Re: [PLUG] OT OSX Leopard v10.5

["Aaron Mulder" <ammulder@alumni.princeton.edu>]

On 10/25/07, Stephen Gran <steve@lobefin.net> wrote:
> ...
> I hope I'm not alone in
> my feeling that if we just keep on making our corner of the Universe a
> little better, the closed software houses will fade into irrelevancy.

Sadly, the success of this approach seems to be very irregular.  For
example, I like a lot of things about KDE as a desktop.  But I gave up
and bought a Mac because of neverending problems with suspend to RAM
and wireless.  Part of the problem is that I like new hardware, and
there's a long lag between release and acceptable Linux support.
Another part of the problem (and perhaps the root of that previous
one) is that hardware vendors often aren't on board.  It's gratifying
to see Nvidia and ATI getting more involved with solid and/or open
source drivers, and again, my X experience was fine.  But I need to be
able to close my laptop in one place, open it in another, and have the
networking work (and no freezes on suspend or resume).  Why is that so
hard to achieve?  I guess because the small number of driver
developers can't cover the vast array of devices.  It makes Apple seem
really smart for picking a small number of configurations and making
them work really well.  (But not as small and/or unimpressive a
selection as Dell and Lenovo offer.)

Anyway, bottom line, I think it's the hardware vendors that prevent
the Linux corner of the Universe from edging out closed software
houses, and that's a real bummer.  The software is by and large great.

Thanks,
       Aaron
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