I have had numerous discussions around Linux, especially as a desktop OS. A lot of Windows and Mac folks like to say that Linux sucks. A lot of the diatribes against Linux usually have to do with getting laptops to functional completely. A lot of people assume that this is a Linux problem, and that Linux must "suck", because some piece of hardware don't work, or doesn't work out-of-the-box.
A lot of other complaints to Linux revolve around functionality issues. Either something doesn't work the way Windows or Mac OS X does, or some application isn't available, or they just don't like the alternative application and they way it works. Are these types of issues related to the quality of the operating system?
I would say not! Many of the issues are actually a matter of taste, versus a matter of fact. Simply not liking the way an operating system does something, doesn't mean the operating system sucks. Just that it doesn't work the way you expect, or it doesn't fit your style of working. For every person that doesn't like the way something works, there are many who probably do.
Personally, I have Linux running on an HP laptop with an Athlon 64 processor. When I first purchased it, I installed Fedora Core 3 on it. Did everything work out of the box? No. Did most everything work? Yes. Considering how proprietary laptops are, and considering that the manufactures are not working directly with a Linux distributor to make sure everything works, it is quite amazing that things work as well as they do! Windows XP came pre-loaded on the laptop, and of course everything worked. HP specifically works with Microsoft to make sure that happens. People take this for granted, and then blame Linux when things don't work. With my HP laptop, everything worked with the exception of my wireless card, and the 16x9 display would get corrupted on the console when using the Nvidia drivers with it.
The built in wireless is a Broadcom 802.11b/g 54 Mbps card, and it was just dead. Of course, Broadcom does not produce Linux drivers, except for embedded applications. You cannot download those, so I started to see what could be done about it. I found the Ndiswrapper project, and that looked quite promising, but I was quickly disappointed, because I had put the x86_64 version of Fedora Core on the laptop, so I could actually run in 64-bit mode (The Windows XP version on the laptop was 32-bit). I started to work on porting it to 64-bit, but ran into some snags in the code base. It actually assumes that it is 32-bit and 32-bit only, so the project really started to become hard. So, I decided to see what else might be out there.
Then I found a commercial product that does the same thing that NdisWrapper does, which is load the Windows driver under the Linux kernel. The company is called Linuxant, and the product is DriverLoader. Amazingly, they had 64-bit Linux support, and they had support for my Broadcom chipset with a 64-bit Windows driver! I was elated, and I quickly purchased a copy (very cheap, but I don't remember how much), installed it, installed the driver, and boom! It didn't work! It turns out that the Fedora project had built the kernel with 4k stacks. Ouch! Typical Windows wireless drivers require a 12k to 16k stack size to operate. Dead in the water again. I guess that quite a few people had problems with things like this, so the Fedora project started building the kernel again with a larger stack size. I updated my kernel, and all of a sudden I had working wireless! Yeah!
Next issue to tackle was the screen corruption on the console. Mind you, the graphical screen was fine. This was more of an annoyance than anything. I did a search on the Internet, and wouldn't you know it, someone had created a step-by-step guide to solve this problem with my laptop and published for all to see. This is one of the real strengths of the Linux community. I followed those instructions, and low and below, after restarting X, I know had a perfectly working graphical screen, and text based virtual consoles that were no longer corrupted!
So, for my two issues, where these problems with the operating system itself? Not really. The fact that Broadcom won't release a Linux driver has nothing to do with the quality of the operating system. The fact, that HP's widescreen display needs a different modeline in the X server configuration is also not a quality problem with the OS. It is merely a public specification issue by the hardware vendor.
Yes, because of these types of issues, Linux is harder to get working. Does this mean that Linux sucks? No, it is just a reflection of the current state of affairs in desktops and laptops. All the OEM's really pay attention to is making Windows work on their machines, and in the case of Apple, Apple controls the hardware and the operating system together. So if their stuff doesn't work, that's a real problem.
For me, I work very productively with Linux everyday, and I don't have to reboot. I use a wide variety of applications, and never find anything wanting. The quality is great, the stability is great, and I love the fact that it changes and matures rapidly. I don't have to wait three years to get my next rev of an operating system, and then have to pay for the privilege to use it.
A lot of other complaints to Linux revolve around functionality issues. Either something doesn't work the way Windows or Mac OS X does, or some application isn't available, or they just don't like the alternative application and they way it works. Are these types of issues related to the quality of the operating system?
