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Hardware Manufacturers that Actively Support Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the doing-more-than-paying-lip-service dept.

wirefarm asks: "I know there is are lot of well-supported pieces of hardware for Linux, but I was wondering, which vendors really go out of their way for the community? While tracking down drivers for a wireless PCMCIA card today, I found that the vendor boasted of having Linux support, but it was seemed that they were actually touting drivers that were community-developed, rather than written with any help of the company. So my question is this: Which companies really stand out when it comes to providing specs and developing drivers?"

2 of 596 comments (clear)

  1. Re:nvidia, but... by Ogerman · · Score: 2, Flamebait

    Frankly, I couldn't care less if nvidia's drivers are open sourced. After spending months trying to play Quake II on a Voodoo5 5500, I bought a GeForceII MX 400. I was playing within 5 minutes of installing the card.

    If you're a gamer junkie, then fine. For those of us whose computers are more than just toys, NVidia's unstable closed drivers are not even a consideration. And maybe you'll reconsider as well someday when X crashes while running a GL accelerated app. Closed source drivers are 100% illogical and unacceptable under any circumstance. That's all there is to it.

  2. Re:nvidia, but... by DennisZeMenace · · Score: 1, Flamebait


    > And maybe you'll reconsider as well someday when X crashes while running a GL accelerated app. Closed source drivers are 100% illogical and unacceptable under any circumstance. That's all there is to it.
    Maybe this is because the Linux kernel device driver framework is so poorly done and un-standardized than you NEED the driver source code to do anything. That certainly is not nVidia's fault or problem...

    DZM