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Intel to Increase Linux Support, Release Centrino Drivers
jonman_d writes "ZDNet UK is reporting that Intel has promised to increase Linux support by releasing Linux drivers at the same time it releases Windows drivers for its hardware. According to the general manager of Intel's Software and Solutions Group, Intel wants Linux users to be able to use their hardware as easily, or easier, than any other hardware on the planet." Pingla writes in with more good news: "Intel promises to release Linux drivers for its Centrino chipset at the same time it releases drivers for Windows. An article featuring Lindows (aka Lin---s) on CNet has more." Sadly, the Centrino support will most likely be a proprietary driver, but it's better than nothing.
Sadly, the Centrino support will most likely be a proprietary driver, but it's better than nothing.
I'll take proprietary drivers if it means I can use the hardware I like with the OS I love to get work done.
Thus far, the company has been hesitant to ship an open-source driver, based on its concerns that showing Centrino's underlying programming instructions might reveal previously unavailable information about the wireless networking technology.
And probably other stuff, too... but that's just a wild guess.
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
I don't think it matters if this is a proprietary driver, just yet. With big people like Intel and IBM showing an interest in Linux, its bound to encourage others to do the same. Then with time, open source drivers might just happen?
But Lindash may not be in the clear - after all, MS calls its X-Box loader the MS Dashboard..
Many claim that linux is held back by several factors including ease of use, interface, etc.. etc... I've always felt it was hardware compatiability. You could never be sure all of your hardware would work easily, and the average user can't try and go and build their own custom drivers, or even download them. This will certainly put pressure on the rest of the hardware manufacturors, and this could help linux take a few more points in the market share. No, it's not the magical answer, as their isn't one, but it's another start.
Looks like the censors finally beeped out the profanity.
And no, Tux-racer doesn't count.
It's nice that one of the giants to adopt this position, but I wonder about the form of these drivers. Maybe it's me, but I find more convenient to have drivers that can be compiled as kernel modules, and diffently from, for example Nvidia drivers, that they're not closed source, and license-compatible with the Linux kernel, so people can contribute in order to improve them, and maybe who knows if they can be integrated in the Linux kernel tree. Maybe i'm being too idealist.
If you really care about freedom, then help reverse engineer the drivers. Several drivers have already been reverse engineered (such as nvnet for example), whats so hard about a simple wireless network adapter!
> Thus far, the company has been hesitant to ship an open-source driver, based on its concerns that showing Centrino's underlying programming instructions might reveal previously unavailable information about the wireless networking technology.
Yeah. Because obviously no other companies have been able to produce wireless networking products. I can see the point of commercial secrecy when you have some l33t hardware that no-one else can make, but when you just have yet another implementation of something that's already widespread and implemented in lots of different ways it seems dumb to worry too much about protecting it through drivers. If the other companies cared enough about your particular methods they'd just get a team of coders to reverse engineer the closed-source drivers.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
It's sad that Intel had to be embarased into fullfilling the promise it made to support Centrino (when they annouced the chipset) by having someone ship a NDISWrapper with their Windows driver in a distro...
I'll believe Intel, when I see it the driver...
I have used several Intel Linux development products for several years. The C++ compiler, performance primitive library (IPP), and VTUNE are all extremely excellent products, and well supported under Linux.
It would be nice if VTUNE would be brought up to equal footing with VTUNE for Windows, but it's pretty good as is.
Then I guess Linux been Free Software does not matter either? I am serious, what's the adventage if Linux is going to have the same issues than other OSes: have to get drivers every now and then from different places instead of just upgrade kernel or distro, "play but do not touch", "upgrade your hardware becuase we do not support it anymore", "we do not like your architecture, just x86-32", etc.
Seriously, what makes it so sad?
Intel can do what they want. They are the owners of their hardware designs and the drivers to make that hardware function.
