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User Space Driver for USB Storage Devices?

Posted by Cliff on from the spreading-the-word dept.

Zarf asks: "With Linux, if you don't like something, fix it yourself. So when I couldn't get my USB pen-drive to work and none of the canned solutions were satifactory... I took it upon myself to fix Linux. I've posted my solution in my Slashdot user's journal. But it seems to me that there must be a better way to promote my solution. Where should I post my fix so it can help the most people?"

5 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. DO NOT DO THIS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Please do not do this. It gives the impression that OSS programmers are free labor for hardware companies. Put it on a page on SourceForge or host it on your own site. Make sure, whatever you do, that you do it on your own terms. Do not make everyone else's work worthless by giving it away for free with no reciprocity.

    If you needed it and you want to share it with others, that's awesome. But don't let someone else get away with making a buck off of it without putting an ounce of effort into helping you.

    If you do approach the company, make it clear that you are willing to sell them a license to distribute it.

    1. Re:DO NOT DO THIS by rmohr02 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You can still sell them the rights to use it under an alternative license so that they don't have to worry about the restrictions of the GPL when distributing the program to customers.

  2. Any Success Stories? by Schlaegel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does anyone have a success story for these sticks working out of the box on a linux distro.

    I have become embarrassed when my Windows using friends want me to copy something onto their usb stick.

    I am running Red Hat 9, and can not get the sticks to work. I can dual boot to Windows on the same hardware and they just work.

    1. Re:Any Success Stories? by Brandybuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think this whole topic is hilarious. Why? Because all the Linux fanboys keep telling me that FreeBSD is antiquated, dying, and doesn't support any hardware. But I can stick any USB Mass Storage device on my system and it just works. Out Of The Box(tm). This includes every thumb drive I've tried, my Olympus digital camera, and that cheesy Iomega USB CDRW at work (it won't burn to CD though).

      Of course, FreeBSD by default has a bare bones configuration, so I do a trivial amount of work to allow user mounting of filesystems. But with a KDE icon on my desktop right next to the Floppy and DVD icons, I never even notice how difficult and unfriendly it is.

      Frankly, I can't understand why Linux has problems with USB Mass Storage. Is UMass, like SATA, just something that no one in the Linux community paid any attention to until now?

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  3. USBMan.com by Stavr0 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    A nice resource for all that is USB. I found some UBS drivers for DOS that allows mounting Pendrives off a strait msdos boot floppy -- something that was supposed to be impossible.

    USBman's Linux section