One thing first: my post #27 in this thread came in reaction to the assertion that Linux is hard because an additional instal on a windows machine complicates life . I proceeded to argue that it's just the same vice versa...

Good for you But likely is not 100% sure, that's what I'd like to point out. Now, comparing probabilities of finding things on the net is somewhat pointless in a medium so much shifting and changing .

See above (I don't have XP, so I never tried).

But dual boot is what my erstwhile foreposter complained about and what I wanted to rectify.

But this is what I wanted to compare, the on-board means to boot an other OS.

Well, I use WinNT which simply doesn't recognize other than µsoft Oses. I don't know about Win2k.

That's not onboard . Well, is YAST2 on-board? It's at least SuSE...

Strike! Exactly! That, and only that was intended in my first post on the subject . Sorry if it came round otherwise.

Hey, but that's actually a tall assumption and unfair too. If you want to compare the ease of setting up a secondary OS start with the same limitations.

Well, those do seem to be on the downside, I give you that. But since I have none, I have no experience with them.

I somehow doubt that this is technically feasible, so programmers to the fore, but it would certainly be nice.

Actually it should be quite feasable. The trick to it would be to have a single set of APIs for developing drivers for varying kinda of hardware. You develop for this API. This API then translates the functionality to a native driver.

An example in Linux would be you would use this (lets call it SODA[Standardized Open Driver Architecture])] as your X-Serv. Then configure the SODA Graphics Driver with a SODA compatible Driver. The Driver written for SODA talks to SODA, and the SODA X-Serv then does the work for X.

Under Windows, it would be similar, you would load the SODA Graphics Driver as you're graphics driver, and then configure SODA to use the same SODA drive you used under X. It could even be setup so that a SODA Driver could look as if it were a straight out windows driver, by having a pre-configured install of the soda driver, and the soda graphics driver.. etc.. blah blah.

I figure under Windows there would be more cases of installing a Driver thats pre-wrapped in SODA, than would be in Linux. Linux would be able to adopt such a technology more natively, while M$ would complain about it, and call it unsecure, and unstable(which is always SOOO funny coming from M$).

Essentialy though, it's a layer similar to OpenGL, or possibly more similar to NDIS Wrapper. Except with SODA the developer would actually compile the Driver for Linux, or OSX, or BSD, or Windows, or others... As apposed to loading a driver written for a different arcitecture, and translating that to the current one. Should work out as a very thin efficient layer. Which would be needed for a hardware interfact.

And I don't mean to use this for only graphics, it could be applied to all facets of hardware, a great example of something that could use it would be scanners, and digital cameras(atleast for ones that need drivers)

I think that my comparison was pretty fair. Windows and Linux are not on an equal basis, so there's no point in inventing artificial conditions if we look at the 'real life' home user market. Windows doesn't want you to be installed on a Linux machine and let Linux live. That's a business decision we all know and we all know the reasons for, and we can clamor endlessly about this, but there's no point in doing so in this thread .

My example of installing Mandrake Linux 9.2 on several Windows machines had the sole reason to illustrate my practical experience with Linux. Mandrake's feature of grabbing part of the hard disk, re-partition the disk and installing itself next to Windows is amazing and remarkable. Its hardware recognition features were less amazing. Only the last point is important if you want to look at the home user market. And at the point where you leave the wonderful installer of Mandrake Linux behind and have to fiddle things out yourself, the friendliness for the common home user falls miles behind that of Windows.

To be fair, I have to say that I haven't looked at Mandriva 2005 LE yet. If its hardware recognition features have reached the class of Knoppix 3.8.1, I'm impressed. Nevertheless, finding and installing stuff for hardware that is not found during standard installation is a vastly more complex task on Linux machines than on Windows ones. This was the first main point of my post.

The second point was missing entertainment software. A simple fact, but decisive for many home users .

The third point was more Mandrake/Mandriva-specific than Linux-specific. This was the aspect that for a technically less inclined home user, Mandriva Linux with a user-friendly installer is even financially uninteresting compared to Windows. This version is addressing groups of people (institutions, companies, a tech-savvy family), whereas the free version (free as in 'no cost') addresses advanced linux users. This leaves general home users out of the equation.

Please keep this thread on topic (which is the Interview with Mandriva (ex Mandrake) Linux Founder Gael Duval
). If you'd like to discuss another topic, feel free to start a new thread, linking to this one for context.

--jeremy

Cool nice interview