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How often have you heard the words "it's difficult to get this software/hardware working on Linux, that's why it hasn't caught the mass imagination"?


On the other hand, how often have you heard that it's more difficult to get software/hardware working on Windows compared to Linux - but others do it for you so you aren't exposed to the problem?

My personal experience is more of the latter and much less of the former. The latest example I have to offer is that of hardware made by Microsoft itself - LifeChat USB audio headphones.

A bit of background. My children have run through eight pairs of headsets in the last two years, most of them LogiTech, for one reason or the other - the sound fails, parts break, the wires come loose. Each set costs something in the region of $40 so it ain't cheap stuff.

Whenever any set which they are using fails, they grab the one sitting on their mother's PC and behave as though nothing has happened. I have to then buy my wife a new set.

For a while this problem hasn't reared its head. The last time it did, in 2009, I invested $45 in a Microsoft LifeChat USB headphone set and like most of the hardware that Microsoft makes it has been good value for money - I have been using a Microsoft PS2 mouse for the last 10 years.

But a week or so ago, my daughter's headphones broke and she grabbed the Microsoft set. As an interim measure, I set up the onboard sound card on my wife's PC for use with an ordinary set of headphones. I figured that all I had to do was to plug in the new headset and use it.

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Sam Varghese

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A professional journalist with decades of experience, Sam for nine years used DOS and then Windows, which led him to start experimenting with GNU/Linux in 1998. Since then he has written widely about the use of both free and open source software, and the people behind the code. His personal blog is titled Irregular Expression.

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