If it's so sad that Intel is going to provide proprietary drivers, do you get sad everytime you get into your automobile? (The computer under your hood mosty likely uses proprietary drivers to interface with the autmobile.)
There is room for both open and closed software in this world. I for one envision a world where the Operating System is wide open with all the tools one needs to make whatever changes they wish to it and to develop whatever they want to on it. If hardware manufacturers want to keep some or all of their drivers 'secret' that's fine, let them. If application developers want to keep their 'Whiz-Bang 2.0' application proprietary, let them.
Believe whatever you want. I have and still use quite a large amount of both proprietary and open source software and in some cases, the open source software is better, in other cases, the proprietary software is better, even for the same task.
What needs to end are silly proprietary APIs put into an OS by particular vendors to allow their other applications to run like the dickens while making competitor's applications less capable.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
"...Intel has promised to increase Linux support by releasing Linux drivers at the same time it releases Windows drivers for its hardware"
I doubt that they will open souce their drivers. So the Linux developers will write their own anyway, whenever they can.
And personaly, as a user, I find open source drivers much more convenient.
Who the hell cares besides RMS? I love using my machine and it has an nVidia card in it. I don't care that their "driver" is closed source, I can play a lot of heavy duty games with it.
It's not about RMS. Open source drivers benefit the development of the kernel, and also the users of the drivers and hardware those drivers support. Remember when the linux kernel was at 2.6, but we had to wait some time before nvidia released 2.6 compatible drivers? If they were GPL, the kernel developers could have incorporated the drivers into the kernel and development would have gone concurrently.
Even now, sticking a closed source driver in there is problematic if there's a kernel panic. How are you going to debug it? What about security? Nobody ourside of nvidia has audited the code. There could be a potential vulnerability that they missed. We negate the benefits of open source if only *part* of our program is open source.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Who the hell cares besides RMS?
That's quite a flamebait-inducing post you've got there...
What about other operating systems? Do we have to badger Intel to release drivers for BSD, and whatever other operating systems might be released in the future?
What happens if we release a new kernel, or decide to change something that breaks the rigid structure into which this proprietary driver is locked?
Releasing proprietary drivers like this seems to be no more than a "keep them happy" quick-fire solution, as this is by no means a long-term solution. And frankly, ignoring the long-term is a very short-sighted viewpoint indeed.
What's the ideal solution? Write your drivers so that they use a well-documented and open API that can always be well-supported, and make the code as portable as possible. Then what happens when you want to use your hardware with a different operating system? Well, so long as your operating system implements that particular well-documented and open driver API, then you shouldn't have any problem. Recompile, rinse, repeat.
Think ahead. We wouldn't be pushing for open source drivers without reason.
what is so secret about them, really?
To use them for your own hardware, don't you have to create the exact same hardware? So no use there, since you have your own hardware...
To use the hardware independet part of the code? Well.. that ought to be a lot of code.
To use their algorithms? Well, there are a lot of code already they can have a look at (without telling they looked at it, if they are evil)..
And if they are to stupid to come up with an algorithm of their own, how expencive would it be to hire someone to do it?
I don't get it...
Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
Who cares if wireless is built onto the CPU. I sure don't. Plus the Centrino is outdated technology. I wouldn't buy a new laptop that didn't support 802.11g anyway.
"promises" are just that. I hope Intel follows through because it is likely I will then buy that laptop i have kept putting off buying.
having this drivers open is not only for nerds or geeks to be happy. it would probably help the kernel people to include a better support for it.. possibly having it better integrated in the kernel..
> Who the hell cares besides RMS?
What do you do when the manufacturer goes belly up, or just descides to terminate the support for your product line?
Just throw it out and buy a new piece of hardware?
Seriously, Linus doesn't like propretary drivers and will happily make source code compatible but binary incompatible changes. Linus does not want to have to deal with proprietary binary compatibility crap for drivers. It just clogs up the kernel with a lot of dead wood and dead weight. For open source, Linus can integrated the code and ensure that any changes will be automatically propagated to these drivers. With proprietary drivers, his hands are tied.
