i give up

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 22:53:10 -0500, "Robert Atkinson" <phreaki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have however, had many users who I show Linux give up because
> everything they own in the house is not supported. They always say
> "isn't linux supposed to be great?" and I can only say that they
> should learn to write device drivers and only buy hardware that has
> well known support.

Isn't this the case with *any* operating system?

The main reason that companies like Sun publish extensive hardware
compatibility lists is to avoid getting thousands of support calls that
say ``I bought this random modem from a retail store for USD $2, and it
attaches as a generic USB device on Solaris.  How do I make it work?
WTF, why is Solaris so hopelessly broken?''

Most of the time buying hardware that is known to be supported pays back
in avoiding lost time, frustration and many hours of troubleshooting
driver issues.

I'm sure Conrad already knows that buying hardware that is known to be
supported is worth the trouble of looking for it.  That's why I was a
bit baffled by the drama-like tone of the thread.  All I can say at this
point to Conrad is ``Good luck with your future endeavors in the Linux
land!  I'll be glad to see you continue to appear on the lists, and use
FreeBSD in those machines of yours that support it, and if you manage to
fix the one that triggered this, we are always here :-)''.