[ltp] T40 / Pentium M and Linux

[Tod Harter]

I really honestly have no problem with IBM saying 'thats not supported by us', 
as long as they will sell me the system and not want to charge me for windows 
I'm happy. I've never called IBM in my life anyway. Not that I wouldn't, but 
I tend to fix things myself, so just give me the bare system option, thats 
all I want. I don't think thats very demanding at all :o).

On Friday 28 March 2003 09:53 am, Greg Herlein wrote:
> I have an R32 and it's great, and the one time I called in for
> tech support they were helpful and when I said I had linux
> installed the support engineer said "cool!"  Now, my issue was a
> question of some BIOS settings to try to make vmware happy, so
> having linux was not an issue.
>
> But, we in the linux community should chill out a bit when it
> comes to demands.  Frankly, support call centers are expensive,
> and tech support is often a thnakless job that is hard to get
> good people for.
>
> Places that do provide linux support have a challenging
> task.  Every damn distro does things differently.  I personally
> can't stand Red Hat - I'm a SuSE fan.  I've seen Mandrake, RH,
> SuSE, Debian, etc all on this list, all with various kernel
> levels.  That variation alone is nearly as bad as the whole Win32
> family of variables - that's a lot of different systems to expect
> a tech support staff to keep track of.
>
> Now, add the notion that linux folks often compile thier own
> kernels and install their own system-level libraries.  Gee, now
> how do you support that?  Having tries to support linux drivers
> in the past, that gets complicated.  It often boils down to "send
> me your .config file and I'll see if I can reproduce your
> kernel" - which gets really ugly if the user patched the kernel.
>
> This is why vmware, for example, will only support it if you are
> on a certified linux distro.  If you are on your own kernel or
> customized system, they can't promise they can help you.
>
> That said, I think that companies need to hear that we *are* a
> market for them.  Any time you interact with these companies you
> need to tell them that you are a linux user.  Only when the
> marketing droids hear it often enough will they suddenly say
> "gee, we have to take care of this market."
>
> Greg

-- 
Tod Harter
Giant Electronic Brain