August 30, 2004
It's always something
That's it. I'm done. Linux isn't yet ready for the desktop. Sorry to have misled those people I've advocated it to in the past.
The problem isn't with Linux, though; it's with the hardware manufacturers, and with simple economics. See, if I'm a hardware manufacturer, and I make a graphics card or wireless network card and release Windows drivers for it, the vast bulk of the people who would buy my product will be able to use it - for the amount of extra work, and support headaches, there's no reason for me to produce a Linux driver as well. So the production of Linux drivers is left to those happy hackers who want to produce stuff like that in their free time — and that's great, if you happen to have the same hardware as them. I suspect none of what I'm saying here really comes as news to any of you.
For three years now, on and off, I've been dabbling with Linux on the desktop, and at no point in those three years have I had a satisfactory setup, where all my hardware in a given machine worked happily. Now admittedly this was partly my fault, for buying stupid things like a PCMCIA DVD drive / CD writer, or a USB soundcard (actually, this worked amazingly well) but there was always something. Just recently, I decided to solve this: I'd set up a nice new desktop system for myself, with nice mundane hardware, and I'd check the linux compatibility of everything I used. And it works great, from the Nvidia GeForce FX graphics card, through the RTL-8139 NIC, and even my Microsoft Natural Keyboard. And then I bought a wireless card.
Now, I toddled over to Prism54.org and checked out their list of supported cards, and found a shop selling one of the best supported PCI cards they listed — an SMC2802W. Excellent. Or rather, not excellent, because I later discovered that SMC sell 2 identically branded models of this card, and only the former is supported. No prizes, then, for guessing which card I ended up with. (I've now put photos of the packaging online, and will offer a small prize to anyone who can spot anything on there saying "version 2"....)
So that's it. I'm quitting, for a while at least. WinXP is getting vaguely comfortable, and I can run most stuff on remote Linux boxes, without the worries of trying to get desktop hardware working. Maybe as more people take up Linux and get annoyed with manufacturers for not producing drivers, things will get better, but I'm not holding my breath.
(Incidentally, I half expect lots of comments on the lines of "But it works fine for me...." so I'm going to answer them in advance: that's great. Lucky you. But I reckon I'm not entirely clueless, and if I can't get it to work, lots of other people probably can't either.)
Incidentally, any suggestions as to how I might get this wireless card working under Linux would probably be appreciated; I might yet even change my mind as long as everything else keeps working.... ;)
Posted by James at 17:21
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Comments
Well I don't know how you can possibly find Windows XP even vaguely comfortable - its idea of window management gives me the screaming heebie jeebies, and most of the rest of it has a similar effect.
But why don't you just get a Mac???
Posted by: MaW at August 30, 2004 06:03 PM
The window management can be improved considerably with TweakUI, although it still sucks quite a bit.
As for getting a Mac, well... ok, sure. You paying? :)
Posted by: Jimbo at August 30, 2004 06:57 PM
Couln't agree more... wireless is a nightmare on Linux.
Posted by: toggle at December 4, 2004 11:41 PM