Re: What so special about PostgreSQL and other RDBMS?

"Howard J. Rogers" <hjr_at_dizwell.com> wrote in message news:<40aa69a3$0$3037$afc38c87_at_news.optusnet.com.au>...
> It's not as pat as that.
>
> I know it's not quite the same thing, but I am more than willing -in
> fact, I am desirous- to convert my newish (5 months) laptop to running
> Linux. You know why XP is still on it? Because 3 of the distros refuse
> to even install on it. Fedora and Mandrake do, but neither of them have
> a clue about my 802.11g wireless card. One has a problem with my
> graphics driver. And both have problems with the external firewire drive.
>
> Now I'm sure I could poke around inside /etc/something and fix all that
> up. But Windows gets all of it right, first time, every time, and I
> don't have to fiddle at all. So what's the cost equation there? And if
> it's not true for me that "the same talent pool" can make both work
> equally well, I suspect it's not going to be true for a lot of shops
> without some serious re-training/retrenchment/re-hiring costs.

I can't argue with you about your laptotp, but in general Linux has much better hardware support build inside than Windows. The reason for this is that even the newest Windows XP are quite old (about two years), so they're not supporting hardware younger than two years. On the other hand, any major Linux distribution has new versions available at least twice a year, not mentioning new kernel releases on monthly basis.
For example on my one year old PC, Fedora Core 1 just out of the box can recognize and install all of my hardware. When installing XP I need to:

1. borrow an ancient device called floppy disc drive, because that's the only way how to supply a driver for my on-board serial-ATA controller.
2. install drivers for nForce2 chipset
3. install drivers for Radeon 9700Pro (or enjoy VGA resolution and colours).
4. install drivers for on-board NIC.
5. install drivers for Audigy 2.

So on my one year old hardware it is not even possible to install the latest Windows.
People are often confusing operating system hardware support with having all CDs with drivers around. Is it true, that all hardware is comming with Windows drivers, but that's a vendor support, not operating system support.
For Linux users getting an appropriate driver could be more challenging, but situation is steadily improving and when I needed to get and install a driver for a brand new Intel 1000 NIC it took less than five minutes (the same time as on Windows) and was needed only because of a two year old distribution used (any newer distro has support for this card already built-in). So I think the support for hardware is a reason for and not against Linux. Of course, there could be some problems and some hardware still needs some tweaking or is not working at all, but that's the problem of a manufacturer and there is a lot of brands for any component, so is not a big problem to buy a proper one.

--
Dusan Bolek

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