From: Adam 

Gary Britt wrote:
> "Antti Kurenniemi" 
wrote in message
> news:44c840fd{at}w3.nls.net...
>  wish people like whoever it was that came up with that
> idiotic shaking and wobbling windows in Linux thing, that we just saw the
> video of, would dig into the important stuff - how to make wifi just plain
> work, and how to make file & printer sharing just plain work, basic things
> like that. Then we'd have a game. But, still, after all the years of "Linux
> is finally ready for desktop", the clue is still somewhat missing and we're
> still fiddling with bash and etc and all that crap
>
>
>
> Yep, that's what I was trying to say, but you have said it much better than
> I.  I like the cool virtual desktop cube, but getting other things to just
> plain work as you say FIRST is more important.  Linux has to be BETTER than
> Windows at these things and more since it has to be installed by a user and
> doesn't come preinstalled like Windows.
>

& given the Taiwan & PRC mandates wrt hardware & linux e.g.

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=33454

"The Central Trust of China (Taiwan) has mandated for the first time
that all desktop computers purchased from now on must be Linux-compatible,
demonstrating the government's desire to widen the nation's usage of open
source software. Central Trust is in charge of purchasing computers and
other equipment for government agencies and schools.

About 120,000 desktops will be procured by the Central Trust under this new
guideline.

"In the past, some of the procured computers did not support Linux,
therefore this new mandate signifies the government's push to reduce
reliance on the Windows operating system," Mike Lin, a consultant at
the Taipei Computer Association said.

Thirty-three desktop models from hardware vendors including Acer, Asustek,
Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard Taiwan, were certified Linux-compatible, while
four models each from Gigabyte Technology and Synnex Technology
International were still under evaluation, according to the newspaper
report.

In the legislative session held late last year, legislators reached an
additional consensus that there should be a 25 percent cut of procurement
budget on Microsoft's products across all government agencies."



& given where most h/w is made these days.....

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33284

"MARKET RESEARCH FIRM iSuppli issued a report which demonstrated that
a massive 82.6 per cent of PC notebooks are made in Shanghai.

The ODMs (original design manufacturers) dominating the market are largely
Taiwanese firms, but they have steadily moved their production to mainland
China over the last years.

And if you want a notebook that's got that little bit extra you'll be
disappointed. Isuppli reckons that notebook PCs have become more
standardised than ever."

Then it's a matter of time...


> George isn't afraid of driver downloads and kernel recompile's, but these
> are things I don't want to take time to learn.  I'm tired of relearning
> Windows from version to version and that feeling transfers to learning
> command line incantations, etc  for Linux.  If the kernel needs to be
> recompiled then that should happen seamlessly as part of the application
> install without me having to even know its being done.
>

Maybe linux should have a permissions/security setting of "dumb but
happy" to allow people to treat it as if it were Win9x.



Adam

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