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Re: dying windows platform !!
by Walking Turtle of ComPDQ on Monday 18/Feb/2008, @05:39
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Gee. So the idea is to throw a layer of basic KDE4 functionality atop the Overpriced Redmond Product with the Dangerously Enforceable License, and make things all right at last for WinBox users in that manner? Well, OK. I'll have a look at the demo and maybe adopt it once she goes stable, if I like it at all.
But I would not bet on Vista's hospitality, really. I think the Redmond krue is just plain insular, judging by the responses that well-respected folk such as Mr. Steve Gibson ( HTTP://www.grc.com ) get from the MS home office when wide-open vulns become just too obvious to ethically ignore.
Um, y'think making a printer work on Linux is hard? Hmph. I'm looking at a fine near-new HP 5610 all-in-one, sitting by my left foot right now, that Vista apparently just would not touch. Its former owner (newly upgraded to Vista) finally bought a Lexmark unit of similar capability, THEN hacked his way (again) through all the necessary anti-just-everything cyber-condom$ and thus got his retail business running again, after a mere week of foolishness, head-banging and lost trade...
Maybe he really needed a different printer, maybe not. Not my department. But I think Redmond just might have started to compete with CUPS, at least. I reckon I'll wait no more than half a year, myself, afore someone in our community plops the right homemade HP driver into Foomatic. (Being semi-retired, I confess I am half-inclined to look into what is required for easing that aspect's lead-time myself - a printer-driver *generator* utility such as the Amiga world once enjoyed is the notion I have in mind.)
So I work on the Other End of the Corporate Cybergear Food Chain. We salvage moribund Windows boxes both from the street and over-the-counter as a community service (now headed toward becoming one viable non-profit inner-city public cyber-recyling depot). At ComPDQ, we Linux the best - and scrap out ("upgrade") the rest back into their component materials. No extra charge for never ever putting any part of our materials into your air, lunch or drinking water. Haven't yet found a boggy-to-crashed CPU yet that did not have Windows on its' deck, of course.
But when it comes to revitalizing any no-longer-wanted, gone-boggy Windows box: Up to now a DoD diskwipe followed by a fast shot of Freespire (for "just-wanna-USE-it!" folk) or Mandriva/KDE (for the more adventurous or demanding) has stood for a few years, now, as our sovereign agent for resurrecting and nimbling-up those moribund '586 boxes that find their way to us for ethical disposal. (Not to mention the RIPLinux distro that confers basic Linux desktop functionality to just about any insufferably munged laptop unit, all in one swell foop, and does NOT wear out the CD-ROM drive like, say, a Mandriva One disk'll do to ya'.)
Gummints ain't the only ones learning to like Linux, turns out. Po' folk like it just fine, too. Different reasons, but still the same love-on-contact. MUCH simpler demos and testing, of course, compared to an entire State government's requirements. Easy to keep the warranty honored appropriately, too.
So: Until/unless a customer up and explicitly asks me to KDE their Windows for them but insists to "SAVE THE WINDOWS PLEASE!", I think I'll stick to fresh, full-scale installs and a shop-standard initial packages/config formulation that consumer-minded low-end people do tend to value highly. As long as it works when they get it home, though, y'all's exactly right - they DO NOT CARE what the actual code under the hood really is, who wrote it, or why it works at all. Some might just rip DVDs, many surely do cruise the Net for oh whatever, and some just LOVE the Magnatunes service - a little sumpin' for free for Just Everyone sure helps draw grassroots folks over to the Linux Side.
Even when the desktop does *not* look so very much like Mr. Gates' brainchild. Muscular gorm at ones' fingertips is one thing; corpy-standardized eye-candy is another.
This manner of revitalization and recycling has proved to be a *great* way to make new friends and keep old ones very happy indeed, in my own humble experience over the last five years or so. It keeps 'em out of the landfill and in the hands of poor-but-inquiring fellow humans. This happy situation can only improve again and yet again over time. |
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