On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 00:53 +0100, Steve Fosdick wrote:
It's nice to be able to report a success, particularly in what can otherwise be a weak-spot to GNU/Linux, that of interfacing to hardware which is supplied only with Windows (or occasionaly Mac) drivers.
That is good to hear.
Your pain on the Windows end sounds like a result of this trend to bundle loads of 2nd rate software with hardware devices. I have seen many Multifunction Printers (stand up at the back HP) that have at least 500MB worth of installation cruft, most of which seems to simply repeat functionality that is already present in recent versions of Windows.
The truly sickening thing is that despite all this "value added" cruft there was no OCR type software....the one thing that XP doesn't include but would have been useful.
On some of these installations (unless you know how to pick around a CD and find the drivers) there is often not an obvious way to just install the basic functionality.
I wonder how long it is before we see a Windows printer driver that captures your Credit Card details and then orders supplies for itself from Amazon :-)
This is why asking some manufacturers for better Linux hardware support could be a double edged sword. If better support means opening interface specs or providing an open source driver it will be fine. But if better support means peddling the same rubbish they give to the Windows users then I think I'd rather stick with community engineered Open Source drivers thanks.