Has Ubuntu Replaced Windows on Your Box?

[marc]

vdal said...

> Everything looked really promising, until I tried to do some serious
> work: getting two USB scanners working either directly in Ubuntu, or in
> a vm, because I do quite a lot of really heavy-duty OCR in several
> languages, including Russian/Ukrainian. No way, José! Ubuntu doesn't
> support my scanners. That really matters to me.

I'm not an (k)Ubuntu shill, but did you ask the vendor about the 
"progress" of their Linux drivers. The only reason hardware works with 
Windows is because the vendor produces drivers for it. If you ask for 
Linux drivers, you ramp up the demand. Vendors like demand :-)

Linux is ready for "serious work" - plenty of us do that - but we have 
to let the hardware vendors know that they'd better provide driver or 
we'll buy other products.

I'm quite enjoying this period of booting out suppliers for not being 
able to provide drivers. They need to wake up and smell the coffee; M$ 
is no longer the star that we revolve around, they are just another 
planet in the same orbit... or something a little more poetic, perhaps 
involving shoes and scraping  ;-)

-- 
Best,
Marc