On Monday 05 March 2001 03:13, you wrote:
<note> <snip> If IBM wants to put their money where their mouth is, they should support a multi-vendor collaborative effort to improve thechnologies such as XFree86 and ALSA.
IBM is putting 3.5 BILLION into their 'Linux mouth". That's not peanuts!
From my own perspective, these are the show stoppers which prevent me from telling my father that Linux is safe for the home user. My mother's still a few years beyond that. She just wants the thing to work. No challenges, no config files to edit, just turn it on and check the email, play a game, write a paper, etc.
Every SuSE since KDE1 and kdm has been at that level, IMO. In fact, it was because I could guarantee that behavior in SuSE 6.4 that I was allowed to install it as the only BBS server in the Dept of Revenue. "It doesn't work any different than Windows" is a direct quote from the primary microsurftie who runs the BBS. She points and clicks everything right down to the backup process. The only reason my wife doesn't have that ability on this PC is because I am always experiementing and don't run the kdm. But, I do leave it up in KDE2.1 24/7 for her to use email, surf and write letters. She sees no purpose for the games and such, even though I've described to her how similar the flight simulator is to real flying. :).
The point at which the uninitiated go into panic mode is when the screen goes blank, or they system won't boot into graphics mode.
Ya, I know what you mean. I see that all the time at work, where the major OS is Win95, with a smattering of Win98 and W2K. All thought, that SuSE 6.4 system has been up 24/7 since September, 2000, without a single incident of any kind.
Sound is also becoming an essential part of the end user experience. I like it, and use if for many different purposes, some technical, some just for entertainment. These things have to work if Linux is to be accepted by all but a few of us who are willing to put in the time and effort to make these things work.
Ya, I see that at work too. That W2K is real picky about what it will and won't work with. I had to remove my scanner and CD writer when I installed W2K because Gates wouldn't commit some coders to writing W2K drivers for them. All in all, I will continue to recommend Linux (SuSE) because the odds are that drivers will appear for strange hardware in Linux long before they appear on the W2K platform. Just MHO. JLK