Mistshadow,

Not just the poor, but, when you consider that when you buy a motherboard, 100% of the modems that are installed directly on the motherboard are WinModems, you don't exactly have much of a choice.

Same is true with Video Cards, Network Adapter Cards, and Sound Cards, all are coming out pre-installed, or more politically correct, hard-wired, on the motherboard already.

This is a great thing, for the consumer, as well as the manufacturer, because you, the consumer, get more "bang" for your buck. But, not if those hard-wired devices don't get supported by your OS. In that case, your dollar just spent for useless hardware, and more money and resources are needed to "re-buy" the hardware you already have, probably in an external "hardware" version of what was hard-wired on your new motherboard - as in the case of me - having to buy an additional external "hardware" modem.

I think the whole idea of a "wrapper" is great, don't get me wrong - it may get a lot of the unsupported "hard-wired" hardware working, and with less cost to either the manufacturers or the consumer - and may help in getting Linux into the "main stream" of the OS martket place.

The nice thing about Linux, and the GPL arena, is, that given time, and a NEED, someone is bound to design something for it. That is where I think Linux is going to surpass the "main stream" OS's - like M$.

As Linux gets more and more "steam", and followers, I think we will see more advancement in the areas that Linux is lacking, because more and more people will be starting to design in, and for, Linux.

I am one of those people. I used to write tons of programs, mostly for the lack of something, in the M$ arena. Now that I have "jumped ship" over to Linux, my programming talent will now be applied into the OS I am using. As soon as I get comfortable in usage, and know what already is done, I will probably start to look at the development tools supplied with Linux, and start to write programs for it (Linux).

I am quite sure I am not the only one who is also doing this. And better yet, I am not a driver programmer, mostly utility, front-end, and back-end software programming, but, I am sure that the many people "coming over" are bringing talents that will supply ideas, and developments, into the OS they are using.

As I said, I used to write lots of programs in the M$ world, heck, it needed it, way back in Win3.x days. In the Win95 days, I had a field day writting programs that were missing in that OS. Even in the Win98 OS, many things were just "left out". So far, I haven't seen anything, that comes to mind, that is "missing", or isn't already included, in Linux already. But then again, I haven't gotten "familiar", or used to, Linux that much yet.

Heck, about the only thing that springs to mind is, a utility program that displays the amount of UPTIME the system has been running. (that was sooooo needed in M$ OS)

I wrote "Uptime" in a mere day, for Win9x and up, to display the amount of computer uptime in a nice pretty interface. Because, as I found out, if the OS was up for more than 12 hours, chances are, it needed a reboot. The idea for "Uptime" in Linux, is not the same need, but to display just how long you have been running, WITHOUT having to reboot. (I think I've been running for days now, and only reboot when I feel guilty, or when that other OS would have required me to)

Oh, one more thing, I just thought of it... In the M$ world, you could get a utility program that went to the Colorado Atomic Clock site, and downloaded the time from the atomic clock site, and updated your computers clock, given the time zone you are in. Haven't gone looking yet, but, that would be a handy little "widget", for me that is, within Linux. So, lets see here, more than three weeks in Linux, and only two programs that I see a need for, hmmmmm, I think in Win98, it was a mere day or two, and I found the "need" for at least twenty programs.

So, Mistshadow, I agree with you, and I think me previous post was not only a little hard, but, unwarrented. I just don't want to see Linux go the same way the Other OS has gone. Linux has a good thing going here - and maybe a good reason for a lot of people flocking to it - I just don't want to see Linux get to be as bad as M$ has gotten, in the stability area, that is.

Just my thoughts,
Cuddles