Linux drove me to get a Mac

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 10:04:33PM -0500, Kamran Khan wrote:
> Sadly you don't get it.  It would seem that many of your cohorts on  
> the list do not either.  For example the solution to print on  
> Linux(Desktop) is to buy a postscript printer.  The solution to allow  
> me to sync my SE Smart Phone with applications running on the Linux  
> Desktop is?  Yes I know, buy hardware that works with Linux.  Like I  
> said you don't get it.  I fail to see how your operating system  
> empowers you when clearly you are a slave to it.

Unfortunately we live in a world where 99% of people use windows, and of
the rest a lot use Mac OS X.

We also have a lot of companies that think everything is a trade secret
even when it has no reason to be.

So as a result many devices only work with windows, or if you are lucky
with Mac as well.  Even trying to implement support for it yourself is
nearly impossible because no one wants to tell you what the protocol or
file format they used is.  After all that's secret and it would be awful
is anyone else knew how trivially plain and simple their solution was.
After all they had to put work into it, so it must be special and worth
something.

Now the answer of postscript printers has been true for a very long
time, not just for linux, but for all unix systems and traditionally at
least also the mac.  Essentially system supports postscript printing,
and except for windows, considers it the native print language.  I don't
have a postscript printer at home, I just have an epson stylus photo
r260, and it works just fine with gutenprint.  Epson is very good about
providing documentation to developers, and hence their printers end up
with very good support pretty soon after they are released.

If your smartphone provided documentation on its interface, someone
would be able to provide sync for it.  Almost certainly they don't.  Of
course if they choose not to provide software for the next version of
windows or mac OS and you happen to upgrade, then your phone will be
useless there too.  Of course given phones rarely stay in use much more
than 3 years, I guess you don't care.  Perhaps you should.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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