I don't usually, but... 10066

Rich Bell poked his little head through the XP firewall and said:

One problem is, one side is thinking only of consumer hardware, and the other side is thinking only of server hardware.

There's no doubt that Linux supports a much wider range of hardware architectures, and scales through a wider range of equipment, from devices not much bigger than an Rj-45 connector, on up to at least one line of IBM mainframes.

There's also no doubt that some manufacturers not only do not provide Linux drivers for their hardware, they don't even provide sufficient specifications to allow a coder to write a decent driver without a lot of time-consuming debugging and reverse-engineering.

However, even Windows is not immune to the occasional pooty driver written by a vendors. For example, I've seen one version of Cisco's "deterministic network enhancer" cause XP to blue-screen.

My feeling is, if you already have hardware, and it runs only on Windows, and you have Windows, go ahead and use it. If you really want it to run on another OS, and can afford it, buy new hardware.

I had to do this years ago with Win NT 4, when a stupid vendor provided the system I bought from them with what I later learned was a "Winmodem". I never did get that sucker to work. I bought another modem that said it would work with NT, and it did. On that same system, I also made the mistake of buying a "Winprinter". Luckily, HP had provided an NT driver in the interim, so I was able to use the thing.

Anyway, it is your choice. And it is your responsibility to make sure your choice will work.

I've been pretty lucky with Linux. I buy it, and it works. Or I have it already, and try it, and it works. I haven't tried the Winprinter, though. Since I bought a nice laser printer, I never will, either.

-- Tux rox!