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Hardware Manufacturers that Actively Support Linux?
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?"
I would have to say nvidia. they don't provide open source drivers, but usually their windows & linux driver updates are released at the same time, and actually right now, thier linux drivers are a bit more current then the official windows ones. (i am running the 28.80's in linux, but nvidia has only released 28.30 i think for windows) If i have to name another besides windows, I would have to say PCTEL. back in the days when NO winmodems worked, they had linux kernel modules for thier modems, even obscure onboard ones. I haven't heard much from them lately however.
Call me crazy, or mod me as flamebait, but...
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.
I've owned an Intel Pocket Concert MP3 player for over a year...still can't use it on Linux...(yes, there is a project in ALPHA on freshmeat...and it's been in Aplha for the same ammount of time that I've owned the player.
My concern with Linux drivers for hardware begins with "If the fscking thing supported at all?" and ends with "Hmmm. WHich kernel am I going to have to use today?". If a vendor actuallly takes the time to give me drivers, then fantastic. I'm just not going to quibble about the open source thing.
I'll fight that battle when MOST vendors include drivers. Until then, I'm happy just to be able to use my shiny toys.
where is the "I feel for ya, but that's some funny ass shit" moderation?
I would say NVIDIA for one, people complain constantly about closed specs etc.
But the truth is it would be competivley BAD for Nvidia to release the specs, yes others have, they choose not to, thats fine with me, they do provide GOOD drivers, and the SRPMS, as well as tared gzipped kernel modules for you to compile on any Linux setup you wish, the actually libs are closed source but hell they DO provide drivers for an OS that accounts for a VERY small portion of their sales market.
There are other vendors that provide Linux support, to be honest If I was in charge of a HW company, I wouldnt, I would provide the specs under some kind of closed agreement to 3rd party developers.
NVIDIA Does provide nice linux drivers, I have, unlike other never had any problem, they release newer version and each generation (for the most part) they get better what more can you ask....(and please dont say provide the specs, if you are thinking or saying that Im betting you have no experince in engineering hardware for a commercial market where competition, especially in th 3d accel, is just downright evil)
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Or FreeBSD.
Or heaven forbid you want to run the latest development kernel.
And don't even think about trying to run two nVidia cards at the same time with their driver. In fact, I couldn't even get my nVidia card to play nice with a PCI Permedia 2 card.
Frankly, I'd rather not put up with crap like that
Dinivin
The reality appears to be that they think by releasing sources or programming specs, they'll somehow make it easy for a competitor to clone their chips. But as any ASIC engineer knows, that's not true. If it were, everyone would be making Pentium IV clones, since the specs for that are published. The reality is that designing a chip with tens of millions of transistors is a very large amount of work, even with the programming (register) specs.
nVidia did release some source code at one point, but it had been run through the C preprocessor, so it was effectively obfuscated.
I used to buy nVidia-based cards, but now I prefer ATI or Matrox. They may not be as high performance, but to me the support is much more important. Anyhow, I have yet to find anything I do for which the performance of the ATI or Matrox cards is inadequate. I don't have any need for frame rates above 72 Hz.
I called him a moron because he deserves it. He automatically accuses the original poster of havning hardware issues "that are agp related or something else".
Why is it that so many of you nVidia fan boys refuse to accept the fact that on some pretty common hardware, the nVidia drivers still have problems for some people?!?
Dinivin