Linux DriverPacks

As many of you are probably aware, Microsoft thinks that they can control user's preferences, that THEY have a choice on you, and that (you) the user doesn't has a choice or a say on what you want as your own computer is concerned.

I work as a Computer Tech and I receive countless of computers in a DAILY basis from people wanting to downgrade their PC's from Windows Vista (even Windows 7) to Windows XP.  I Have been doing a great job (or course my customers has to either purchase a legit copy of XP, or already own one).  On these systems that came with Vista and how slow it was performing right off the bat, right off unpacking, when the hard drive is reformated and XP is loaded the different is noticed, XP brings these new 'slow' vista systems back to life, the boot up time to desktop is less than 15 seconds, all programs opens in an instant when with Vista it would take an eternity.

Now here is the problem (or should I say "The Microsoft Clincher").  On the latest systems that customers have been purchasing now, they come in a way that is seems an impossibility to install Windows XP.  There is no SATA drivers for XP, Driverpacks doesn't got a working SATA driver for XP for slipstreaming purposes.  Switching from SATA to IDE mode in the bios is also impossible for most manufacturer in most of these systems, but I have seen that in dell systems you can still make that change, so at least I would recommend Dell to users since they at least give some control to the owner.  As for HP/Compaq is concerned FORGET IT, as soon as they started delivering Vista only systems, they yanked out the SATA to IDE mode change in their bios, apparently they probably made an $$agreement$$ with Micro$oft to yank off that feature off their systems even though that wasn't a problem for me back then since I could easily slip stream the SATA drivers to an XP CD and install XP that way, but I mean, on the systems that are coming out now you can't even do that because there is no XP SATA drivers for them and driverpacks doesn't have one for them and you can spend hours on google searching for them and you are not going to find it.  It appears that when Windows 7 came out, that more people and most companies have been less cooperant in providing/facilitating XP drivers and Hacks to make a downgrade from Windows 7 to XP a possibility, now its an impossibility.  I understand that Vista sucked, it was sloooow, it was a pain in the a@@ for users, but Windows 7 is nothing different, its just a revamped version of Windows Vista with its crappy memory precaching feature that there is no way of disabling, Vista and 7 loads into memory all the "things" the OS thinks you are probably going to execute, so if you have a system with 4 GB or RAM vista will try to load all that 4 GB or RAM with programs and documents you have previously accessed and that's why Vista takes for ever each time you boot it.  I prefer that things get loaded into memory as I load them not the other way around (I dont need my grandma's recipe/cooking software to load into memory precached each time I turn on my system.  So Microsoft makes this design or memory management thinking they are pleasing every one and the problem is that Microsoft doesn't provide a way to change this for the user.

Anyways, these operating system has lots of problems otherwise customers wouldn't be complaining about them and my IT offices wouldn't be full of these types of request in a daily basis.  I cannot tell my customers that they are wrong and to suck it up and continue using their Windows Vista/7 and too bad if its too slow for you (although that what Microsoft appears to be illustrating to users). 

So, on Systems that I were not able to load up Windows XP I recommend Linux to my users.  So... if its not Windows XP, it will be Linux.  So lately there has been a Linux season down at my Offices and customers are liking Linux.  By my preference, I have decided to introduce Fedora Core 12 to these "Impossible Windows XP" systems, but sometimes I have to spend a long time dealing with missing drivers, configuring ndiswrapper for Wireless Adapter that doesn't have Linux drivers, and other problematic drivers out there.

So, Here is my question for DriverPacks.net  Do you guys have any plans to develop DriverPacks for Linux users (Fedora) any time soon? Because Linux is catching up with Mainstream rapidly.  People that wants to regain control from corporate greed are installing Linux on their systems.  Some hardware manufacturers but not all of them are cooperating with Linux, but for the other half, we need your support, we would like to make Linux a pleasant experience to all of our users for as much as we can.

We have installed, maybe to over 300 systems so far Linux.  Word of mouth is gong over my neighborhood about how great, fast and stable Linux is and now Users that I had installed Windows XP on their Vista only machines earlier are bringing in their computer again, this time requesting Linux.  So this is what I see, user prefer to and like to use Windows XP over Vista and 7, but they prefer Linux over Windows XP, so its now either Windows XP or Linux.

Of course there has been the challenge for us now and then that has caused a very few of my customer to return bran new printers back to Staples/Radioshack because of our failure to find Linux Driver for some Lexmark printers because Lexmark doesn't cooperate with Linux users and these users still decide to keep their printer and they just purchase another printer of the brand/model that we have confirned that works great under Linux.

So, as we can see, we are experiencing a massive high adoption of Linux within our consumer base, it looks like under this trend, linux will outgrow Windows Users.

Every month that pass by we experience a higher level of Linux converts than the ones we had on the previous months.
So the time has come to create a Linux Driver Packs, linux installation should be easy, simple, fast and seamless to these users.