Re: New users or troll?

On Thu, 04 May 2006 15:41:31 -0700, michelebargeman wrote:

I was reading a post from an "allege" new user, who supposedly doesn't
have lot of patient when it comes to learning something new - à la
installing a new operating system - in his/her case on an allege older
system!

Maybe it is just me, but I would have thought that anyone who is using
computer - including Windows user would know that new operating sytem
don't work on an older system. Say Windows XP Professional + System
Pack II will not work properly on an older system - say Pentium II.

How is it that any computer user would expect brand new operating sytem
design to work on an older hardware? It would like hope for a bicycle
to keep up with a space rocket? Am I wrong?

I will give you another example. I have more then one computer. In one
of my comptuer - Pentium 4. I have install an older video card - PCI
based with 16M. Since this computer was not built to do heavy duty
graphics stuff, I don't need to put nivida on it therefore I don't
expect to get much from - considering that most GUI are design for 50M
video cards. Nevertheless, it display KDE very nicly, even mplayer
display some xvid nicly. Still, I know it is an older card, and It is
not meant to be use with latest (2006) 3D Games - nor I ever tried to
do such foollish thing. It works nicly with KDE and even with mplayer -
I'm very happy.

What I don't understand is why would anyone expect a brand new
operating system to work on an older hardware? Pherhaps it would safe
to assume that such a person might be troll - specailly if he/she is
using profanity.

I can think of several reasons why one might think or at least hope that a
current Linux distribution would work on older hardware:

1) it often does - I've recently installed Elive on several P166 systems
with 64mb RAM - it runs quite well. I would not expect KDE or Gnome to
work on them, but Enlightenment does.

2) being new to Linux - the thought of support for 'antique' hardware
might never come to them.

3) until otherwise convinced, they may consider Linux a 'toy'. Toys often
don't have strict requitements.

4) MS FUD leads them to believe that current or 'state of the art'
hardware is not supported by Linux - corollary - Linux must support old
hardware.

.

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