Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3232 mails)

[William Gallafent <william@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 22 August 2006 11:24, Jeff Rollin wrote:

> Even Windows, with its supposedly superior driver support,
> incorporates idiocies such as having to download a modem
> or ADSL driver just to get on the Internet; the number of
> packages one has to download/install from (separate!) CD's
> (on top of all the crud MS packs into its OS) just to get
> a level of functionality equivalent to *out of the box*
> support on a decent Linux distro is *phenomenal* and, for
> an OS that claims to be the One True Operating System,
> laughably abysmal.

This is only a problem if you build your own machine (or
have lost the Manufacturer's driver or recovery CD). Every
Windows PC (and laptop) I've used in the last several years
has come with a recovery DVD, or a driver DVD, or both. The
recovery CD installs Windows and all the drivers in one
go. If you choose to install plain Windows from an MS
install CD, the driver DVD will install all the necessary
drivers for your machine in one operation subsequently. If
your hard disc is intact, there is often a recovery
partition which will regenerate a clean system with all
drivers present more rapidly than using the DVD (especially
if it's been lost ;)

I agree that any major Linux distribution (sUsE in
particular) has better hardware support out of the box than
pure MS Windows, but since Manufacturers package all the
necessary drivers for a machine with that machine, this
isn't generally a real-world problem in my experience.

Coupled with the fact that most Windows machines come
pre-installed, with drivers already present, I think this
aspect of your argument is overstated.