"Suddenly it's like a very fat person (who) uses most of the energy to move the fat. And Linux is no exception. Linux has gotten fat, too."
From a speech given by Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit association, at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo
Source: Article from www.news.com
2 comments:
Along a related vein: http://news.com.com/Device+support+key+to+desktop+Linux/2100-7346_3-6058123.html?tag=nefd.top
excerpt: "BOSTON--Hardware manufacturers should do more to make their devices compatible with Linux, experts agreed on Tuesday. Making drivers available promptly and automatically would help open-source users, said attendees at a panel on the Linux desktop at the LinuxWorld conference here."
I wish! I spent way too many hours learning how to, and compiling "ndiswrapper" so that I could activate the Broadcom 4318 wifi chip in GNU Linux, using the wrapper on the device driver file written for WinXP. The exact distro does not matter, because it is Broadcom that refuses to release its driver code.
Then had to make, make install, write additional scripts, blah blah, so I could obtain a wireless connection to my uni servers in VPN.
Now I am typing this reply while connected via wireless VPN in GNU Linux. Finally. Yay. One more step to geekdom. But do I think manufacturers like Broadcom will release their code base? No. Why would they want to? Where's the volume of demand?
I might as well get slashed(dotted): I do think there should be far fewer distros, and yes I don't think the open source stuff is that impervious from code bloat either.
"No. Why would they want to? Where's the volume of demand?"
I think you summed it up . No volume.
Post a Comment