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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? :)"
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...)
> 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.
> Microsoft hasn't been bashing Linux so much anymore. It sees important opportunities there...
.Net, to develop for it, and to become dependent on it. That includes building ties to Palladium.
.Net .Net support (lock-in) in Qt
> Anyway, they've been changing their atitude towards Linux and Open Source.
That's the biggest BS I've ever heard. Gates and Ballmer still run the company, and they are no more honest now than in the past.
It was just a few months ago that evidence came about that showed how Microsoft pressured Dell into dropping support for desktop Linux:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24478.html
If Microsoft is being quieter now, it's because they want something -- something that requires less hostility from Linux developers.
What Microsoft wants right now is for companies and developers to accept
This is consistent with Microsoft's earlier behaviour.
For example, once Microsoft had their polluted J++ version of Java in place, their strategy became the following:
> "At this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps." http://java.sun.com/lawsuit/051498.unfair.html
Microsoft tried a similar "keep quite and let everyone lock themselves in" strategy with Bristol's Wind/U (Windows APIs on Unix), which tended to lock Unix applications to Windows servers.
So of course Microsoft would like things to quiet down right now. It's because they've already set the traps that they hope will capture Linux and the Internet.
These traps include:
-
- Palladium
- Windows Media protocols over the Internet
- Palladium support for Apache
- MS Office lock-in on Linux (Crossover)
- ActiveX lock-in on Linux (Crossover)
-
- ActiveX support (lock-in) in Konqueror
- Windows Media lock-in on Linux (mplayer)
- Hardware partnership with AMD (kept API details secret, making Linux unstable)
- Hardware partnership with NVidia (closed source driver tied into Linux kernel)
- Hardware lock-in through NVidia (their new graphics language compiler)
- Attempted government-mandated IP-security-hardware lock-in
Actually, now that I think about it, that last one is a killer. In order for Microsoft to get Congressmen and Senators on their side, it is very important to reduce the political risk, by making Microsoft seem more benign. Thus, if Microsoft can succeed in keeping the Linux supporters quiet, then more government officials will be willing to accept the payoffs, excuse me, campaign contributions that Microsoft has offered, in exchange for selling out the American people. It would be a pretty sweet deal for Microsoft to have a law that requires the use of Microsoft technology in every computing device.
"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.