[mdlug] Linux push an economic phenomenon?

[Dan Pritts]

> You have my sympathies.  My first Linux machine was
> a Cyrix 386 originally built to run windows (oh, how
> I hated that, because I had been using Unix since '83!

didn't realize you were an even older fogey than i am.  I bow to your grey beard.  :)

> I guess I got lucky with my hardware. 

Laptops were the real bear, but I had problems on desktops too.  Want to add an extra serial port?  Nope, the card computer alley stocks doesn't have linux drivers.  Want your hard disk to work in anything except excruciatingly slow non-DMA legacy ATA mode?  Nope, buy an older laptop.  Want your monitor to work with your video card?  well, it's possible, all you have to do is...

And servers, for that matter; we had issues with dell 1750's, pretty generic 1U boxes.  The RAID controller, or maybe the ethernet, wasn't supported by debian because the device driver was not sufficiently Free.  That was when I gave up on debian.  

I am SURE that things are better now.  Someone mentioned buying a thinkpad with linux preinstalled, that is just awesome.