Slashdot Mirror
USB 2.0 for Linux Coming Soon
itwerx writes "There's an article on MSNBC about USB 2.0 support in Linux. Interesting to see that the open source community is less than a year behind the most powerful software company in the world in supporting it. Does that make us the second most powerful now? :)"
Don't you find it a bit strange that MSNBC, which is at least half owned by Microsoft, is almost advocating Linux?
Anyway, I'm glad to hear it. I look forward to replacing my USB 1.1 hard drive housing with a USB 2.0 one.
we would be able to make such advancements if m$ did not exist? what are our biggest device support things that m$ didnt have first?
Reading the MSNBC story one would think this would solve all driver issues, if the device is USB 2.0. Last time I checked you still need to install some type of software to get a device to work. If the manufatures don't support linux, you might as well have a PCI card.
What about USB2 under Mac OS X?
NetBSD has had NetBSD support in current for quite some time. Does that make it number 2?
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
>Interesting to see that the open source community is
>less than a year behind the most powerful software
>company in the world in supporting it.
1 Year is interesting? Seems like maybe a couple months behind would be interesting.
Interesting to see that the open source community is less than a year behind the most powerful software company in the world in supporting it. Does that make us the second most powerful now?
No, it makes us a year behind. That isn't necessarily bad given the limited number of USB 2.0 to support, but it does show where it rates in the Linux priorities. (As a comparison, consider that Linux supported Itanium very early on - and I've yet to see one in the wild...)
Microsoft should be proud that their news source isn't super biased.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The new version won't instantly enable USB 2.0 to work with Linux-based devices[...]
*Still* having trouble getting their heads around this Linux thing, I see.
There is no controversy here, Pay Respect to those doing the work, *waves the jedi hand* Move Along.
What devices support USB 2.0 that linux users REALLY need at this point? Look at it this way, Apple doesn't suppost USB 2 yet (and OS X.2 doesn't look like it does either), MS is the only player in the field. I say firewire all the way.. firewire 2 is just around the corner and looks fantastic (will probably be supported pretty quickly too).
USB is good for keyboards and mice... that's about all.
I wouldn't say you're second until it's actually released. Wild speculation about Apple's next Powermac release says USB 2 might be there as well.
I had written a digital camera vendor about 3 months ago and asked about their software support for Linux.
They basically said "USB on Linux is not there yet" but they had obviously looked at the possibility. I hope USB 2.0 will give them what they've been waiting for and in turn give consumers what we've been waiting for -- more bundled software that runs on Linux!
Now all I have to do is wait for hardware that supports 2.0.
I still can't plug my firewire CDRW into linux & have it work properly, out of the box. Nor does my firewire HD.
How many years behind does that make linux? 3? 4?
I am still waiting for Firewire to fully be supported in linux on my laptop; looks like it might be better to wait for USB2 to kick in.
...now how about some drivers for USB 2.0 hardware? Like the 1394 camera drivers we're probably never going to get, either?
CNET ran this story before MSNBC. The story is Here.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
I don't mean to be a troll, but USB 2.0 support was in the kernel (2.5) a WHILE ago.
Next time you want to say what Linux will support, please do a search on lkml, if you even know what that is.
I just don't get USB 2.0. What does this technology provide that "Firewire" hasn't already been providing for years?
Coming? I'm using it right now, it's an experimental option in 2.4.18 (maybe earlier too).
Flawless.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
I'm going to have to agree with most people so far - almost a year behind means "we" suck.
I installed a USB 2.0 card in my machine, and the system recognizes it as a USB 1.0 device, but it operates a HELL of a lot faster in Windows, even with USB 1.0 devices. Then again, there are no Linux drivers for most of my USB hardware, so that point is irrelevant really.
About the only thing I can do in Linux with USB is sync my iPaq. BUt there's nothign to sync it WITH. lol
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Does that make us the second most powerful now? :)"
NO!!! Linux IS the best!!!
Linux is #1 World wide
I've been using USB2 on linux for a while now. Since the kernel has source available, it's possible to apply patches to add features without waiting on a vendor. It would be more accurate to say something like "mainstream usb2 support" or "usb2 in released 2.4 kernel".
FWIW, I've found USB2 to be not as fast as firewire for things like hard drives, a conclusion that windows benchmarks have also shown. So it's not like the delay in releasing 2.4.19 is really hurting anything, especially since there aren't many usb2 devices or ports around anyway.
