That does not happen with Free Software. You buy it (or get it for Free or whatever), you get to use it any way you want. Also, you will be able to modify it, or share with your friends, use in multiple PCs (if you don’t bother about the support) and do things that were never possible with proprietary softwares. Also, you get the source code, which prety much ensures the vendors not using your information without you noticing.

And about the answers regarding writing drivers and such, I don’t know who actually told you that, but I’m sure s/he was not a driver developer or at least not someone who has written drivers for hardwares that are built by someone else and even the developer documentations are not available. It is not easy to write drivers, even difficult when no detailed documentation is made available by the vendors. Also, if you can create drivers for Linux, you can also create ones for Windows. When somebody tells you that next time, just tell them “You can write your own drivers for Windows too. You don’t need kernel source code for that. OS Development API and knowledge of hardware is enough information.” Maybe they will then come up with a better explanation.
Even I’d pay rather than having to write a driver for an unknown hardware. It might just take years to reverse engineer the hardware and actually make it work.

But money is not much of a issue. The bigger and more important thing is that we have freedom if we are using Free(swatantra) Software. We need not be bound by long and unimportant (whats the use?) piece of document (EULA) which is probably different for each proprietary software (in Free Software world, we have a small set of licenses which are common for most of the softwares). We can use the program in whaever way possible, learn from it to create better ones, share the program, edit it if it does not fit our needs (or pay someone to do so if we can’t do that ourselves) rather than wait for enough market for the addition or change to be considered by the vendor.

And if you have made up your mind to use Free Software (like Linux) for yourself, it is not difficult to find the hardware that works in Linux. In fact, I have encountered very few hardwares that do not work with Linux.. It has not always been the same though. My PC-TEL HSP56 Softmodem made me use Windows for over a year as a kid. I was at school and I would not get Rs. 2000 for buying an external modem which worked with Linux, and had to surf via that internal Win modem that cost a mere Rs. 500. However, things have changed a lot now. Most hardwares I have encountered work flawlessly under linux these days. In fact, I have a Webcam lying on my table which belongs to my friend coz he uses Windows 7 and he does not have driver for it. It has worked in my PC in Jaunty(ubuntu 9.04), Karmic(ubuntu 9.10) and now Alpha version of Lucid(ubuntu 10.04) without problems.
But since you might run into problems with some hardware, you must check if the hardware runs well on Linux before you decide to purchase (like you’d do if you used Win Vista or Win 7). And, as of now, I believe it is a lot easier to find hardware that works with Linux than finding one that runs on particular version of Windows.

I’m sorry for the long post, but I hope I cleared some of your doubts.

My intention was to really understand the shortcomings in the Windows product so that I can make a wise decision while buying an OS next time. Otherwise I wouldn’t even bother commenting here.

Usually when I ask people who usually promote Linux or any other open source product, I have several times received an answer in the line of – “Oh, why worry about drivers, you can write your own here, since you have the source code.”

This certainly is an advantage. But my second post where I said I’d pay rather than write my own driver, I simply intended to let you know that while this is a very big advantage, it doesn’t work for me.

So, if I have been able to convince you that my post was in no way a challenge, but just a request for elaborations, please respond. And this request is not just to the original poster, but to anybody else who would be interested to share their first hand experience here.

And about writing drivers for the system. Being a UNIX admin, if you cannot select what hardware are appropriate for your system then in that case I have no words for you.

Even today, we (me and some of my friends), even buying small hardwares like CDMA devices, webcams etc.. we check if they are *INX compliant or not. I am currently planning to buy a laptop and well going through many of then to check if all the hardwares vendor are Linux supporting type or not?

You being a system admin of a responsible corporation of Nepal and showing such irresponsible activity is a shame to tech associates like us. Now I can see why the status of telecom hasn’t been better in years with technological advancements.

Greetz
fr3ak

You said MS software restricted you from using the PC your way. Could you please elaborate on that. I would really like to know the kind of restrictions imposed upon me by MS software that would hinder the intended functionality of the PC for a user like me. I’m a professional in the telecom sector and I use my PC everyday for Internet/email, word processing, spreadsheet and few other database and telecom-related applications.

Thank you.