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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? :)"
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'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.
The article is from CNET. It has just been reported again by MSNBC.
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.
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.