Being a year behind in this industry is not something to be proud of. Rather this is something to hang our heads about. MSNBC must have loved posting this article. They're notorious for innovation delays, yet they still kicked our butts by 12 months. If the Linux/OSS community hopes to be competitive in the desktop environment it needs to stop being satisfied with second best. Granted these accomplishments are noble in light of the skimpy development finances being poured into OSS, but funds are growing.
Success will come when we start forming hardware protocal standards based on technology that we've accelerated beyond the point where M$ can have much of a say in the standards. People will run linux on their desktops when it can do really innovative cool stuff that other closed-source companies have only started circulating memos about developing.
Linux can no longer live of the legacy of its stability. Say what you will, but the NT5 kernel is suprisingly stable and new versions will likely continue to improve now that M$ home users have been exposed to stable kernels. Linux still has an upperhand is security, but M$ is spending a lot of $ and time into matching us there too. Our frontier needs to be usability, flexibility (open source media formats not restricted by heavy licensing), and innovative feature implamentation. This combined with the corner stone of extremely low cost will drive linux/oss above and beyond.
ôó
Open source software usually supports standards BEFORE the major commercial operating systems. I haven't played with Linux for a couple of years, but I always assumed it had support for USB 2.0 from the moment the standard was defined. Looks like OSS isn't what it used to be...
If USB (the interface that hardware presents to core driver software) had been designed well in the first place, then speed would not matter, except for content of data elements that describe speeds (e.g. a value that says this is running at 12mbps or this is running at 480mbps, or the argument to a command that says force this to run at such and such a speed). Maybe they needed to add speed information and speed control, but that wouldn't be a whole change that needs a whole new software architecture (that's something that could have been added in an overnight coding session). What you'd get is data being transferred 40 times faster with 480 mbps.
Without looking at the specs to see, it's rather obvious that the hardware people just redesigned the interface all over again. Can't someone teach those people some things about reusability and refactoring? And USB isn't the only place this happens. Of course you do need to occaisionally add something to an interface, so a tweaked driver will be needed to fully take advantage of new hardware ideas. But a whole redesign isn't called for ... unless the old design was a POS. But was it the hardware or the software that was a POS? Looks to me like it was the hardware. We'll see when the next speed step occurs. Surely, the Firewire people won't stay 80Mbps down for long. They'll probably aim for somewhere in the 800 to 1600 range next, I bet (if not already). Will the next generation be compatible while still running at the higher speed?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
How can you have support for a non-existing CPU?!
Just because it hasn't showed up on pricewatch.com yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are prototypes, and before that, there were emulators.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Last I checked, IEEE 1394 (Firewire) completely kills USB. USB 2.0 only just catches up in speed, and the next version of the IEEE 1394 standard is on the way...and who had the first support for Firewire? Apple. I guess that makes MS number 2 and relegates linux to number 3 of this little artbitrary ranking system.
From a high level software perspective, there wasn't that much to do.
The biggest amount of work was developing the driver for the new EHCI host controller. A new host controller was necessary for the USB wire interface changes to support the faster speeds.
The reason why development took a while for the EHCI controller was because of the lack of USB 2.0 devices. It's hard to test a driver when you have no hardware to test it against.
That being said, the article is VERY misleading. Linux has had USB 2.0 support for well over a year now and before 2.5 was forked. It's just that it was backported for 2.4 now. Even that's misleading since it's been in the 2.4.19pre tree since it was forked months ago.
> The new version won't instantly enable USB 2.0 to work with Linux-based devices
*Still* having trouble getting their heads around this Linux thing
I know exactly what that part of the article means. It means that Linux now supports USB 2 controllers and hubs but does not yet support any USB 2 devices connected to a USB 2 tree.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You're seeing a couple of different things happening here.
The host controller is the host side hardware which supports USB. For USB 1.1 (there was a 1.0 standard, but it's broken and hasn't been used in years) there was OHCI and UHCI.
For USB 2.0, there's EHCI.
You can't run USB 2.0 on an OHCI or EHCI HCD. You can't run USB 1.1 on an EHCI HCD.
