one thing i find anoying is

[Brendon]

On Wed, 03 May 2006 14:38:23 +0800, you wrote:

> On Wed, 2006-03-05 at 17:50 +1200, Brendon wrote:
> 
>> that the open source market is becoming so popular and so wide spread these
>> days,  that it makes me think why some the major players in the compter
>> idustry, and some of the major isps  are not supporting os's like linux.
> 
> 
> First, it's not as popular on the desktop as its advocates seem to
> think.  And nor will it ever be while it is still so difficult to
> configure for all but a small subset of available hardware.  Now it's
> improved drastically on that front since my first exposure to it (to the
> point that Ubuntu has replaced XP on my system despite its failings --
> but not to the point that my wife uses it), but it is still not ready
> for mass market.
> 
> Second, whenever I hear the phrase "supporting Linux" brought up I wince
> inwardly.  Why?  Because I've been on the receiving end of that request
> and the first question that invariably comes to mind is:  "Which Linux?"
> There is a bewildering array of kernel versions, functionality patches,
> kernel patches, libc versions, gcc versions, etc. which all interfere
> with supporting Linux.  Hell, even the location of important system
> files can change from distro to distro (and I know of at least one that
> generates the system files from XML descriptions of them!).  No company
> that is sane is going to support Linux while there are literally
> hundreds of different possibilities to support.  Want Linux to stop
> being a pariah in commercial support circles?  Standardise.  (This could
> start with Linus promising an ABI freeze on core components.)
> 
>   
> 
>> i have had the problem when ringing up a help desk and been asked , what
>> operating system are you using and get the reply "im sorry we don't support
>> linux only microsoft and mac"  which in some way has been confussed as the
>> mac is, is sort of linux based.
> 
true i agree with wot you say as to speak,  but what i am trying to get at
is that the more people that we bring over to linux the better.  It is just
that i am a strong advocate  of the open source movement.
and would like to see it improve and liuz becoming even more popular.
-- 


.....
   brendon