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Why I'm not worried...or at least less worried

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One of my feeds had a posting "Linux's iPod Generation Gap", on Slashdot. The gist being that Linux has to become compatible with mainstream multimedia applications to take make a bigger dent on Windows dominance on the desktop - I'll read between the lines and assume they are talking about the consumer market. To be clear, I have no opinion....I've played, literally played, with a couple of distros via VPC but that's about it...and even then it was mostly to get a flavor for Mono...doubt I even bothered to check if the sound was working or not. So my depth of experience with Linux is pretty thin.

The first response I saw was this one:

Really. It's not hard.
Just emerge gnupod and make sure you compile it with the --with-ffxk-so-opti=3 directive in autoconf. That'll hose you every time. Also I recommend that you use gnutunes out of the gnxms repository; the vanilla Gentoo repos's version is hosed.
Also, my iPod only works if I mount it as /dev/sdc6. Don't know why that is, but the dev said he'd put it on his TODO list.
Aside from that it's pretty easy!

Seriously, my propeller spins pretty good, but I simply don't have the patience for anything close to this. So I'm even less convinced about Linux as a legitimate choice for the consumer. The OSS & Linux advocates probably grab onto the "the dev said he'd put it on his TODO list. " Having been a "dev" for most of my professional life....that doesn't exactly fill me, the user, with a ton of confidence ;) If you get into this level of intimacy with what's driving the pixels, and your desktop doesn't have the cover on with a working soldering iron within arms reach...a applaud your patienct and perserverance! I'm pretty sure my cousin has a Linux machine or two up, but I see an HP laptop with WinXP on his lap during the weekends.

To be totally honest, I haven't even tried connecting my iPod to Vista, but my SmartPhone and 2 PDAs all connected and synch quite nicely. Seems like I'm carrying around more battery power in my backpack in portables than the Apollo 13 crew had during their troubles.