🚀 go-pugleaf

On 18 Aug 1997 22:33:03 GMT, Dr. Who <mind@ripco.com> wrote:
>
>See, this is exactly what I"m talking about.  WHY do we need plug and pray
>support?  It just increases the size of the kernel.  It's helping along
>those companies that are manufacturing "non-standard" or "incompatible"
>hardware.  Basically, you're helping MS if you buy plug and pray crap.
>Besides, plug and pray is not known for its quality...

Not to be gloomy, but it's not a battle we can win.  Every free Unix
user in the world can ditch all of their PnP hardware, and never buy
another one for the rest of their lives, and it wouldn't even amount
to a drop in the bucket moneywise.  It wouldn't be sending a message
to anyone.  Now, these days, it seems like just about everything is
PnP, and not supporting it would greatly reduce choices for a lot of
users.  Not to mention that a lot of folks don't really have a choice...
I wouldn't use a machine (at home) that I didn't build myself, and
handpick the parts for, but most people just buy a Compaq or a Dell
or whatever.  And it seems like every one of them comes with at the
very least a PnP soundcard.  Tell them that they would have to spend
a couple hundred dollars getting replacement parts so that they can
use those parts under Linux, and they'll never try Linux in the first
place.  I love Linux, but OTOH I'm not one of those people who think
that every PC in the world should run it.  However, at the same time
I would like it to be useable and newbie-friendly as possible.

Not to mention people considering installing it en masse in academic
or corporate environments.  If they want 50 Linux PC's in a lab or
office, custom building machines is out of the question, and they
are frequently locked into buying machines from a certain vendor
(like Gateway), almost guaranteeing at least 1-2 nonstandard parts.

I say if someone is willing to put the time into writing a driver
for something, for free, and allowing users all over the world to
expand their hardware choices, more power to them.  I'm starting
to get nauseated at the amount of flaky, nonstandard hardware out
there (WinModems, Intellimice, etc.), but PnP is probably a bad
fight to pick as it's rapidly becoming a de facto standard already.
Good or bad, we're stuck with it.  OTOH, the whole I2O thing is
starting to frighten me...

  Regards,
    Mike