I agree with PJ

Story: Linspire: The Revolutionary LinuxTotal Replies: 5
Author Content
qcimushroom

Apr 25, 2006
8:51 PM EDT
Linspire's mind set, to closely resembles that of Microsoft's

As for promoting Linux on the desktop Novell drive for the corporate desktop, even if slower is the strongest way to get Linux to the main stream.

Make people use Suse at work and they will start using Opensuse at home.
salparadise

Apr 25, 2006
10:28 PM EDT
Until they come against SuSE's inability to work with USB storage devices and floppy disks properly. Oh, and there's the deliberately crippled media players and the ugliest menus on earth and slocate isn't installed by default and NFS is flaky and messes up the boot process and, and, and...

Make people use Linux at work and they'll soon start to want it at home as well. But make them use a decent distro please.

signed Disappointed with SuSE

incinerator

Apr 26, 2006
5:45 AM EDT
I agree with PJ, as well. What's the point in using Linux if you just end up being locked in because you need all these non-free drivers, firmwares and application to give you an environment you can actually use. Besides, it is a lie that these non-free drivers are so vital. If that was true, OpenBSD would not even exist. I can perfectly live and work with a GNU/Linux box that doesn't use nvidia/fglrx/ndiswrapper drivers nor non-free video/audio codecs like divx/mp3/wmv/real/whatever. I don't lock anyone out by my choice of free software and free media formats. It's the others who lock me out.

[Salparadise: Your comment is pointless and off-topic. qcimushroom used suse just as an example, he could have used the name of any other distro in that sentence.]
number6x

Apr 26, 2006
5:47 AM EDT
sal,

I've never had a problem with Suse and my usb memory stick, or several usb printaers and hard drives.

Have you filed a bug report with SuSE for the problems you have had?

If you haven't, please do. Make sure you list the type of motherboard and the bios version you have, as well as the suse version.
salparadise

Apr 26, 2006
6:36 AM EDT
[Salparadise: Your comment is pointless and off-topic. qcimushroom used suse just as an example, he could have used the name of any other distro in that sentence.]

Not a valid criticism. He could have used any distro name, but he didn't and thus the statement was branded.

Haven't reported a bug as this is a problem I've had on three seperate machines from three manufacturers and am informed by other users that this is a SuSE problem. I've had complete success with USB sticks on Slackware, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora to name a few, and have had nothing but problems with them on SuSE. If it happens again when I'm running SuSE (less than likely as I don't run it anymore) then I'll submit a report.
jdixon

Apr 26, 2006
7:13 AM EDT
OK, let me waffle for a moment.

PJ is slamming Linspire, yes. She's advocating that people not use Linspire, yes. However, she's not trying to force anyone not to use Linspire. She is instead merely arguing that people should use distro's which adhere more closely to the principles of free software.

Now, in this, I agree with her. I would much rather have users using Debian or Slackware than Linspire. However, Debian and Slackware are not "former Windows User" ready. Linspire is trying to be. Whether they are succeeding or not is arguable, but that is the niche they're aiming for. Where I disagree with her is that there's anything wrong with this. If Linspire meets their goals and becomes the preferred distro for former Windows users, then more power to them. I may not personally choose to use it, and I may not recommend it to others, but that's my decision. Each user must make their own decision about which distro best serves their needs. And, having made the intial conversion to Linux, switching from Linspire to true Debian or another distro is easy in comparison, so Linspire can never become complacent. They have to stay better than the other distro's to keep their users.

So, while I personally do not prefer Linspire, nor recommend it; I think their existence is good for Linux overall.

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