Comment 1873 for bug 1

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Tom <email address hidden> wrote:
> Wow, i find it amazing that you don't see more people using mobile or hand-held devices in your town!
> Also amazing that you can't buy any hand-held or mobile devices anywhere.
> Such devices have already pretty much taken over here in the Uk.

Of course mobile devices are all around also here in Austria, but:
Mobile devices are an addon - they help on the go and they are good
for consuming IT content, but they are bad when it comes to
"production" like Programming, Document Writing, Foto Editing, Desktop
Publishing, Design, CAD, ...

This is why I do give nothing on those news headliner telling that the
PC era is over.
Of course: A lot of people do use a computer (approx guess) 80 %
internet surving or watching video, 10 % email reading and 10 % email
writing. - Those are perfectly service with a large enough tablet.
Anyway I do not know any tablet or smartphone user not having also a
laptop or PC at home.

BTW: I consider PC and laptop as both being relevant for this bug #1.

> However i do agree that this bug is not really fixed. Quite the contrary!

Yes, indeed!

> Now is the time to really start working at it! Now that mobile devices and hand-helds have become so common-place it
> should be easier to go into stores and demand peripherals (such as printers, wireless routers etc) that are Gnu&Linux
> friendly. Demands such as "I need a printer for work but need to know that i will be able to print from my Android.

This is an uncommon use case. What I see always: Documents are sent by
email to somebody who has the desired printer on his laptop or PC
already configured in the list of available printers. At least 2 times
a week I am at customers and I would never go to connect to a wild
number of printers and after changing to the next phone model have to
do it again anyway. I already reduce the list of configured W-LAN
entries in my phone. Even if it would be just 2 clicks or touches away
- I first would have to ask some person at customer side to what
printer I should send the document xy, would maybe need to configure
page size, make sure enough paper is in the trays and so on. Apart
from the fact that on many network printers you first need to login
anyway and have to be within the customers real network and not only
in the guest W-LAN.

> So, is this printer Gnu&Linux friendly?"

This of course is an issue sometimes, but I experience less problems
to get a Linux compatible printer than a Linux compatible laptop/PC.

> or "I need a wireless router so that my Android can access my home/work network.
> Does this router have drivers for Gnu&Linux?"

I never heard of drivers I need on my client to support particular
routers. Routers are running their own operating system inside and
most of them alreasy run a flavour of Linux ASFAIK. I do consider
routers - as servers - already to be taken over by Linux.

Best regards, Martin.