So how does backward and forward compatibility work? Simple. Your USB 2.0 card has both 1.1 and 2.0 HCD's on it. Most likely you have a couple of OHCI controllers and a couple of EHCI controllers on it.
That's why Linux saw the 1.1 controllers, because they need to exist to support 1.1 devices plugged into the root hub. Windows will also see the 1.1 controllers for the same reason.
Now, back to my subject. I call bullshit on devices working a hell of a lot faster in Windows. Why? Because the HCD is the bottleneck. If you plug a 1.1 device into your 2.0 card, it'll still be using the 1.1 controller that's on that card. The 1.1 controller is limited to 12Mbps.
The testing I've done (as well as other people) shows that Linux is consistently faster than Windows on almost all devices. For those devices where Linux is slower, it's only slower by an insignificant amount. Hardly "a HELL of a lot".
I won't even begin to explain the ignorance behind your assertion that there is nothing to sync your paln with under Linux.
I read on some site that USB2.0 could be used to produce virtual NICs. Anybody know someone working on this? It sounds like an interesting way to network a set of boards together with direct connections to each board without using up all the PCI slots. Do you go through a hub of some sort?
It sure sounds interesting to have something like that especially if this fabled memory pooling version of Mosix ever shows up.
I've been using it with 2.4.18, and it's been working just fine (I have a USB 2.0 disk). The interface cards are cheap and the throughput is great. And it seems to be a simple extension of USB 1.0, so drivers like USB storage just seem to work. (Firewire, of course, works as well.)
> do you guys think [Linux] would be able to make such advancements if m$ did not exist? what are our biggest device support things that m$ didnt have first?
What the heck are you talking about?
Microsoft doesn't make advancements -- the PC hardware developers do.
Microsoft's primary role has been to hold the hardware developers back.
Do you remember, in the early nineties, when we had hardware-based Virtual Machine capabilities on the PC? Remember when, because of virtual memory and multitasking innovations from companies like Qualcomm, we were able to run multiple copies of DOS, DR-DOS, and other OSes, in parallel? What happened? Microsoft wanted users to only be able to run one OS -- DOS/Windows -- on their PCs. Thus, Microsoft tied memory management into Windows, thereby destroying further developer on PC VM capabilities.
Do you remember when the 386 came out, with its new memory protection capabilties? Do you remember how many years it took for Microsoft to provide support for those capabilities? Even Windows 95 still wasn't using it correctly. In fact, it was Linux that, while new, provided support for 386 memory protection -- long before Windows.
Do you remember when Microsoft hired a group of VMS developers from Digital to develop a stable version of Windows? Remember when they succeeded with NT 3.51? Remember when Microsoft destroyed that stability by allowing video drivers to run in kernel mode, in NT 4.0? Microsoft's history is riddled with backward steps.
Remember when, in 1990, everyone had a capable GUI, that is, eveyone but Microsoft? By the end of the eighties, we had the Macintosh, the Amiga, the Atari ST, and OS/2 and Geoworks for the PC. It wasn't until five years later that Microsoft came out with something even remotely similar, in Windows 95.
Remember when there were simple standards for LANs (SMP), security (Kerberos), printers (PCL), and video (VGA)? Microsoft didn't want open standards, because that might help another OS to compete with Windows. Now, because of Microsoft, we have polluted protocols, and complex devices drivers, tied closely into Windows. Further development of interface standards for PC hardware has slowed to a crawl.
Remember when Microsoft tried to sabotage the standards for Java and OpenGL? Remember the Halloween document where Microsoft stated their plans to "decommoditize" (i.e. destroy the openness of) Internet protocols? Have you noticed that Microsoft has been carrying through on that threat?
Were you paying attention to how long it took for Microsoft to provide a 64-bit version of Windows? The DEC Alpha version of Windows was a joke, because it was just a 32-bit version of Windows, slightly modified to be able to run on 64-bit hardware. Even now, there is doubt about Microsoft's claim of being 64-bit-ready. Meanwhile, Linux has been running on 64-bit platforms for years.
Have you noticed all of the hardware innovation that has been taking place with Linux? Just in the last few years, we have seen Linux based supercomputers, Linux-based clusters for movie graphics, Linux on IBM mainframes, Linux in car radios, Linux-based store kiosks, Linux-based digital video recorders, and so on. Many of those innovations could have taken place ten years ago, except for one thing -- they were being held back by Microsoft.
