All Linux Users, Important Boycott Notice

[Xenocrates]

I hereby establish a boycott against Linksys, which is owned by Cisco Systems, Inc. and all other manufacturers of networking cards that have no Linux drivers, and therefore do not support the Linux community. This boycott is effective Thursday, January 22 at 9 PM Eastern, unless called off or postponed before then. I will be continually searching for brands of networking cards that support Linux users and updating this thread with brand names. I have e-mailed Linksys technical support several times and each time, have been ignored. It is time Linux users stood up as a community against big corporations that care more about money than their own customers. Programmers, avid computer users, and even casual computer users everywhere are being limited by the will of corporations, and are not free to persue methods other than those endorsed by these big corporations. I also encourage everyone to boycott other products made by companies that do not support the use of Linux. i know this may not be entirely possible for many of you, such as those in offices and gamers and others, but everyone do what you can. There is a free alternative to Microsoft Office called Open Office that is available through Red Hat Linux (it is included in the installation) and is also available seperately through http://www.openoffice.org .


edit:
I am changing the time two hours back so it starts at midnight eastern on January 23, so basically instead of starting any particular time now, it will just start on January 23

edit:
I am postponing it a few days to Monday, January 26, as I am away until then.

edit:
yes, I did change the dates, I had the wrong date originally posted

edit:
Anyone interested in participating in this boycott, please send me a PM saying so, I want to get a count of the supporters.

 

[subdivizion]

i would like to do that but can you suggest any good alternatives to Linksys wireless router and pci wireless card?

 

[Xenocrates]

yes, I am working on that. I have no time today, but I hope to post a few alternatives tomorrow before the boycott officially starts. Let me clarify one thing: I don't want anyone to inconvinence themselves by going and selling/ returning all their stuff unless they personally are willing to do so and feel it necessarry. I think I will return my network card if I can find the packaging, but because it doesn't doesn't work in Linux. The intended goal of this boycott is to show companies that they can't push around the consumers and tell them what to do, that we should be respected, and that customers are more important than money both in the short run and the long run. I will keep updating this thread as I find more companies officially approved of by this boycott, and as I recieve replies and letters from both companies targeted in the boycott and companies supporting the boycott.

 

[amd643200+]

I join...... I just changed on of my computers over to linux and went looking for wireless adapter drivers on there site and found a joke selection of 7 router drivers but nothign else. I called tech support to see if there was something that i can do and they told I should wait to see if one comes out. (pffft)

so tomorrow I am going to return all of my linksys products even though they work on my other 6 computers if they arent going to support more than one OS than they cant have my business

 

[Xenocrates]

Thank you for your support. As promised, here is a list of companies that sell wireless networking cards that support Linux:

http://www.proxim.com/ - They sell products under the name ORiNOCO that I was able to find without problem Linux drivers for on their own web site. I believe there are also other retailers that sell ORiNOCO products, but this was the easiest to find online, and apparently, one of the most popular.



Here is also a list of other companies that have either software or hardware beneficial to Linux users and to anyone participating in this boycott:

http://www.OpenOffice.org/ - A very good and free replacment for Microsoft Office and other similar software programs. It can open and save files with the extensions commonly associated with Microsoft Office programs, and is available for many major operating systems (Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, freeBSD, and Windows).



I will update this page as I find more.

 

[amd643200+]

check out pc world this month the editor has an article on linux

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,113746,00.asp

the article talks about how he switched for a month to linux and how he liked it etc... he also give some reveiws on programs where to get help and some other info that is good to know altogether a good read and he gives teh thumbs up to linux

 

[/.]

What the hell? Before trying to start a boycott, why don't you try to figure out how to use an operating system before you buy into it? Linksys wireless cards of the prism2 (and even prism3, as they're the same programmatically) variety work fine, and there are no outstanding issues with the ethernet cards.

 

[Xenocrates]

Apparently, I am not by any means the only Linux user fed up with not only Linksys, but all major corporations that are trying to drive users off Linux. And I am not using Linksys as the exclusive company that we are boycotting, but as an example to start off. And before you start flaming me, please recognize the issue here. The actual cards work perfectly fine, yes, but the company does not put out Linux drivers, and they have ignored any and all requests I have made. They do not even have the courtesy to reply and say "No, sorry, we don't support Linux at this time." Pardon my directness, but it is ignorant MS addicts like yourself that are keeping Linux from being as widespread as it could be. You may disagree with me and with my resoning, and I understand that, and I believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but at least let us have our Lunix. If you don't care for Linux, then don't use it; Linux doesn't care for you. Just don't criticize Linux users for attempting to try something besides the mainstream-big-corporation approach. I welcome criticizm, but what you just said was not criticizm, it was pure flaming. If youa re going to criticize us, go ahead, just don't flame us and don't be rude. There is a reason I am resorting to a boycott instead of cursing Microsoft and Linksys and all big corporations. And to all Linux users in this forum, please do not return his favor of flaming, I do not wish to have this become a flamefest.

 

[/.]

blab

Good for you. Your mother always told you to go against the flow, eh?

RAEG AGAINST THE MACHIEN!
I mean, one customer that's having issues understanding how to get a networking card working is really going to change a lot!

 

[Xenocrates]

The idea is not to attempt to drive these companies out of business by stripping them of a few customers. I never said that. Part of the idea is to get more people to stop dishing out unnecessary money to these companies only to fiind out that their card doesn't work with linux. Another part is to just make a point, no matter how weak it may seem. I do not appreciate being flamed and quite frankly, you have not made very many good arguments (or any other type for that matter) and it looks like you're just using flaming as a useless argument when you have run out of all others. And its a lot more than a single customer, mind you. If all you are going to do is flame, then please refrain from posting at all. If you are going to make intelligent arguments, I welcome debate, but not flaming.