[perssontm]

You have a valid point, but theres another side to it. The hardware that works great are the hardware that developers tend to use. The worst low-end lexmarks which are barely good enough for one cartridge cycle is not something any computer enthusiast/programmer would spend time on makeing work.

Since I switched to linux on my laptop 100%, around 2003 somewhere, I always tried to pick hardware which is professional grade, not home/consumer end. Although a bit more pricey to start with but most of the things have lasted since then as well.

[jfarmer]

Sure. But still, let's imagine I did professional work that required professional hardware. Further, let's imagine that Linux supported my current setup perfectly.

My setup won't be my setup forever. Maybe some new hardware comes out and I want to experiment with it. Will it work with Linux? Will the person making that hardware have Linux in mind when they're building it? If my current hardware breaks, will it be easy for me to find suitable replacement quickly? As in same-day quickly?

Is memorizing the list of "professional-grade" hardware that works with Linux -- or perhaps just the list of exceptions if that's the smaller list -- worth my time as a professional?

For you, the answer to all these questions might be "yes" or even "yes, given how much I care about using Linux for other reasons." That's great.

However, the mere fact that one has to consider these questions increases the cost of adoption. It shouldn't therefore be a surprise that fewer people use the platform as a result or that people point out this frustrates them. Maybe they even use tricky phrases like "hardware support" which can mean many things to many people to describe their frustration.

If you want to think about it algorithmically, maybe try this picture. You have two points A and B on a map with varied terrain and a path-finding algorithm. You have N seconds to get from A to B, including the amount of time it takes to find a path.

You won't be able to take fastest path if it takes longer than N seconds to find that path -- by that point you'll be out of time. Instead, the naïve solution would be to take the first path P where the time searching for P plus the time to traverse P is <= N, assuming you can find one. Maybe you modify this meta-algorithm slightly so that once you find a P, if the time spent so far plus the time to traverse P is M < N you spend another N - M seconds looking for a second, possibly-shorter path.

Those "N - M" seconds are really important in consumer psychology. If you've found multiple options and weighed them you'll feel much more comfortable in your decision. That comfort translates into confidence in the underlying platform.

On Linux the "time searching for P" is much larger than OS X, but the original article is pretending as if it's only the existence of a fast-enough path that matters. It's not, especially if the time to find the right path dwarfs the amount of time you have to spend on the problem or it results in you being able to weigh as many options as you would on another platform.

For me, personally, as someone who values his own attention very, very highly, my threshold for "time spent searching for P" is incredibly low.

[pyre]

  > Is memorizing the list of "professional-grade"
  > hardware that works with Linux -- or perhaps just
  > the list of exceptions if that's the smaller list
  > -- worth my time as a professional?

Why the focus on 'memorizing?' When you research the best appliance to buy, do you complain that you had to memorize the specs of (e.g.) different refrigerators? Or do you just do research/comparisons, buy the thing, and promptly drop all of that from memory?

[jfarmer]

Hmm, that's not quite what I meant. I know what I care about in a refrigerator and I know I'll be able to buy one with minimal hassle once I decide I want one. I'm free to research online and I'm relatively confident someone at the store will be able to answer my questions when I get there. I also have lots of friends (and family) who have purchased and installed refrigerators, so I can ask them for input if I want.

My dealings with hardware + Linux has not been like that at all. Instead, what works and what doesn't is essentially arbitrary. Some brands are generally more compatible, but there are always some make/model combinations you want to avoid. And even if it "mostly works" there's a good chance some of the less common features will work poorly, at best. When I say "memorize" I mean internalizing this essentially arbitrary list. The HP 450C is ok, but don't get the HP 451C! That sort of thing.

To top it off, if I go to the store and ask questions about Linux compatibility -- perhaps there's some information I couldn't find online, say -- I'm not at all confident I'll be able to find someone to answer my questions. And even if they didn't, I'd wonder if what they knew was up-to-date or not.

[bdcravens]

There was a time when "time spent searching for P" was much greater for Apple hardware than Wintel machines.