[ILUG] Naive ADSL/WiFi questions (long (sorry!))?

[John Madden]

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On (22/06/07 11:58), Ian O'Connell said:
> Yes, i never said i agreed with it, but its just the way it is. If
> your forced to pay for something i damn sure try get some use out of
> it.
> 
It's "the way it is" because people don't complain about it. If people
complained and / or went to a competitor, things would change. Look at
Dell - it's taken years, but they're finally offering Linux as a
pre-installed option, because customers want it.

> True and thats all well and good, and if it doesn't work? you've to
> wait for another engineer to come out... i just don't see the point in
> the extra hassle if you don't need to. (and in your case he might be
> able to use os x regardless).
> 
Well, if the hardware he installed worked with his laptop or testing
equipment, there's no reason why it shouldn't work for me. The exact
same thing could happen if he set it up under Windows on your machine,
and then it didn't work under Linux.

> >Nobody is saying someone should limit their choices, but those of us who
> >choose not to keep Windows around, or who don't have it to keep around
> >in the first place, should not be required to have it to configure or
> >use a particular service. And if said service cannot be done with your
> >choice of OS, then vote with your wallet and look elsewhere for a
> >similar service that can.
> 
> Thats all some great idealism and what not, but given the
> inconvenience of leaving a pre-installed os alone isn't huge, or even
> making the the bart BE, i don't see why its a great plan to delete it?
> I'm all for your view of voting with wallets to a service provider
> that supports all oses, but that just isn't always possible. if your
> forced to pay the windows tax you might aswell head off future
> potential hassle. i just don't see this need to drive for a windows
> free household?
> 
Again, I have to point out that I do not own a copy of Windows, so 
"leaving a pre-installed os alone" leaves me with an OSX partition, 
not a Windows one. That's pretty useless to me for an engineer who can 
only set up Windows, a tech support guy who's script depends on Windows, 
or a website designed only for IE on Windows.

Also, you're never "forced to pay the windows tax", as you can pretty
much always look to a competitor who won't force extra cost for
something you don't want onto your bill, and this is the "idealistic"
method I would take.

> >I think what he means here is that you'll enforce the Windows
> >monoculture that most businesses focus on. Your choice of OS is your own
> >obviously, but you shouldn't be forced into having to keep one around
> >just to keep service providers happy.
> 
> shouldn't, but its the nature of the world. I don't run windows on
> those machines every day, some i've never ran it on since the day i
> got them. But its not exactly put me out for there to be an extra
> option in the grub boot loader.....
> 
Again, it's the nature of the world because people have been slow to try
and correct it. Your views of the Windows tax and the way things are
don't help to change it. Rather, it re-enforces the monoculture to the
detriment of those outside it, which includes you from the story below.

> and since dell has been mentioned came across a painfull senario with
> a powervault a few months baack where we'd to move the scsi card, and
> connect the PV to a windows machine since you couldn't update its bios
> under anything but windows , or a specific version of linux. (machine
> runs freebsd, nfs server). Painfull, but its the way it is.........
> 
This could conceivably be blamed on your views above, and similar views
from others. The reason it required Windows is because nobody had
challenged that requirement. And you (or whoever paid) as the purchaser
should have bought hardware that wouldn't require this to be done to
update the bios. There are plenty of other options available that have
already been mentioned in this thread.

- -- 
John Madden -- john at jmadden.eu
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