A bunch of people in this thread have already posted responses that say things like "I don't care if a driver is bianary, I want to use my hardware, the only people who care are free software zealots."
Bullshit. Proprietary drivers are a bad idea for linux. Now I have to say, the licensing issue does matter to me. Even if you don't care, there are plenty of technical reasons to avoid them and pester a company to release the source for their drivers. First of all, the code is usually sub-par. EEs right them, they're smart people, no doubt, but most of them aren't programmers and lot's of bugs and race conditions show up. The OSS community can't help debug them because we don't have the source. Furthermore, on a more personal level, most of the kernel hackers don't give two shits about proprietary drivers, because of that, they generally stay buggy and improperly maintained. Intel is a big enough company that they'll properly produce high-quality drivers; however, it is simply a fact that letting the OSS community have the source would increase their quality, more eyes looking at the code, and they would be the same people that have written the kernel. These debates flair up all the time on LKML. I was too lazy to go look for links to specific discussions, if you're interested in the issue however, they wouldn't be hard to find.
- Ryan, who can't remember his password right now, and so posted AC
Intel is announcing plans to release Linux drivers for the WLAN part of their centrino technology from the time beginning. Though there are no facts yet, no release date, no statement whether the drivers will be binary only or Open Source, no information which chipset generations will be supported eventually and so on. See details of the story and How to Get Linux Running on Centrino Laptops at TuxMobil. So don't miss to sign the Linux Support On Centrino Petition! More at the link above.
Totally agree here. Now if only we could have accelerated ati 9600 and broadcomm drivers, we would have clear sailing with emachines's AMD64 laptop.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Read this. Here is the problem. The kernel developers arent GPL zealots like RMS is, but closed source modules are a problem for them. If a kernel module crashes, and it is the propreitery modules fault, then they can't find out whats wrong and unable to sort out the bug. That is why since 2.6 the kernel developers discourage acccess to the kernel. By opening the drivers, drivers can be more stable on your system.
To those who say, but Windows DRivers are closed. They are not to the kernel developers. When installing new drivers you may of had a warning that a driver wasnt signed. A signed driver means one that has had its source code audited by MS for bugs, and is more stable than a unsigned one. Microsoft dosent like closed source (unsigned) drivers, and will warn you if you try to install it.
So if you want a stable Linux, don't load closed source modules into it. Dont take unstabllity for short term hardware support over stabillity in the long term. Encourage companies to open their source, or reverse engineer and stablise their drivers!
found here
Why do you hate commercial software? What is so wrong with Intel protecting its' employees hard work? I know if I worked at Intel, I sure as hell wouldn't want my competitors to take advantage of my innovations.
With that said, this is a step in the right direction and I hope other hardware manufactures do what Intel has pledged to do. Closed source, proprietary drivers are better than no drivers at all.
I do not want to execute code I can not audit.
It might be a small marked, centrino together with linux, but they are pissing off a lot of people unnecessary. Many of these people have influence in companies buying computer hardware, not only laptops but servers and workstations. Good way to make the bias towards AMD stronger.
My job gave me a dell laptop where I am not using the wireless at the moment (I don't dual boot). I am reminded everyday why the next server will be opteron since I am in charge of buying the new one.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
I care. Simple: when the hardware is no longer supported my the manufacturer, what do you do if it becomes incompatible with new kernel versions? Or let's say that for some reason (I can think of one), you don't want to use XFree86. Too sad, your driver doesn't work with Y or freedesktop.org X servers... you have to stay with whatever the manufacturer chooses.
and now they are in the kernels, and pretty much edged out the eepro100 drivers for intel nics.
