Comments

• Yuhong Bao

  2009-11-17 18:11:13

  "GNU/Linux advocates too should warn peers, colleagues, family and friends that Vista 7 is incompatible with hardware and software. " I think the best bet is to suggest users assess their hardware to see if it is compatible before any OS change, for that matter.

• your_friend

  2009-11-18 08:16:55

  Relax, this is what dual booting is for. The prudent steps are to test the hardware with a live CD, install GNU/Linux to a new partition if it works at all, and to gradually wean the user from obnoxious hardware and software. This way the user loses nothing. The process is relatively painless, except for finding your data on Windows. Done carefully, there is little risk.
  
  If only things were so easy for Windows users. Vista and Windows 7, like most Windows "upgrades" demand fresh installs or a whole new computer. The best assurance things work Microsoft can offer is a lame online evaluation that has let a lot of users down. Users are expected to back up all of their documents and wipe the dozens of third party applications that makes Windows useful and pray they can find it all again. This is risky even without an "upgrade." Buying a computer does not spare the user many steps. They still have to locate and transfer their data and then find all of the applications they need to manipulate that data. New versions of non free software usually modify data in a way that makes it impossible to go back to the old machine. This pain happens at every major Microsoft OS change and it is always worse than people expect.

• Yuhong Bao

  2009-11-17 18:11:13

  "GNU/Linux advocates too should warn peers, colleagues, family and friends that Vista 7 is incompatible with hardware and software. " I think the best bet is to suggest users assess their hardware to see if it is compatible before any OS change, for that matter.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-11-17 18:44:00

  Indeed.
  
  Nonetheless, the point remains that XP supports more hardware than Vista 7. Linux does not make such steps backwards. 2.6.x is rather consistent.

• Yuhong Bao

  2009-11-18 00:08:05

  "Nonetheless, the point remains that XP supports more hardware than Vista 7." Yea, I personally have encountered this myself. One relating to an old HP printer which did not have specific Vista drivers. It might have worked with XP drivers, I didn't try, but ultimately due to other problems was thrown away anyways. Another was an old Handspring Visor I still have that I can definitely confirm do not work with Vista, even using the old Palm Desktop designed to work with XP, and I know why. Here is an IRC log that has the gory details: http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/irc-log-25102009.html#tOct%2025%2001:47:50

• Yuhong Bao

  2009-11-18 00:08:49

  It worked fine on the Ubuntu side of my dual-boot using gnome-pilot, BTW.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-11-18 02:22:41

  Over the years I've used kpilot and gpilot, but jpilot works best for me at the moment (2.6.31).

• Yuhong Bao

  2009-11-17 18:08:41

  Well, MS itself support WM in Windows 7, just to make this clear. The former is actually Samsung's fault for making their own firmware upgrade software incompatible.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-11-17 18:40:56

  Not all editions have this option.

• Mikko

  2009-11-16 22:18:58

  here in sweden several 3G dongles for pcs doesn't work with windows 7 but there's an firmware update that fixes the problem but that can only be installed from a pc with windows xp :)

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-11-16 22:53:21

  Remember this?
  
  "The Vista users of Lund over in Sweden can't access the Internet through their Linux network.
  
  "Imagine, an entire city running its digital infrastructure on Linux. Beautiful, right? Now imagine the frustration of Vista users when their Microsoft OS denies them access to the Internet due to some small bug in some Microsoft code.
  
  "Frustrating indeed.
  
  "The city of Lund, Sweden has been in the digital dark as Vista OS users cannot gain Internet access through the city's Linux based communications infrastructure. The company in charge if that city wide system, Lundis Energi, had said that the problem persists because of a bug in some Vista code. Lundis Energi also said that they are in no way willing to change the configuration of their server to cope with the flaw."

• Mikko

  2009-11-17 16:28:34

  missed that one