DOS boot still frustrates laptop Linux | Hacker News Reader

DOS boot still frustrates laptop Linux

blogs.zdnet.com

7 pointsukdm10 comments

I really tire of articles that boil down to "Linux can't install because the hardware vendor is stingy with the specs and won't let/help people write open source drivers". Especially when the author doesn't realize it. The core problem is that the people who made your hardware don't want you to run Linux, and the reason why it's important to understand that is no (sane) amount of "extra labor" by "Linux" can solve that problem. And I don't think it's a useful definition of "blame" to "blame" someone for a problem they are not capable of solving. Try putting your Ubuntu on an Intel-based laptop.

And when I say "I tire" of this sort of article, it's not in the hopes that they will stop being written, it's a now-not-so-subtle hint that it's not a very useful thing to post here.

I share the frustrations of others about this kind of article. Popularity isn't the point.

Free software communities don't benefit from simply having a larger number of users who are just as helpless as they were when they were using a proprietary operating system. Having to learn something about the system (even something at the command line -- horrors!) in order to get it working makes you a better computer user, and more likely to contribute help to others who need it. I don't mean this to sound like free software should be designed to "keep the riff raff out"; on the contrary, it should be designed to make it easy for a newcomer to learn something he didn't know before. But I do think that you're missing the point if you switch to Ubuntu or any other free OS with the expectation that you can keep laboring in ignorance of what your computer does. Free software communities don't need such users, and while they may be happy to help them for a time, they can't afford to help someone who won't help themselves forever.

Exactly. How many times do we have to read articles where it is clear the author thinks GNU/Linux is a business. More users is not the goal of GNU/Linux. Making a better operating system for those people that contribute code, support other users, and LIKE the system is the goal. It will be a small number of people relative to the Windows and Mac worlds. That's OK because it is large enough to be self sustaining.

As a FOSS developer the number I care about is how many other developers there are, not how many users there are.

I agree we should have better drivers, but you basically have companies that do absolutely nothing to help or purposely discourage open source drivers (which for commodity hardware like network cards is mind boggling, at least for graphics cards there is a reason). I've also run into companies that say they are giving out drivers or docs for their hardware, but the documentation is wrong. It is far from easy.

And you say it much better than I can: " I do think that you're missing the point if you switch to Ubuntu or any other free OS with the expectation that you can keep laboring in ignorance of what your computer does. Free software communities don't need such users, and while they may be happy to help them for a time, they can't afford to help someone who won't help themselves forever."

And I really don't understand why this stuff gets pinned on Linux so hard but not on other operating systems. My Windows 7 install doesn't come back from hibernate without blue screening, and had issues with some of my hardware. Both are common attacks on Linux. Maybe the real problem is neither OS but the crappy hardware vendors that make buggy products and ship them anyway.

That's fine, if you never want Linux to be mainstream.

But some people do seem to want Linux to be mainstream - and that means making it usable by exactly those people who don't actually want to learn about computers, they just want to use them to get something done.

I sure do hate it when people confuse shell environments such as Bash/ksh/etc with 'DOS'. I suppose people that don't want to use the command line at all don't understand, but there is a huge difference between a modern command line and one with no history where the cursor keys don't even work.

I use a shell with no readline / history support and I don't miss it one bit.

Calling Linux modern is, at best, a joke.

Non-article frustrates HN reader

Newest hardware don't always have fully-functional and well-integrated Linux drivers on the day the new hardware is released.

This is mostly the hardware vendor's fault and it sucks.

What sucks even more is to write an article about that and blame Linux/Ubuntu user unfriendliness.

Moreover, I don't know ANY laptop system that ships with 8GB of hard drive (First-generation eeePC maybe?) and have a Wi-Fi chipset that does not work with the latest version of ubuntu or the one before. Maybe this article is talking about events that took place 2-3 years ago when eeePCs where new and had bad drivers?

That's why I call bullshit on this article and discard it as Microsoft Public Relations' Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt campaign.

The only Unix that has escaped this fate is OSX, because a mega corporation with a lot of foresight, talent, and (most importantly) money, did their magic. Linux will never reach out to the common user unless it receives similar treatment.

You should try doing more than using Safari. Some of us even replace the command line on OSX to be something more friendly (Plan9port). The number of times I've dropped to the shell to find the contents of a resource fork for colleagues using "find" is > 0.

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