LinuxAnt's DriverLoader Loads Centrino Drivers

cRueLio writes "The latest release of Linuxant's DriverLoader can now load Centrino drivers. This is very useful, because Intel has been resisting the release of Linux Centrino drivers. For those of you who don't know, DriverLoader is practically a wrapper for Windows wireless drivers."

Comments

why

[Roryking]

Why do hardware manufacturers not release drivers for Linux (or for that matter any other non-Windows/Macintosh platform)? It would seem that the idea would be, more supported plaforms = wider customer base = more profit. I can understand how development might be an issue... but considering OS'es like Linux are open source, it would seem that development would be at least marginally easier and cheaper. Has anyone written/emailed/asked a HW maker this question? What was their reply?

Re:why

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to which you have to remember that it is impossible to realease up to date binary drivers for linux without having to constantly maintain 100 different versions for all the different kernel builds by Redhat/Suse/Mandrake/etc (forget about gentoo, slack or custom kernels). The only way hardware manufacturers could get out of that pain is by releasing the source for their drivers which many are hesitant to do. The module versioning issue is really a pain compared to say windows where a vendor can release drivers that he knows will pretty much work across multiple versions of windows. I think this has got to be holding driver development for linux back.

Re:why

[edwdig]

In the case of Linux, the problem is the kernel is an unstable target. A driver written for the 2.2 kernel won't work with the 2.4 kernel. Sometimes even a point release will break compatibility.

Now factor in that most users aren't going to compile their own kernel and drivers. So you need packaged versions. What distros do you package for? What versions of that distro? It very quickly becomes a lot to maintain for little benefit.

As to other OS's, they've got such small userbases it isn't worth the effort.

What should happen is companies should just release documentation on the hardware when appropriate. I can somewhat understand NVidia and ATI's reluctance, but someone like a network card vendor shouldn't care.

My biggest gripe is companies that change the chipset on a product without changing the model number. Sometimes it makes it really difficult to ensure you're getting hardware that works outside of windows - or that it meets your needs.

Wonderful.

[base3]

Now hardware vendors can blow off developing drivers for Linux. "Just download the wrapper and use the Win32 driver."

You forget

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

As soon as they release the source, the community maintains it. Try that with windows drivers.