John Hinton webmaster@ew3d.com wrote:
Almost 100% of computer devices have support written for Windows...
Insert: "written for [specific versions of] Windows"
again... complain to the manufacturers as they are the ones who need to hear "I didn't buy your product because it has no available driver for a Linux OS, but instead bought 'other product' because support was available". The bucks talk, but with the competitive market in computer hardware, there is not a lot of money for writing drivers, so it will take a LOT of people complaining.
Agreed. The problem is the marketshare. It's a lot more profitable for a "superstore" vendor to horde their specifications (often using 100% host-based/CPU-driven), and make their hardware Windows version-specific.
They are not interested in Linux because that would create near-perpetual drivers that work for years. The idea of the "superstore" product is to force your buyer into upgrading every 2 years.
That's not conspiracy theory, that's 100% taken from Microsoft's own Tier-1 OEMs, Gold Partners and, now, distributors. Their buy into Best Buy was just their move to extend this to retail.
I actually think we Linux folks, are viewed as a bit of a fringe group by most of the manufacturers. :)
Actually, it's more about a "self-defeating fringe." Most would actually not want Linux to succeed because GPL drivers and the "superstore profit model" are _mutally_exclusive_. ;->
I remember a few years ago, I think it was W2K server.. not sure... had a bug in it that forced a reboot at around 180 days.
You're thinking of the MS-DOS 7.x "timer" that lasted only 47 days in "Chicago" Windows 95/98/Me. It's a leagacy holdover going back to PC-DOS 3.3 (I believe?). Because _all_ 386Enhanced mode OSes (including Windows 95/98/Me) shunt back into Real86 mode DOS several dozen times per second, this would cause the system to hang.