I would say not! Many of the issues are actually a matter of taste, versus a matter of fact. Simply not liking the way an operating system does something, doesn't mean the operating system sucks. Just that it doesn't work the way you expect, or it doesn't fit your style of working. For every person that doesn't like the way something works, there are many who probably do.
Personally, I have Linux running on an HP laptop with an Athlon 64 processor. When I first purchased it, I installed Fedora Core 3 on it. Did everything work out of the box? No. Did most everything work? Yes. Considering how proprietary laptops are, and considering that the manufactures are not working directly with a Linux distributor to make sure everything works, it is quite amazing that things work as well as they do! Windows XP came pre-loaded on the laptop, and of course everything worked. HP specifically works with Microsoft to make sure that happens. People take this for granted, and then blame Linux when things don't work. With my HP laptop, everything worked with the exception of my wireless card, and the 16x9 display would get corrupted on the console when using the Nvidia drivers with it.
The built in wireless is a Broadcom 802.11b/g 54 Mbps card, and it was just dead. Of course, Broadcom does not produce Linux drivers, except for embedded applications. You cannot download those, so I started to see what could be done about it. I found the Ndiswrapper project, and that looked quite promising, but I was quickly disappointed, because I had put the x86_64 version of Fedora Core on the laptop, so I could actually run in 64-bit mode (The Windows XP version on the laptop was 32-bit). I started to work on porting it to 64-bit, but ran into some snags in the code base. It actually assumes that it is 32-bit and 32-bit only, so the project really started to become hard. So, I decided to see what else might be out there.
Then I found a commercial product that does the same thing that NdisWrapper does, which is load the Windows driver under the Linux kernel. The company is called Linuxant, and the product is DriverLoader. Amazingly, they had 64-bit Linux support, and they had support for my Broadcom chipset with a 64-bit Windows driver! I was elated, and I quickly purchased a copy (very cheap, but I don't remember how much), installed it, installed the driver, and boom! It didn't work! It turns out that the Fedora project had built the kernel with 4k stacks. Ouch! Typical Windows wireless drivers require a 12k to 16k stack size to operate. Dead in the water again. I guess that quite a few people had problems with things like this, so the Fedora project started building the kernel again with a larger stack size. I updated my kernel, and all of a sudden I had working wireless! Yeah!
Next issue to tackle was the screen corruption on the console. Mind you, the graphical screen was fine. This was more of an annoyance than anything. I did a search on the Internet, and wouldn't you know it, someone had created a step-by-step guide to solve this problem with my laptop and published for all to see. This is one of the real strengths of the Linux community. I followed those instructions, and low and below, after restarting X, I know had a perfectly working graphical screen, and text based virtual consoles that were no longer corrupted!
So, for my two issues, where these problems with the operating system itself? Not really. The fact that Broadcom won't release a Linux driver has nothing to do with the quality of the operating system. The fact, that HP's widescreen display needs a different modeline in the X server configuration is also not a quality problem with the OS. It is merely a public specification issue by the hardware vendor.
Yes, because of these types of issues, Linux is harder to get working. Does this mean that Linux sucks? No, it is just a reflection of the current state of affairs in desktops and laptops. All the OEM's really pay attention to is making Windows work on their machines, and in the case of Apple, Apple controls the hardware and the operating system together. So if their stuff doesn't work, that's a real problem.
For me, I work very productively with Linux everyday, and I don't have to reboot. I use a wide variety of applications, and never find anything wanting. The quality is great, the stability is great, and I love the fact that it changes and matures rapidly. I don't have to wait three years to get my next rev of an operating system, and then have to pay for the privilege to use it.
Linux doesn't suck!
1 comment:
My post here is very old now. Most of the issues I had have actually been addressed.
For example, the issue with the Broadcom chip for wireless. I have used the reverse engineered Broadcom driver (no NDIS Wrapper, no commerical software), with great success for a long time now.
Recently, I just purchased a new laptop, and it came with an Atheros wireless chip, and that worked flawlessly when I installed Fedora 10 on it, without any hassle. In fact, when I installed Fedora 10 on this new laptop, almost everything worked out-of-box. I only have one issue.
My issue is that the built-in microphone doesn't work quite right. It's an Intel sound chip, with a driver, and playback is perfect, and the microphone jack works with my headset. So, its 99% functional out-of-the-box. Of course, we would all like to see 100%, but we are getting there.
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