[ltp] Washington Post article Linux on TP600

[Tod Harter]

> Rob Pegoraro has been writing for the WP PC/Technical column for at least
> five years now.  After reading that article I was rather dismayed by his
> comments about the Winmodem and sound card.  He should have qualified his
> statements by saying that these problems are not entirely Linux's fault,
> since the software used with these chips are often proprietary. I expect
> better from a journalist whose job it is to follow this subject and has
> done so for so long.
>
> I think it really is the situation that if all you know is Windows, then
> other OSs are difficult.  For me it is just the opposite, I find Windows
> difficult and oftern have to resort going back to Linux to get some task
> associated with hardware to work, such as writing an ISO image to a CD-WR
> disk.

I feel the same way. I rarely use Windows and find that its usually easier to 
do things in Linux for me, but I still think windows is easier for 
unsophisticated people to figure out enough of to get by in. The problem 
isn't so much that things are harder in Linux as that you can much more 
easily box yourself into a corner where you MUST know a good deal to get a 
problem solved. 

I think you're right about the author as well. He seemed to LIKE Linux and 
want to say good things, and did give a more than fair review IMHO, but it 
didn't seem like he was totally balanced. The thing is it illustrates that 
users DON'T CARE about if something is or isn't proprietary etc. They don't 
pay directly for drivers, so they see no benefit from a free OSS driver than 
a proprietary one! 

I also must say that I am pretty darn sure there are people here that have 
gotten TP600E sound to work... I think he didn't try to hard on that one, and 
if he had, he'd have been in this list! Again, it illustrates a point, users 
want to use, not research problem fixes... 

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