WSJ - Article on Linux netbooks

[Alan Cox]

> You shouldn't have bought hardware not supported by GNU/Linux in the first
> place. Now you blame others for being unable to fix your or your clients'
> screwups.

And predicting the future is easy of course.

Lots of people come to Fedora and to Linux not having planning for some
years in advance to do so. Claiming people should have planned that far
in advance is not at all helpful and doesn't reflect reality.

Where there are vendors who are not being helpful there isn't that much
that can be done about it - especially for obscure hardware. Where stuff
gets done despite the vendor it's normally because it is either popular
or simple so enough people exist who care about doing it.

Some hardware is often quite easy to decode from traces - USB especially,
but many things like wireless cards are not, and 3D video cards even less
so. Printers, plotters and scanners vary - some can be quite simple. The
Craft Robo is an example of the simple end (indeed the "driver" is
written in python), while Nouveau and the broadcom wireless are the other
extreme.