If there is one thing that has stood out about Microsoft and Windows, it is their _lack_ of innovation. Linux and Open Source are easily outstripping Windows.
Linux has had support much longer than the article implies. Here's one post which is significantly before.
In fact, this isn't the first since it mentions the USB 2.0 support that was in the 2.4 -ac kernel. It only mentions a patch for Linus' 2.4 kernel tree.
You can read linux-usb news and reach linux-usb team at http://www.linux-usb.org
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
Oh, and here we have somthing supported for Windows and MAC for some time and GREAT! Linux is finally 'rounding the bend. Whoopee.
Apple doesn't support USB 2.0 - as many other people have pointed out, Orange Micro (www.orangemicro.com) offers PCI cards and drivers for OSX.
Having said that, one has to commend Apple for the architecture inside OSX. A third company wouldn't have been able to create drivers that quickly if OSX never had good plumming. I guess since it started getting designed around 98, they could see USB / Firewire becoming the standard for external IO and designed the OS to allow for easy integration of such devices. I once read the docs about the OSX driver architecture and was impressed - many well thought out layers of abstraction - but that was a long time ago.
You get a more open standard, compatibility with USB 1 devices, and significantly lower cost.
USB2 will be integrated on all motherboards very soon, Firewire will remain an add-on option. USB will be king of the landscape, Firewire will live on like SCSI.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
Very thoughtfull post, but when you say "Linux can no longer live of the legacy of its stability." I must disagree. That's the NUMBER ONE REASON why I run it for all my important stuff. Uptime, baby. If WinXP could stay up for a few months without swiss-cheese hole security, I'd run it. Stbility is king, and that is why Linux has entered the enterprise first, not the desktop. Enterprise wants stability, and Linux blows away Win2KSP2 in this regard (and many others as well). Just my 2 cents.
USB is an open standard? It's controlled by USB-IF which is very heavy with Intel people who created it. Only IEEE 1394 (FireWire) is an open standard.
Would a LAN connected by USB2 be less expensive than gigabit ethernet (using a switch with all gigE ports)? Seeing as gigE switches are still relatively expensive, going USB2 might be a way to cut costs. However, my guess is that gigE latency would still be lower.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
is first loser. Being one year behind MS means you are one year behind the lamest OS company in the world. Is that something to be proud of? Stupid people only recognize accomplishmenst in light of what MS has done. Give it a rest.
Look at the original spec. It specifically mentioned that it is designed never to go faster than 12mbs, because there are more appropriate interfaces for higher speeds (Firewire). Apparently Intel changed their minds.
Firewire isn't actually slower anyway, due to inefficiencies in the USB 2.0 design, the throughput of USB 2.0 is approximately the same as Firewire and is usually significantly slower in practice.
Finally, the new Firewire is protocol compatible with the old Firewire, they can exist on the same wire. In this way it is better than USB 2.0's compatibility. On the otherhand, Firewire 800/1600 require a whole new connector and so in my book actually has less real-world compatibility with previous standards than USB 2.0, or the same at best.
I have a USB switchbox which shares USB Macally keyboard and my MS IntelliTrackball between my PowerMac G4 and my P3 550.
Now, I've had no problems getting the peripherals to be properly recognized when switched over in the following operating systems: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, QNX RTOS, BeOS, and Solaris 8.
However, Linux USB support is still entirely flaky. I've tried multiple Linux distros (Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, Slack), and about half the time, the peripherals are recognized when I switch them from my Mac to my P3. About half the time they're unrecognized, and then, at that point, no matter what I do, they will not be recognized until I perform a hard-reset.
If even BeOS could handle this properly, I hardly see why Linux can't. I don't think my configuration is entirely unusual. Until this simple problem is dealt with, Linux will not be my idea of an advanced operating system.
The vast majority of changes for USB 2.0 were at a level below what the USB device drivers care about. As a result, most USB 2.0 devices will work with the old USB driver developed against USB 1.1 devices.
Take for instance Mass Storage devices. The Linux USB 2.0 support was developed against a USB 2.0 Mass Storage device. 95% of the development was the EHCI host controll driver. 4% was in the core (to support some new USB 2.0 features) and 1% was in the Mass Storage driver.
There are some new features that USB 2.0 introduced, but there aren't many and are well worth the additions.
