you installed Mandriva yourself was there a part of that install where
you clicked a box that said "Download 3rd party software to play MP3s and
DVDs?  WARNING: Doing so my be illegal in your country."

While it is disapponting that all articles do not whole heartedly indorse
Linux this article is a step in the right direction.  Here is someone who
openly admits that his column is not aimed at techies or IT people  but at
compendent people who just want a computer to get a job done.  Here he is
saying that Linux is now worthy of a look, so this is definatly a step in
the right direction.

Steve
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/attachments/20070917/14fac494/attachment.pgp