So, even if they are originally released as proprietary, who cares, I bet the source will sooner or later be released.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
Wireless, 3D, all that stuff... is end user high margin hardware. Therefore, it's the hardest thing for the big manufacturers to open. Personally, I don't care. Desktop Linux for me means using VESA but gaming and all that will come much later, I couldn't care less. Energy should be used consolidating server based Linux and efficient corporate desktop stuff. Anything else, right now, is a bonus as far as I'm concerned. At least nVidia have realised that there are some gamers who like Linux who will buy their cards (and rave about them even to Windows gamers) at high profit margins because there is a binary driver.
Everyone else is more interested in where Open Office is going, quite frankly... and when there will be a proper CMS toolset for Linux.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
What happens if we release a new kernel
;-)
The kernel should look exactly the same to the driver, so that you don't need a new driver for a new point release.
or decide to change something that breaks the rigid structure into which this proprietary driver is locked?
The rigid structure you speak of should be should be, er, rigid. ie. it shouldn't have to change or be broken very often, facilitating driver compatibility.
What's the ideal solution?
Have the Linux kernel do more to make it easier to use binary drivers?
Because as you can see from Intel, they don't seem to be prepared to release all the code into the open that makes the Centrino wireless card work. Maybe if we all sign an online petition, Intel will change their mind? ie. you just gotta accept it. In the mean time, why should be it so difficult to use binary kernel modules in Linux?
If they want to make it easiest then they should submit code to the Linux kernel. That way the next version of almost every Linux would support that hardware straight away automatically.
When your computer crashes for unknown reasons and the kernel hackers will refuse to help because you use a closed source driver.
I do not want to execute code I can not audit.
You say that, yet how much of the code have you actually "audited"? Hell, you haven't even finished the kernel yet, have you?
BZFlag? Unreal Tournament (including GOTY, 2003 AND 2004)? Armagetron?
Heavy duty games? On Linux? I knew this was a troll... why didn't you throw in a "and who cares about BSD drivers, it's dying anyway?" line?
Who the hell cares besides RMS?
Me. I have a ppc. (of course I'm not concerned about Centrino stuff this time, but I was when I couldn't buy a powerbook due to lack of 3D, when said powerbooks shipped with nvidia chips).
blah
Though it's not an open-and-shut simple approach, one can imagine a closed hardware management layer, driven by an open, developer-manageable O.S. software management interface layer. This doesn't solve the instruction-set incompatibility problem, but it is possible to let open maintainers handle the work they are (very) good at: Accommodating changing kernel interfaces, races, etc.
Linus is on record stating that as uncomfortable as it is, proprietary binary-only software can be linked into the kernel as long as it is not a derived work, meaning not depending on any interface provided by the kernel.
So Intel can preserve their private, secret register settings, providing a controlled abstraction of the hardware, and still tolerate, to some extent, varying kernel interface requirements.
It's not the path I would take; but at least they're walking in our direction..
That is so 15-minutes-ago.
802.11g is all-the-rage, there are proprietary (I cannae give ye much more, cap'n) extensions to g which give it even more KickAss throughput and already Intel even are trying to jumpstart "more wireless speed than you would know what to do with" mode AKA UltraWideBand based technologies.
Somebody releasing half-assed (in the sense that we have to rely on them to provide timely updates, because it's not open source) drivers for last-years wireless technology is not in any sense of the phrase "stuff that matters".
On this kind of timescale I expect we're soon going to have our own OpenSource (we worked it out for ourselves, thanks for nothing) drivers.
Intel is a large enough company making enough profit that they could easily afford to provide current-and-up-to-date drivers for their wireless technologies as they release them not whenever they're no longer busy doing "important stuff".
Intel, you're half-assed. Period.
Behind the 8-ball when it comes to 64bit (busily playing catch-up to AMD) and can't be bothered getting out drivers for your technologies.
