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William Fidell wrote: | | Long time reader, first time poster. Well, not that long but hey.
| Personally, I feel that the best distro to promote to a non-linux user | is one where everything just works (DVD, wireless, bluetooth, sound and | graphics).
It can happen, for many laptops it already does happen, and it will happen for more.
Basically it is what OEMs do with Windows already, but Linux (the kernel ;) has made it easier to get changes back for hardware support, as do some of the distros, so end users can make the same contributions.
I've worked with the XFree86 guys to get my graphics card better supported "by default" by the ATI driver. Similarly on the UserLinux list today there is a discussion on a motherboard that doesn't work "perfectly", which needs adding to a particular list in the kernel. Most of these changes are trivial, but the combined effect is to smooth the process for those who come after you, and is the kind of thing that end users can do easily.
Ideally though the manufacturers will do this as GNU/Linux becomes more mainstream in the laptop market, but they do need people to buy their new GNU/Linux laptops to justify the cost -- so please do shop from GNU/Linux friendly manufacturers.
Meantime, if it doesn't work smoothly, don't just fix it for yourself, don't just post a "this is what I did page/message" (although that is useful), figure out what would make it work smoothly, and talk to the people concerned. Often they just need someone with that particular hardware variant to try things out, or report identifiers for hardware. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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