Up to a Certain Point

Ian Murdock, the semi-eponymous creator of Debian, has a nicely provocative post that turns some conventional wisdom on its head. It's often said - sometimes by me - that the move towards Web-based apps makes the operating system on a user's PC increasingly irrelevant, which means that people might as well opt for GNU/Linux instead of Windows. But as Murdoch points out:

Of course, there’s a flip side to this: if the operating system is just a set of device drivers, wouldn’t you want the most extensive set? As far as Linux on the desktop has come in the past few years, it still lags Windows significantly in plug-and-play value.

I think he's right - up to a certain point. And that point is when GNU/Linux is good enough. You don't really need to have the absolutely spiffiest device drivers if the price you pay is lack of security and, well, price. We're not there yet, though, so maybe it would be a good idea to go easy on the device drivers argument for the moment....