Here's a clue
Intel, please just plain get up off your fat hairy ass and deliver drivers (we'll live with proprietary if you insist) as soon as the hardware is available on the shelf and provide timely updates for new OS releases (dammit man, it's not like we're releasing a new MAJOR kernel every month) Yours truly The Community (aka Your Customers)
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The situation is pretty infuriating with the video drivers for laptops with integrated graphics on 855GM chipset. Many of these come with a 1400x1050 SXGA+ lcd display but a bios that does not know how to switch to this mode. (No kidding, it can do 1024x768, 1280x1024, etc, but NOT the native lcd resolution...) Intel has not released specs to let the XF86 developers program the video modes from the driver, so X Windows is entirely dependent on the BIOS.
Result is your spiffy new SXGA+ laptop with Intel integrated graphics can only do a fuzzy interpolation at lower effective resolution. Needless to say, the Windows driver authors had all the info they needed to program the driver.
And you guess what trouble you will have getting the laptop to display on an attached external monitor....
Intel needs to provide specs to the XF86 developers, so that they can provide good drivers for Linux!
Because I didn't mess with Linux kernel 2.6 yet and if I wanted to use Linux kernel 2.6, then I would have made do with what was available to me, which would have meant no 3D. Then, when Nvidia release the driver, I would have downloaded it and be happy.
I understand that Nvidia got that driver out fairly quick, considering that the 'Live' version of Linux kernel 2.6 hadn't been official for even 6 months. So what's the big deal? If Nvidia wanted to, they could have simply never released a Linux kernel 2.6 version of their driver. That's their free choice to make.
The right for people and corporations to keep their software proprietary or to open it up and freely give it away is the strength of True Freedom and Capitalism.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Open source is the way to go for software, but it may not be the best way for hardware. There is far fewer hardware makers than software makers. If somebody doesn't like the closed source software somebody has already made an open source version. If somebody doesn't like the hardware being closed source then they can use a different peice of hardware. The only problem with that is there is a limited ammount of hardware for some applications.
Let companies provide us with their drivers in any form that they choose. Chances are they will be better than using wrappers or an opensource driver that does not utilize the full capability of the hardware.
I have already paid for my hardware, be it new or used. If I can't find a driver to use it under Linux or *BSD then I won't buy it. I can't afford a license for a competing operating system, as a result I can't afford some hardware. With intel supporting hardware under linux this give me and many other college students a break on our wallets. Now all we need to do is purchase our student copies of Codeweavers Crossover office (www.codeweavers.com) and MS Office if needed. I have a database class and all the databases are Access so I need MS Office to make sure my databases are 100% like the professors. I would use an opensource program but sometimes they don't save the database correctly.
So let the hardware companies support linux in any way they choose. It makes Linux look more attractive to the average user or company. The more users, the more (and better) software out there.
~ryan
jonman_d "ZDNet UK is reporting that Intel has promised to increase Linux support by releasing Linux drivers at the same time it releases Windows drivers for its hardware.
"Pingla writes in with more good news: "Intel promises to release Linux drivers for its Centrino chipset at the same time it releases drivers for Windows.
You hit the nail. Indeed, I think I may have sounded rather cynical in my last post, so kudos to Intel for taking the first step.
They know what to do to make things perfect, and so long as they're making a good effort to release true open source drivers in the future then we'll appreciate the initiative and cheer them on.
Bring on the open-source drivers.
Intel, NVidia, etc. have spent millions of US$, Euros, etc. developing their hardware and software. They need a competitive edge to their products (real or imagined). If they can protect their interfaces, at least for a short period of time, they can stay ahead of the competititon (or try to).
On the other hand, Open Source including Linux needs the broadest support possible. Restricting the O/S to only closed drivers will scare traditional companies away (and already has in come cases, think Canon printers). It will limit the accessibility to state of the art HW and SW. Much of the performance gains in modern hardware are due to the software drivers (graphics comes to mind). If you give away all your software, you weaken your position in the market and it can affect your bottom line.
The primary objective of a company is to maximize shareholder's wealth. Put these problems in this context.
