[linux-audio-user] Some various questions about system configuration..

[Rob]

On Thu February 2 2006 13:13, Lee Revell wrote:
> These gripes are with your hardware vendors not Linux.

As someone who's deployed a lot of desktop Linux, I have to say 
that it doesn't matter who's to blame when the client's computer 
won't work... it comes down to "Too bad, Linux won't work on 
this one."  

Windows had a lot of the same issues with sound and video cards 
in the early 90's, until it reached a critical mass (of users 
who either didn't need those things or selected vendors whose 
stuff worked with it) where vendors couldn't afford to not 
support it.  Our issues will continue till Linux does the same.  
We may not have the same market pressure, but we do have 
brilliant people writing drivers independently to pick up some 
of the slack, at least when the vendor isn't openly hostile to 
their efforts.

It breaks my heart to recommend Nvidia to people who require 3D 
performance above the 2002 state of the art, but I'll do that 
till ATI gets their act together and I will recommend users not 
switch to Linux if they've already invested in ATI.  (If they've 
deliberately bought a gaming video card, they're probably 
hardcore gamers anyway and won't be satisfied with Cedega.)

And even then, when Linux achieves similar hardware compatibility 
to Windows, it will take a long time.  A few years ago I 
recommended that a friend stick with Windows because he was 
using a bunch of Echo Audio gear and those drivers weren't 
available for Linux yet.  Now that they are, he's wed to Cool 
Edit/Adobe Audition and some of the things he does with it (like 
Antares Autotune, available in every plugin format except VST) 
whose Ardour/Audacity counterparts either don't exist or don't 
work as well.  

Apart from "it's free" and "there aren't as many viruses", I 
don't have any carrots I can use to get him off of Windows at 
this point.  But it seems unlikely he'll upgrade to Vista 
either, so we'll see what happens in a few years, I guess.  I 
suppose by then he will have switched to some Firewire audio 
solution and the Linux driver support for that will be buggy and 
incomplete, if it exists at all.

Sorry for the rant, but the blame game has always bugged me.  It 
just doesn't matter whether the fault lies in the kernel or in 
the hardware or in the vendor or in the distro or in the 
applications.... if the user's unable to do what he needs to do 
using Linux, he usually goes back to Windows and tells his 
friends and family that Linux is no good.

Rob