USB is good for keyboards and mice... that's about all.
USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire at 480mbps (vs. 400mbps for Firewire). Who needs 480mbps for a mouse? I put a 24X Yamaha cutter into a USB 2.0 enclosure and can burn CDs at the full 24X speed, so I'd say that it's good for external CD drives, too. It's also good for flatbed scanners, digital cameras, tape drives, printers, USB-to-Ethernet adapters, and just about any external peripheral which would benefit from a high speed, low cost, hot plug interface. That describes a lot of peripherals.
MS is the only player in the field.
Hardly. As this article states, Linux supports it and, as another poster pointed out, so does NetBSD.
Another reason to support it is that it will soon be standard on every PC motherboard sold while getting Firewire ports will usually require the addition of a PCI card.
Lastly, it uses inexpensive cables and is backwards compatible with USB 1.1 devices and cabling. If I have a USB hub on my desk, USB ports on the front of my computer, and a USB mouse, barcode scanner, and flatbed scanner, why would I want to start buying an incompatible Firewire peripherals? It already looks like there is a bald eagle nesting behind my computer, so I don't need yet another set of cables for Firewire.
So nice of M$ to draw attention to the mechanism that it keeps splintered. The article phrases the situation as a model for Linux device compatiblity as if there were no other options and Linux development will alsways be broken and lagging. This is true, if you are talking about chasing M$'s broken tail. CSS has demonstrated that any device can be made impossible to talk to, regardless of technical skill.
My experience with M$ USB has been less than advertised. Windows 2000 has managed to make USB I not hot pluggable, and it manages to screw up one of my camera's flash card formating everytime I plug it in at work! At home, I tried to print out five plain text pages to a USB printer from win98. I got four pages, five error messages for lack of communications and one last message about "unknown system errors" requiring a reboot. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. That's what happens when you screw around with "standards" too much.
On the other hand, pcmcia with a compact flash adaptor has worked very well. Compact flash registers itself as a new hard drive, /dev/hde in most cases, and this shows up in /var/log/messages when you plug it in. So long as your camera stores pictures unscrambled, you can get them without any silly interface software or device driver. Mount and coppy. Cannon S110 works great, Sipix has broken pictures. Yeah, pcmcia only goes 64 mbps, sigh. Too bad someone out there wants to make sure that:
1. You must use a propriatory driver to talk to your devices. This will enable DRM of the pictures you take - eventually you will have to pay per play to view or print your own pictures. That's progress!
2. That driver will not work forever and you will have to replace your device. Bitrot! more progress. My place of work is filled with old devices that stoped working due to "software upgrades". The vendors recomend, shocker, that we replace the devices.
M$ will never support a "universal" device.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Not quite fucktard, the royalties are something on the order of 25 cents per system, and that gets split up amongst the 1394 consortium (Apple, Sony, Compaq) and does not go straight to Cupertino.
Even on a $50 motherboard, the royalties would amount to half a percent of the cost. Go do the world a favor and get a vasectomy before you have any children.
Leave it to MSNBC and CNET to print totally uneducated articles about something they have no basis for.
From linux-usb.org:
People have been using USB 2.0 with usb-storage devices from Linux hosts since June 2001, but it was only in early winter of that year (a short while before Linus created the 2.5 development branch) that other USB 2.0 devices (notably, hubs) began to be available. So while some changes for USB 2.0 were rolling into 2.4 kernels through the year 2001, most of the tricky stuff (the ehci-hcd driver) was separate until the 2.5 kernel branched. Recently, some Linux distributions have begun to include this support.
You have to reboot after you install an MS security patch, and new holes in IIS are found often enough to make claims of running a patched server for a year and a half without rebooting a pathetic lie.
Someone sets the agenda and we all dance to it? Linux supports and has supported all widely used "standards." It will survive even if it doesn't support USB 2.0, but it is common sense to support it. Some peabrained reporter idiot thinks it is "critical" and this is "news"?
That post wasn't flamebait. I was commending a company for having employees that were doing the right thing. Give me a break.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Isn't the idea behind Open Source is with "100's of thousands of developers" you can stay on top new technologies unlike commericial software with smaller development teams. No this isn't a troll message, I'm saying think before you open your mouth. You had a positive message in support was now available, but you dimisnished it with your, only took a year longer we're #2 rubbish.
