[nflug] RE: Burning a CD-R

[Ken Smith]

On Thu, 2005-12-22 at 13:03 -0800, Ron Maggio wrote:
> Hi, all
> Thanks for all the suggestion, but this beats the whole purpose of
> getting away from Windows. If I or anyone else has to jump through
> hoops of fire, then Linux has a long way to go! In order for Linux to
> meet or beat Windows for the desktop it must be able to work right out
> of the box with no number of great ordeals along the way.
> I thought, I was able to get use my I/O Magic a standard cd-burner.
> But from my experience, I've found nothing but! I'm not going to
> purchase special hardware that Linux will work with, so if you want a
> good deal on books and software about Linux and Unix email me.

Just a humble observation...

You're missing one of the fine points about the Open Source Development
model.  As much as many Linux advocates say it would be nice for Linux
to replace Windows on the desktop there is a big difference between the
*talkers* and the *doers*.

The *doers* are typically people who somehow managed to get well know
enough to become one of the major Linux distribution *programmers* (e.g.
they are actively contributing to Fedora Core, or actively contributing
to Ubuntu, or ...) and they are doing it, typically, FOR FREE.  They get
something out of it - personal satisfaction of some type and/or it does
something they need it to do.  But *very* few people involved in Open
Source projects are getting any money for it.  There is also, typically,
not any specific company that lets say a CD burner vendor could talk to
in order to have their product supported by the Open Source project.
The project is usually a loosely coupled group of hackers.

So...  If a piece of hardware is "generic enough" (think disk drive that
follows the IDE/ATAPI standards) lots of people have that sort of
hardware and support for it comes real fast.  But if the hardware is
even slightly exotic the only way it's going to become supported by any
given Open Source project is if one of the developers has that piece of
hardware and wants it to work.

And, again typically speaking, the *developers* know full well what this
development model is like and what its strengths/weaknesses are.  Many
of them do what they do because they found other Operating Systems
lacking what they wanted in one form or another, and it would be fine
with them if the project they were working on really did become good
enough to replace lets say Windows.  But given the limitations of this
development model most of the developers don't feel obliged to spend
their time or their own money working to produce something that everyone
could use instead of Windows.  They're content spending their time and
perhaps some of their money working to produce something that works well
enough *for them* and, perhaps, remove some of the roughest edges so
that some other people can share in the fun (keep in mind most of these
folks are doing it for their *recreation* - it's not their *job*).

There are companies out there that take the results of Open Source
development and make a product of it (e.g. RedHat, Mandrake, etc).
Those outfits are much more likely to be what you are looking for given
the above statements.  They have paid programmers who do what their
managers tell them, the managers do to some extent what the
salescritters tell them needs to be done in order to increase sales, and
companies who want their CD-burner board to work with Linux have someone
they can go talk to (e.g. the RedHat management folks) to have the
appropriate drivers written (or existing drivers tweaked or whatever it
happens to take).  But guess what - you don't get RedHat for free
(because they need to fund the paychecks for their programmers, etc).

-- 
                                                Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to      |       kensmith at cse.buffalo.edu
  there, funny things are everywhere.   |
                      - Theodore Geisel |


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