...then there was the incessant demand to download and install drivers.<p>First, the display would not go above 800x600. Talk about ugly! He called his friend and his friend said he had to download and install the correct video driver. After googling and following a lot of bogus links, he finally figured out who made his video chipset, found the manufacturer's web site and installed the proper driver. Whew, proper resolution for his LCD screen! Why wasn't the driver included on the CD? His friend said that XP was originally released 10 years ago and the hardware didn't exist back then. If he weren't so cheap and paid the 599 euros for the latest version, Win7, it would have included the driver. Probably.<p>Then he plugged in his printer. Nothing. Call the "friend" again. Sigh, another driver needed. His friend asked about the CD that came with the printer, said the driver was on it. Oops, didn't need it to make the printer work with linux, threw it away. More googling, found the driver. What the??!! Why is a <i>driver</i> a 347 Mbyte download?!!! Oh well, install the driver and the printer works again. Hmmm, now it is popping up prompts to buy more ink from the manufacturer. Bloody annoying, that.<p>...
I rather not have a world where there is one most used implementation?<p>I think it would be better is the world would get to the point where unix (as an informal platform) with many implementations became the norm?<p>Some kind of low-level virtual machine layer could then be used to support binary-only distribution for commercial software?