I recently read an article about this on C/Net (IIRC) and it really read more like this:
Hey, Linux will soon have USB 2.0 support and with all the vendors/devices supporting USB, it's a good thing Linux is eventually getting USB support.
The average Joe is going to think you can't use your USB devices with Linux.
So watch out when you read those articles because there can sometimes tell another story. The number one marketing company in the world isn't always doing in-your-face marketing. Actually, they very seldom do it that way. In that way, they are very unlike the Borg who are so arrogant and powerful they just keep coming( in the clear ) directly at their prey.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm sorry to break this to you, but Linux sucks and is illegal. Now Windows XP, thats a REAL OS not like the FAKE LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM. Buy it or die plz.
Linux sucks and slashdot will be soooooon dead bahahahah
"Does that make us the second most powerful now? :)"
No, it just validates Microsoft's FUD that Linux is a bad choice for a desktop OS because of poor hardware support.
It's so true! I work for Microsoft so I should know!
Never mind USB. Despite years of patches, fixes, and upgrades, I *still* have to tell Win98 that I'd like to remove a PCMCIA device, so it can then *allow* me to remove it.
True story, happend today - a friend of mind got a USB connected digital camera. He took some pictures and needed to send them pronto to be included in some newspapaer story (long story...).
:-)"
He plugs it in, XP crashes. Every time the camera goes in XP goes out the Windows...
Friend remembers me saying that I think Linux can handles this easily and gives me a phone call. I'm away from my desk so friend decides to try on his own: He boots Linux, camera gets detected automatically, friend grabs photos easily and send newspaper.
When I called him there was nothing for me to do but say: "So, Linux saved the day once again
Gilad.
Gilad.
>> Does that make us the second most powerful now? :)
Nope. That's makes you the first loser!
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Being first is not always being best.
Actually, in software, the first version usually has the most bugs.
Rush, Rush, and Rush. Debug later sell first.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I don't think you can do this with USB. USB has 1 host (the computer) and one or more clients. You can't have more than one host on a chain, so you can't connect 2 computers. I guess someone could build a box that looked like a client to each computer that connected to it, and run a network over that, but I don't know how cheap it would be.
But you could do this with FireWire. Windows and Linux both support it already, IIRC. Plus, from what I've heard, the current FireWire is faster than USB 2.0. And the next version of FireWire (due to start showing up pretty soon) is twice as fast.
Wouldn't you agree it applies to software as well?
DISCLAIMER
Take this as a rallying call, and maybe you'll derive something good from it.
Take this with your typical flame-happy slashdot troll attitude and maybe you'll piss off your neighbors with your ranting.
I'm bored, lets go break something.
You mean like this IOGear product announcement for a USB 2.0 host-to-host link? Many such devices are already supported under Linux with the usbnet driver, though currently only at USB 1.1 speeds. (It should be easy to tell that driver how to handle one more device ... :)
I'd expect it to be 2-3 times as fast as a 100BaseT link, without too much trouble, even on early USB 2.0 implementations. Bridge it (Linux will do the spanning tree stuff for you!) and make it be a relatively cheap 480 MBit/sec Ethernet style LAN.
That product might be based on the NetChip TurboConnect2 device. For USB 1.1 speeds there are a bunch of such custom devices, resold by many companies. I'd be rather surprised if that didn't happen with USB2.
I'm glad someone here has a head properly fastened to his shoulders!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Has anyone pointed out that releasing a year behind is like a million in computer years?
Linux O Muerte!
This is a pet peeve of mine, but megabit and megabyte are not synonims. They differ by a factor of eight. Does the journalist really mean mbps means megabits per second? Am I being too picky? A byte as wordsize is obsolete these days anyway.
My favorite quote of the article is "SuSE is thinking of providing software that lets customers upgrade to the 2.4.19 kernel..." Last time I installed SuSE, gcc and ftp were part of the standard installation.
Oh yeah, there's now a webpage for the usbnet driver.
That basically tells how to do USB host-to-host networking over USB today. Special devices that talk to two different hosts, and switch between them. Sure, you could build switches that talk to even more, but this is where it starts ... :)
When this all works with zeroconf IP it'll be easy to set up a peer-to-peer LAN with speeds of several hundred Mbit/sec. Until then, you've got to set the net up by hand ... :)
The standard releases of Windows STILL (!!) do not come with USB 2.0 support. End users must add it themselves ... and so must OEMs.
