Yale Daily News

Wine is starting to be able to run recent

versions of iTunes. I used it to buy a copy

of "Autobahn" by Kraftwerk a couple months

ago. Now, you might disagree with my choice

of music, but you shouldn't underestimate Wine.

Although it might not yet provide the polished

experience users need, it has very strong

bones underneath that rough exterior, and

those motivated computer science students

you were talking about can probably add the

needed polish for any app they care about.

In other words, if you have an app that

doesn't work on Linux yet because Wine is

immature, go find a friendly CS student

and ask him/her to fix it for you!

(Bribing them with a couple pizzas and a

case of beer or two wouldn't hurt. And

if they are good at it, paid internships

and jobs doing it full time are available.)

I don't think you've been keeping up with Linux, if you think that new hardware really fazes it that much. I bought a brand new Dual-Core laptop with a dedicated Nvidia graphics card, Bluetooth, Wifi, Firewire... The works. A bug in the drivers for the sound hardware already had a fix available, and the next new kernel out the door fixed the problem once and for all. I've never seen Microsoft respond THAT fast.

I keep hearing this talking point that Linux has less hardware support than Windows... but I have yet to see proof. What I HAVE seen is a brand-new version of Linux work with a ten year old video capture card that no version of Windows has supported since 98. 2000 came out in 2000, a mere two years after the piece of hardware in question, but no driver ever came forth. So it doesn't run iTunes. There are alternatives to the iTunes store, and there are far superior alternatives such as Amarok that run natively and for free on Linux. I use my iPod all the time, and it interfaces just fine with Amarok.

For people that can easily afford an iPod and a new computer Linux may not be the best investment. It requires time to learn the basics of it and learn how to set it up. Not unlike the first computer I had way back in the early nineties which ran DOS, except Linux is actually easier.

I use Windows and Linux and I like both and need both. I however know people that don't really use a computer beyond simple email and websurfing. For those people Linux is a viable alternative. Yes, it can take more time to set up, but if for you the cost of Windows or a MAC is more than the time investment, the Linux is well worth it.

It's not that the installs are difficult initially: it's that once you use the system for a while--with Ubuntu in my experience--it's great until you realize the little things you care so much about don't work. Fingerprint recognition takes some futzing to get working, unlike on Mac and Vista. Plugging in headphones often don't turn off the speakers, which is hugely inconvenient for libraries. Amarok is nice, but it's hard to find the music you want if you can't handle DRM. And DRM and Linux don't happily co-exist. Maybe I should just go back to buying CDs and liberate myself from this problem.