Kevanf1 wrote:
On 21/05/06, Rikard Johnels <rikard.j@rikjoh.com> wrote:
Is seems to me, reading from a lot of the new installations made on this list. The main problem ppl very often crash into is the graphics department. Not getting the right resolution, image of center, not being able to set LCD's etc. And it most often boils down to a bad xorg.conf being created by Sax. Lots of the solutions are "Hand hack this", "Run with these and that debug/switch", "copy old config to new" and so on.
My question/ observation is; Is this really how a professional utility should work? You need quite a bit of expertise to fix the graphics setup. Especially with the newer cards. Its not the clearest and easiest for newcomers to fix a graphical problem. And most of the time as all they want to get is the new and shiny desktop. Alot of ppl dont care whats under the hood. (And doesnt understand)
Time to take a closer look as to WHY Sax cant set things up w/o screwing it self? Not saying that Sax is a total piece of.. Its a fairly nice piece of software. It just doesnt reach the high SuSE standard we expect to see.
Just my 2 cents....
-- /Rikard
Those people we hope to tempt from Windows are very likely to be the ones bad mouthing Linux as a whole with this sort of problem. It is 'sort of' acceptable when you have this problem with a freely downloadable distro' but certainly not when people are paying for it. I am surprised there haven't been cases taken to such bodies as Trading Standards (a UK official consumer body) with paid for distro's. It will happen and when it does it can only do harm to Linux as a whole.
I will say this. I have had fewer problems with this version of Suse than with any previous one as far as graphics and video cards are concerned. Suse still does not recognize that my video card is 3D but I have more resolution choices and I can get a proprietary driver from ATI if I have any serious problems. The level of difficulty with the video and graphics issues are a little less than what I used to get with MS Dos years ago. Usually people can drop their graphics settings down to a more basic level until the problem gets sorted out. The main issue is getting manufacturers to produce drivers for their hardware. I broke down and bought a second cheap scanner for Linux because my Microtek Scanmaker 6800 will not work under Linux. If there is more adoption of Linux among corporate users, this should drive manufacturers to include drivers. I expect that as Linux expands in Europe and especially Asia that manufacturers based there will be more inclined to spend the time to do appropriate drivers and software such as Epson's scanning utilities. Until 10% of the world's computers run Linux, many manufacturers will not spend the time to support it. Right now, all Linux distributions combined amount to about 5% of the world computer market. As Asia and Africa expand computer usage, open source will strongly appeal to them from a cost perspective and this should improve the market situation. Most North Americans and Europeans will pay for something that works right out of the box even if it crashes and gets viruses. If I knew 3 years ago what I know now, I would have saved about $1000 is computer software costs by going to Linux earlier. I would have had to accept slightly lower functionality in the early stages but now I can do 95% of what I want to do in Linux. I still keep my machine as dual boot for the sake of accessing some older files and because some Windows software does a better job of communicating with my cell phone and until recently, my scanner, video files and voice modem. Wal Mart has played around with selling easy to use Linux computers on the low end of the market with Linspire. This probably where new personal desktop users will enter the market. In reality, it is the corporate and government markets which will drive growth and hence support for the next 5 years. Ralph Ellis