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USB 2.0 for Linux Coming Soon

Posted by michael on from the speed-kills dept.

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? :)"

3 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Coming? It's already here by fire-eyes · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  2. Huh? by virtual_mps · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. USB 2.0 is 99% hardware interface changes by Johannes · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.