No shit. Trying to sell Linux at retail is a fricking nightmare from hell. Which printers on sale at Walmart this week work in Linux? Will these wireless cards at Best Buy work out of the box? Damned if I know, and the poor bastard behind the counter at Staples sure as hell ain't gonna know either. Which is why i have said time and time again there needs to be a stable ABI and a "Tux the penguin" certification process. That way retailers like me can just go "look for the fat penguin" and know that the items will "just work".

So while I congratulate the kernel guys for these new tweaks, until any of my customers can walk into Walmart and buy hardware without it being a minefield I don't really see this helping Linux adoption much. The Windows customers can look for the "works with Windows x" Winflag, the Apple customers look for the Apple logo, the Linux customers are just SOL unless they study like it was a fricking test just to buy some hardware at Staples. Until that changes getting better memory response isn't really gonna help much IMHO. It is like those OSes that fit on a single floppy. Good for a little "how did they do that" entertainment but not really usable for the vast majority.

I personally hope for the day I see just as many Linux laptops as Windows ones in Walmart, and little fat Tux logos on nearly every piece of hardware, but with the zealotry of RMS and the "source code or nothing!" crowd I won't hold my breath. Damned shame, as the newer Linux distros are really nice, with lots of cool features, but trying to find hardware that works is just too big of a PITA to allow me to sell them at retail.