Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Windows Drivers Under Linux?

Posted by michael on from the last-resort dept.

sniggly writes "The Inquirer has an article about how Montreal, CA based Linuxant has created a 'compatibility wrapper' allowing standard Windows NDIS 5.0 drivers to work on linux. After pointing to another project allowing windows printer drivers to work on OS/2 the author asks 'Are printer and network card drivers going to become, over time, a commodity with Win32 drivers one day the 'de-facto standard' run via wrappers?"

4 of 474 comments (clear)

  1. It's kind of like MPlayer by Pan+T.+Hose · · Score: 2, Troll

    It's kind of like MPlayer's win32 codecs -- very practical and a great way to pollute your system with proprietary crap. In other words it's great for open source advocates and evil for free software advocates (myself included). Actually, this Windows drivers, codecs, formats, APIs (Office, Wine, .Net, etc.) it is a very interesting issue where free software differs from open source. Great article.

    --
    Sincerely,
    Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
    "Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
  2. Re:wow by cpeterso · · Score: 1, Troll


    expecting an SCSI driver to work with an IDE harddisk

    you mean like how Linux IDE code and CD-ROM burning require Linux's SCSI support? talk about a hacked up system with broken modularity..

    --
    cpeterso
  3. Re:Instability by itzdandy · · Score: 0, Troll

    windows2k/xp has plenty of oportunities to BSOD with perfectly fine software on good drivers. A replaced DLL or bad registry key and many more.

  4. Re:Instability by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 0, Troll

    since Win2k you should never get a BSOD anymore unless your hardware is broken somehow.

    Never?
    You must be smoking some primo shit, BillyG's hydroponic, ultra-pure, 50 generations of selective breeding, primo shit. Where can I get some of that?

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.