If we look at RedHat and SuSE as examples of Linux OEMs, we see that until now, Linux has been at the same stage as Windows in terms of distributing the software: in both cases, the integration was done by OEMs. In what sense is this "a year behind"?? Not device driver support, from what I've seen; few devices, no lack-of-driver problems. Maybe in testing, but Linux always relies on "real world testing" anyway.
As of 2.4.19, Linux OEMs don't need to do this integration any more. But MSFT ones still need to do that integration. (Or if they don't, that's a very recent change, as of the last few months.) So: Linux may well be the FIRST OS to really bundle USB 2.0 support in its base distribution.
Yes, I could count NetBSD, but they don't have a particularly complete implementation even in their latest CVS. There's a lot of basic stuff they don't seem to have yet; I seem to recall at least one high speed transaction type as unsupported, and no split transactions at all. (And split transactions start to add up to a lot of work...) Linux handles all of that, except for the "split isochronous" type needed to stream a dozen USB 1.1 webcams on one USB 2.0 bus.
Ah, the ol' usbnet driver. Thanks for the tip. Of course getting a USB2.0 to ethernet setup working and creating virtual NICs would be two different issues. Is there such thing as a generic MAC addeess?
I've seen some of USB1.0/Ethernet adaptors as well so the same thing with 2.0 didn't sound all that far fetched. It sounds quite intriguing, but I suppose there's quite a few details to be worked out. For one I don't think I've seen USB2.0/Ethernet adaptors yet. You'd probably need those to start. Oh wait, the MAC addess would be in those. Hmm, I see you'd need to buy these little adaptors --once you could find 2.0 versions of them-- and then switch them using a regular fast ethernet switch. Perhaps it's not as complicated as a I thought, nor quite as virtual as I had assumed at first. That doesn't mean it aint cool though. Those USB1.0/ethernet adaptors were right cheap as I recall.
Standard Ethernet addresses are pretty generic MAC addresses; IEEE standard in fact. That's what the "usbnet" driver uses.
There is a USB 2.0 10/100BaseT Ethernet adapter announced, from D-Link I think, but then you're talking Ethernet, not a "Virtual LAN" technology (which is really IP-over-USB).
My biggest pet peeve about USB in ANY platform is that instead of doing what they did with the mice/keyboards/audio/parallel drivers and make a standardised spec. for a serial class, they waited too long so the manufacturers had to come out with thier OWN methods to communicate with their serial devices. This made it a nightmare to try and get a serial converter recongnised in linux.
For windows, the manufacturers made some of the drivers avail for their serial converters. [but now even some of the early ones are no longer supported in XP like the enterga/xircom/intel ones and the intel based mct ones]
The problem with USB is the need for a separate driver for MANY of the common devices.
Getting everyone together to come out with UNIVERAL device specs that the manufacturers follow and an easy way to update the device IDs for the OS would greatly advance the use of USB on Linux.
--
Time is on my side
I wonder what the slashdot community would be saying if Linux supported USB 2.0 a full year before MS...
It surely wouldn't be as casual as the "we are the second most powerfull" comment made in the writeup.
Your mammas flamebait.
Linux was behind FreeBSD in it's USB 1.x support for the longest time. Now it's a little bit ahead (I say because the improved driver model for USB on linux is better than FreeBSD). It's not like USB is some trivial thing, SCSI and Ethernet are way easier to implement, which is why open source unix clones are ahead of windows in that. (Yes, Linux supports ethernet cards that windows does not. don't freak out over it).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You mean you guys don't have USB 2 yet?
Holy fucking shit, why are you guys using Linux anyways? I find XP Home to be more stable than my Debian (on the same machine with no windows only hardware)... What's left in Linux that makes so many geeks use it?
I get about 14MB/s on read to an external USB2 maxtor 120MB drive according to hdparam. I had my hands on a 160MB Firewire maxtor drive and only got about 12MB/s. Both drives used ext3.
I've been using the external USB2 drive for several months now, probably close to 1/2 a year and it has performed perfect, except when I plug it into my USB1 machine at work (way too slow).
Deuteronomy 13:06-9
But you -did- get the reference, didnt you?
No sig for the moment.