>>>> writing a few dozen lines of assembly to
>>>> function as a device driver would be pretty trivial...
>>>
>>> And you would be right, were we living in a universe where people
>>> building hardware spent *their* money so you could spend less of *your*
>>> money.
>>
>> I'm not sure I follow...
>>
>> By not using exorbitantly-priced MS products, they can sell their
>> device significantly more cheaply. You would think that would be a
>> fairly compelling market advantage.
>
> No. The guys making the coin changer, etc, having to support *both*
> Windows and Linux costs more than supporting just Windows. I imagine if
> someone came to them and said "We'll buy 50,000 of these if you provide
> a Linux driver" then they would have done so. But those 2 dozen lines of
> assembly, along with all the other stuff that goes with it (like
> maintenance, sales, marketing, tech documentation, recompiling it for
> each kernel as necessary, etc etc) costs money and apparently wasn't
> worth doing.

Oh, right.

I was thinking more along the lines of "if the device you want to use 
doesn't have Linux drivers, just write some".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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