Ian came up with this when s/he headbutted the keyboard a moment ago in
comp.os.linux.advocacy:
already works. Intel 8xx generic sound driver.
already works. HP 5300
Works (after a fashion. 3D support is still crap, but the AMD/ATI merger
should take care of that in short order)
Nice one. Pick the two most expensive to maintain Win*printers on the
market.
*NOTICE IT SAYS WINPRINTERS! DESIGNED FOR MICROSOFT! LINUX DRIVERS ARE HACKS
WRITTEN BY LINUX USERS FOR LINUX USERS BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO BE BECAUSE THE
MANUFACTURERS ARE SCARED OF PISSING ON BILL'S RUG!
Personally, I'd go for one of the 7xx series HP Deskjets for colour printing
up to medium-industrial use, and a Brother HL1030 or HP Laserjet 6L or 1200
series for monochrome/draft/document printing.
Lexmark ink is more expensive, drop for drop, than premium champagne. That
is a fact.
If you want tightarse economy and don't mind risking burning out the
(nonreplaceable) heads if/when the tanks dry out, then go with an Epson
(D78 or RX220 if you want the ability to print directly onto optical
media). Inks are stupidly cheap for these printers, and the four or six
separate tanks means that you're not replacing all four colours when one
has dried out.
Not likely, unless they do something /really/ stupid.
Microsoft make a lot of money selling operating systems, but they make a
lot more selling software to run on them.
What this means is, that at last, we might see some decent application
software on linux. MS won't care if the programs are running on some
free distro if people are buying them.
If that were the case then we'd have MS Office For Linux already.
Visual Studio Linux.
..NET Linux
....
Maybe they'll not want to step on the shoes of the Crossover guys.
Despite what a lot of COLAs say, MS has been working towards
standards-based software for some time. We will soon find .NET apps
readily available to run on linux. You will have to buy them from MS or
Novell, but people don't mind paying for something they want. There will
actually be competition (real).
Microsoft sell neither operating system nor application software. They
sell /licenses/.
Licenses which give the end user the revocable right to use the software
imprint on the supplied media until a time of Microsoft's choosing, with no
implicit or implied warranty as to either its fitness for purpose nor its
usability as advertised. Even the security updates are supplied on
Microsoft's ridiculous terms (you must "prove" first that you did not
"steal" the software imprint - every single time you query the update
service). If such a sc~am/~heme hits Linux then I'll be going back to
Pencil[tm] and Paper[tm].
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