On Thursday 28 Apr 2005 20:34, Jan Elders wrote:
Some personal experience examples : * Buying "any" 54Mb wireless PCMCIA card and plugging it in under Linux will hardly ever work right away. In that "other" OS it does, usually.
We are dependent on manufacturers either doing the drivers themselves (which they do for Microsoft Windows), or releasing specs. Given those constraints, it's actually impressive that so much works. You can use ndiswrapper to use the Microsoft Windows drivers if you like - it works fine on the cards I have used it with.
* It requires quite some studying/searching before you get the € (euro-sign) working on your Linux box. Is standard available under W$$.
??? AltGr+4 gives it here, on a default install - you may need to check your encoding, though, and of course you have to be using a font that has the euro sign in it :-)
* Have you ever tried to play a DVD-movie right after system installation ? Won't work, you need to install a lot of additional stuff first. No problem with W$$.
This has been done to death on this list. The large content combines don't like Linux, and there's not much can be done about that. Having said that, you can get DVDs playing in 5 minutes by downloading a couple of packages.
* Accented characters (common for millions of Europeans) don't work right away after the initial installation. You need to know what to do to get that working.
Absolutely untrue - I have about 140 accented characters available within two keypresses, and that's on a default 9.2 install, using the (default) en-GB.UTF-8 encoding; I did nothing at all. I attach a short note on this - obviously (again!) you need to be using a font that will show these characters.
* Activation of a SAMBA server needs quite some studying and detailed configuring first. Under W$$ it is rather simple to activate the sharing services.
Possibly, since it is a Microsoft protocol (!), but anyone will tell you that the resultant networking can sometimes be flaky. Using something like SWAT can simplify SAMBA setup considerably.
* Getting checks done on SPAM mail and viruses is another challenge. Equivalent tools for W$$ are easy to install.
??? SpamAssassin and a couple of others can activated in KMail with a couple of clicks.
* Connecting a TV-card, in my case, produced video image right away, but no sound. Even the combined wisdom of this discussion forum has not been able to help me so far !!!
Depends on the hardware, I suppose. I have one card that works fine, and another that produces no sound (yet!).
But again, some reflection and self-critcism on Linux won't hurt to my opinion.
Yes, but it has to be based on facts, and not on points that are incorrect. -- Pob hwyl / Best wishes Kevin Donnelly www.kyfieithu.co.uk - Meddalwedd Rhydd yn Gymraeg www.cymrux.org.uk - Linux Cymraeg ar un CD!