Linux is the best thing out there. Mozilla and OpenOffice rock. I love open source (free and otherwise) software and support it whenever I can. However there is a market for state of the art hardware (Nvidia) and software (Intel compiler, Oracle database, high-end applications, etc.). We live in a mixed environment.
Do you want to be paid as a programmer? Do you want to have some worth to your products? There is a strong market for commercial, closed software (specialized software, industrial databases, custom solutions, high-end games). Not all can be free and open, nor should it be. It is far harder to make money on just services. Do you want programmer jobs to go to India like the mass of consumer hardware now made in the far east? Are the US and Europe becoming consumers and service organizations with few products of our own?
I can't resist mentioning Microsoft in this context. Much of what they do is now a commodity (operating system: use Linux, word processing/presentation/spreadsheet: use open office, servers: use Linux/BSD with Samba, etc.). They are the competition in the desktop, server, and embedded spaces. They are getting scared (think trapped beast). How can we compete with Microsoft with their nearly 100% (until recently) closed products? By working with vendors that can't or won't open their products. By getting commodity and older product drivers released (for example Canon printers - hint, hint). By working with hardware/software vendors on state of the art drivers but letting them keep their core IP if it helps them with a competitive edge (and gets us drivers).
ZDNet UK is reporting that Intel has promised to increase Linux support by releasing Linux drivers at the same time it releases Windows drivers for its hardware.
Pingla writes in with more good news: "Intel promises to release Linux drivers for its Centrino chipset at the same time it releases drivers for Windows.
OK, that first piece of news is nice, but the second one really gets my heart racing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who the hell cares besides RMS? I love using my machine and it has an nVidia card in it. I don't care that their "driver" is closed source, I can play a lot of heavy duty games with it.
[Raises hand] While I am not dogmatic about it, there are a few serious practical concerns about closed source drivers;
Can't use them out of the box; it's another set of steps.
The closed drivers tend to be flaky.
There are few reasons *not* to go with open source...and quite a few reasons not to.
Allowing the code to be reviewed and fixed, having nearly automatic support for non-x86 CPUs, having a much wider user base, and simple good will are reasons to release the source.
In some cases -- and Intel and Nvidia specifically can do this -- a mix of 'firmware' style add-ins limited narrowly to a few 3rd party propriatory parts would probably work. Hiding the source to protect it from prying eyes isn't a good reason since everyone has debuggers and disassemblers...so if they want to know they probably already do know how the secret sauce is made and what it does.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Why care? Reduced power consumption.
except you still wouldn't be able to use your wireless card because broadcom has yet to release specs or drivers for their chipset.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
If you don't use any Nvidia hardware, then why should you even care beyond simply choosing not to purchase anything with Nvidia's name on it? All that does is take up time that you could be using to better the Open Source drivers that you are using.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Fun and perfectly normal? Of course. Several of my old relatives were tinkerers. Their cars never went to the garage they fixed them themselves. Good luck doing that with the black boxes you got nowadays.
Opensource is back to the days when you could FIX your tv, replace parts of your washingmachine, tune your own car. I can't really think of any product outside computers that I am not allowed to mess around with to my hearts content. Sure I void the warranty but I got the choice.
Why should drivers be any different? They are an essential part of the hardware yet they are completly closed. I find it odd.
So is it bad that Intel wants to release binary only? Well yes. No it is not the end of the world but if a company comes along that offers full opensource drivers I will buy them.
And not just for the OSS of it. I buy from Intel a hardware solution. What kind of stuff are they pulling in the software that is so secret? Is the centrino in reality like those winmodems? (probably not of course but I wonder with video cards)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Centrino is a set of 3 chipsets.
Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor
Intel(R) 855 Chipset Family
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless Network Connection.
These 3 parts make up the Centrino, it's not just the wireless part.
