Hi, This came from the Langa list a newsletter I am subscribed to. Paul. 1) Linux's Achilles' Heel In the movies, they call it a "backstory," the plot behind the plot; the history and circumstances that led up to the current plot. Linux was the backstory for my recent coverage of virtual PC technology http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=1860044 9 . Although that article stands by itself, the story behind the story reveals both how far Linux has come--- and how far it has to go. I'll name names later (if you've been following along, you may know who it is anyway), but the problem I'm discussing isn't specific to one distribution--- it's far more widespread than that. So, for now, let's just say I was trying distribution "XYZ," a polished commercial Linux that seeks to go toe to toe with Microsoft Windows. This distro "XYZ" even costs roughly as much as a Windows XP upgrade, which suggests to me that it should be judged by the same standards, and not be granted the leniency that Linux sometimes merits when it's distributed for free or at very low cost. Full commercial price means full commercial expectations. Despite my very positive first impressions, I couldn't get XYZ to work with my sound card at all, even though I was testing XYZ on a brand new PC from a major vendor. The system was based on an utterly mainstream Intel motherboard with an on-board Intel sound system. This is not some weird, off-brand system using unknown components: It's about as mainstream as it gets. When XYZ's built-in setup routines failed to get the sound working, I reinstalled the whole OS, from scratch--- four times. I poked. I prodded. I tweaked. I FAQed. I How-To-ed. I searched Usenet. I worked through their tech support. Nothing solved the problem. I broadened my search, and eventually tried eight other Linux distributions; all of which suffered the exact same problem. So, I wondered: Maybe it was my hardware that was to blame. But then I tried the exact same setup with different versions of Windows, going back roughly a decade. Guess what? Windows 95--- yes, 95!- -- easily handled the sound system setup that brand-new versions of Linux could not. There's lots more to the story, and it's important to know the context (see below for link to full story). But Linux still has major flaws, and general hardware compatibility is among the worst. Even a 10-year-old copy of Windows can still do some things better than a completely current commercial version of Linux. That's kind of silly, especially when more and more Linux vendors are charging Microsoft-level prices for their distributions. You may end up paying Microsoft-type prices, but may not get the level of compatibility that MS offered a decade ago. Click on over to http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=1890166 0 for the full scoop, including the results of a survey of 1,000 real- world IT managers who tallied the total costs of converting to Linux. These are neither Linux fanatics nor Windows bigots, but 1,000 people just trying to get their jobs done--- and their results are veeeeery interesting.
