Linux Desktop Summit Re: [SGVLUG] Hello from San Diego

[Michael Proctor-Smith]

On 4/26/06, John Riehl <jcriehl at mail.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> Well, the problem is not that it doesnt switch, it does.  the problem is
> that the screens become garbled.  You press once to show on the
> external, press again to show both, and press a third time to go back to
> the laptop only.  Well, the external screen is a blob of color of the
> correct background color, but everything is undiscernable. If you try
> both, you see that the external screen is still mucked, as well as the
> original laptop screen.  If you try to come back to just the original
> laptop screen, that is still mucked.  specifically, the dimension are
> changed.  xwindows is now in the middle third of the screen, with the
> bottom cut off.  the icons are blobs.  It almost looks like it folded
> them back over the screen.  To recover you have to kill & restart x.  To
> use the external monitor, you have to boot switching to the external
> monitor in the boot process.  You cannot use both at the same time.
>
> The EXPECTATION level of my users (yes, they are rocket scientists) is
> that it should work as well in linux as it does in windows.  On windows,
> you install the os, you install the drivers, and it works as you would
> expect.

First of there is a problem with drivers for new hardware, this is not
linux's fault it is the hardware manufactures fault, they do not see a
large enough market to write the drivers themselves and they do not
"get it" that all they would have to do it release some hardware specs
and throw around a couple of examples of the hardware to get the
drivers written for them for free.

Second you John you have stated something to the effect that users
expect to install windows , install drivers and everything will work.
Well how well does windows work on that shiny new computer without
installing those drivers. My guess is not as well a Linux does.

My point is that Linux is ready to be a corporate desktop, a
scientific desktop, an engineer's desktop as long as it is on hardware
from the right manufactures.