There is already full support for the processor in the 2.6 kernel
The 855 Chipset is also supported
The PRO/Wireless is what this is all about. Intel has been saying that they will be supporting the wireless for the last year and we have not seen a thing. The best chance we have currently is running a wrapper for the Windows drivers, this is not bad but not good either. If Intel can deliver a driver that gives Linux users FULL functionality with the Wireless, I know I will at least be happy.
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
You have nothing supporting what will happen tomorrow. Intel isn't likely going to go out of busines anytime in the next ten years. I doubt that Nvidia will either.
If they do, then why would I want to get 'full functionality' out of one of their 5 to 10 year old video cards when I would be able to buy a new video card for a small spot of money and get drivers to support my latest hardware?
Are you still using a 10 to 15 year old Hercules graphics card as your primary graphics adapter? With that card, have you slapped on a 3DFX Monster II, 3D Accelerator for which to play the 'latest' 3D Games?
That's right, if you wanted to play the latest 3D games, you couldn't use that combination anymore, neither of those pieces of hardware support any of the advanced 3D Graphics features demanded by modern 3D games.
So, again tell me why I should be concerned if Nvidia or Intel went of business and I had a 5 to 10 year old piece of equipment that won't run most of the modern software that I want to run?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Great. So where are the frickin' drivers for all the Intel USB cameras?
"ZDNet UK is reporting that Intel has promised to increase Linux support by releasing Linux drivers at the same time it releases Windows drivers for its hardware."
:)
So, does this mean that Intel will stop releasing Windows drivers?
Therefore, I think the availability of open-source drivers should help the hardware sales quite a bit, in that people like me are willing to accept somewhat worse price-to-performance ratio for a open-source (therefore well-supported) driver. Considering that more and more people are trying to install linux on their desktop, and most distributions are unlikely to include proprietary drivers anytime soon, closed-source drivers will be a significant minus for people planning to install linux on the system.
Don't underestimate the value of having the drivers open-sourced, Intel...
"Opensource is back to the days when you could FIX your tv, replace parts of your washingmachine, tune your own car. I can't really think of any product outside computers that I am not allowed to mess around with to my hearts content."
For some of those things, you still can find user servicable components. Washing machines are still quite mechanical and most of those parts can be purchased at your local Sears Service Center. I pass one everyday myself and they sure are busy all the time.
If you want, you can still tune your automobile, I know of more then a few guys that purchase replacement computers and on the 'Speed' channel there is this show that runs every week that shows you the step by step process of replacing the computer in your car or truck, hooking a laptop or other PC up to that computer and then modifying the settings on that vehicle computer.
As for the television, that's a tough one. I mean, if you have all of the equipment and skills to test, diagnose and perhaps even fabricate replacement electronics components, I suppose you could work on your TV yourself and I quite certain that there are some people out there that do that on a regular basis.
If you really wanted to, it is VERY possible for you to do all of those things with cars, washing machines and even televisions. However, you would rather claim that it is simply impossible to do and write if off as something that saddens you. That's fine, it's your choice to do that.
Just like it's Intel's choice to protect their products 'secrets' by releasing proprietary drivers.
So really, what's the problem here?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Seriously. This is not a troll, so hear me out here. I love Linux and I won't use anything else, including on my desktop.
The real problem here is Linus's stubborn refusal to freeze the driver API's. At the very least, the driver API's should be frozen during each major release cycle; i.e. a driver which loads on 2.6.0 should continue to work properly on 2.6.999. If there are big new exciting things that force an API change, it should wait until 2.8.0.
I say that this is Linus's fault because it's well-documented that the moving-target API's are his clear decision. And it's a bad decision. If he wants large-scale adoption of Linux at the end-user level, he's going to have to realize that most end-users aren't smart enough to do their own driver integration -- but they might be able to download a driver off the 'net or from a CD, and see "Gruntle FOOset driver for Linux 2.6" and expect that it'll work on any Linux distribution that includes a 2.6 kernel.
Until the driver API is stabilized, Linux is going to have a hard time finding users outside the hacker set.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
> What is so wrong with Intel protecting its' employees hard work?
