I love open source. I love the technology, the philosophy, and the people in the trenches making things better.
But I give up. Between proprietary hardware drivers and slow software release cycles for the things that matter most to me, I’m done.
I just spent two hours to accomplish the following: Download a new album that we paid for and play it back on my television.
You know that you branch out into realms I don’t even contemplate, but, this is why I have never branched out in that direction. I absolutely hate (pet peeve) hardware that doesn’t work right, and 9 times out of 10, it’s a driver issue. They are nearly impossibly (IMHO) under Windows, I can’t even imagine dealing with them under Linux. Mac, of course is a much more closed environment, so you have some security there but at the cost of limitations in what you can buy and usually at a higher price point.
I blame the Hardware manufacturer’s for adding so much software bloat to their drivers. We use HP printers at work, something I haven’t fought changing simply because I didn’t want to deal with accounting whining because they order the ink cartridges. But HP has added so much crap to their print drivers, I am finally considering taking on that battle, because Accounting maybe an easier foe then HP. I recently installed an HP 4500 all in one printer at one of our stores, granted our PC’s are older, but they are still XP w/SP3. It spent over an hour installing, then for no apparent reason based on the less then helpful error message, failed. They have added little apps to buy cartridges from them, added tool bars to IE (or sold the right to add other companies tool bars), added additional web printing, and about 100 other useless apps and applets, instead of sticking to what the user needs, which is a well written driver that allows the hardware to interface with the OS. It’s just ridiculous the amount of code bloat they add to try and bump up their bottom line instead of providing what I was trained as the proper way to code, following the KISS method.
Hardware manufacturer’s need to learn that less is more. Keep it simple and make it work seamlessly…. Do that, and I will be elated with your product.
I have enough time suck’s in my life without that hassle. Maybe it’s fun for a hobbyist to deal with these things, but it doesn’t improve our bottom line at work, and I personally would rather be surfing the web or watching TV at home.
Sorry, to jump your soap box, but it just really hit home as of problems of late.
I feel ya! Ironically, in a business setting Linux is way better than Windows in most regards. I was humming along great on an older computer, but with graphics and audio chipsets that were just released a few months ago, it’s a nightmare!
If I didn’t “need” to access advanced video features, write music, or use some exotic audio hardware, I’d still be 100% satisfied with Linux on the desktop.
And the funny thing about Mac, if I remember the stats correctly, there are more Linux desktops in use than Mac desktops, it’s just that people spend considerably more money in apps and hardware on the Mac, so there is little incentive for companies to properly support Linux outside of a server environment.