Re: [MLUG] scanner

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

If it were up to me I'd say for the whole Linux community to flip the 
hardware companies the finger. We've got opensource designs for most 
critical computer hardware now.. with some effort we could flesh it out 
to include printers, scanners, etc. Design the hardware, design drivers, 
and make deals with companies to actually produce our products. I'm sure 
the zero-licensing costs would pull in a couple interested manufacturers 
at least. Obviously, being opensourced the devices would end up working 
with Windows, Mac, etc too but there certainly is no harm in that.

Software of course is another issue. We'll well on our way on that front 
but as always it takes time and motivation. Most opensource users are to 
cheap to chip in donations to even a few of their favorite projects so 
they'll just have to wait til the developers have time to get to all 
their little needs.. having to work a 'real job' 8-12 hours a day cuts 
into the time you can spend filling people's wishlists. No doubt that's 
why the majority of projects are either started by students or related 
to people's real jobs. :)

> That's the heart of the problem.  If everything simply worked with Linux,
> that would just about put an end to MS Windows.  The problems with Linux
> include relatively poor hardware support (relative to Windows), many good
> programs don't run on it and you have to know a few things to do a good
> job of setting it up and configuring a secure system.  On the positive
> side, there's a massive amount of excellent free software available for
> Linux, Linux is much more stable than Windows (e.g., sometimes a year or
> more between reboots in Linux!), and Linux can scale massively to very
> large numbers of processors, Beowulf clusters, etc.
> 
> So I agree with your critical comment, but don't forget what *is* good
> about Linux!  I'm sure other people can expand on my lists.  ;-)


-- 
So long and thanks for all the fish.

Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>
http://kavlon.org

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