> I know if I worked at Intel, I sure as hell wouldn't want my competitors to take advantage of my innovations.
IHMO most drivers doesn't contain any real "innovations". There are ofcause exceptions like Windows printers with all processing done in the driver, where a company can see a competative edge given away if not closing the source.
But most are just a layer above the hardware, not revealing much at all about the actual "innovations", and most companies are just too afraid to release source code without a thurrow investigation of the concequenses... and because of that it never gets done
Sadly, the Centrino support will most likely be a proprietary driver, but it's better than nothing.
What do you care, Cowboy Neal? You Slashdot editors don't even USE Linux anymore; you've all "switched" to Mac OS X, and last I checked, that was a LOT more proprietary than just a driver or two. You've already said you're buying a G5; you've probably already done so. So you don't have to worry about Centrino OR Linux drivers, do you. How does Linux run on that G5? That's what I thought. Mac OS X for Cowboy Neal. And that makes Slashdot 100% Mac. Hope VA Software doesn't find out you guys are pimping the competition's product here on Slashdot. VA's close enough to bankruptcy without their own employees turning against them, which is what you're doing, btw.
I've lost all respect for Slashdot since I found out you don't eat your own dog food. Slashdot has no integrity.
p.s. I used to work at Apple, and I am telling you the truth when I tell you that your mind is not your own. There are subliminal messages in OS X. Enjoy.
You don't care, but hardware designers do. The less chips they have to put on a board, the smaller that board is. Since Centrino is aimed at laptops space is important.
And of course the less chips that have to be interfaced, the less time they spend in design, and the cheaper the manufacturing costs. Of course when they can make more $$$ then the competition while charging less it means more profits not only from directly making more, but also scale factors if they can sell more than the competition.
I don't care how my laptop is designed. I care that it has wired and wireless networking, a good keyboard/mouse/screen, long battery life, small size, and a lot of other features. I also care about cost, and linux compatibility. Anything that can be done to maximize the above (minimise cost) the better for me, and the more likely I will choose one model over another. Centrino might be a solution that manufactures use to get there.
Yes. The reason why the IA32 platform is the #1 general purpose computing platform is the availability of dirt cheap hardware.
If you cannot afford to buy a wireless networking adapter for $20 in five years, then you should be looking at seeking more gainful employment rather than bitching about driver compatability.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
"We negate the benefits of open source if only *part* of our program is open source."
What a green slice of bologna. It only negates THAT part (which is a relatively small (albeit important) part). If I were part of a company putting out drivers (read: supporting), and realized that you knuckleheads want all or nothing, you would get NOTHING. Then, you can start your own open source driver project and bitch amongst yourselves without costing me a damn dime. Just be happy companies are starting to realize that we are here to stay (read: future).
Another thing, opening drivers will allow everyone to see their quality killing performance enhancing shortcuts and possibly code shoddiness (not unlike some of the MS code floating around). I am sure they wouldn't want that and I am not fully sure I want to know that! It would irk me to no end.
Funny thought: Your argument seems like saying Cindy Crawford is ugly because of that mole (because we all know the only mole we would LICK would be hers).
You should amend that to read "new driver tend to be flaky". I seem to recall extreme suckage in open source drivers back in 1997 when most of them were new... even for hardware with good documentation.
Intel doesn't give a crap about non-x86 CPUs, nor should they.
There is a difference. If you reverse engineer a binary driver, you cannot legally use the "secret sauce" that you discover. If you GPL your "secret sauce" however, your competition is free to use it.
The binary driver issue highlights the diffrences between "Open Source" software are "Free" software. Commercial enterprises embrace open source because it lowers their costs while improving the quality of their software.
Free software, on the other hand, is a completely different philosophy that few people in business really embrace.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Does this mean that we're more likely to get Palladium aka Trusted Computing to work with Linux? If Intel is interested in making sure that their boards work with Linux, this seems like a good start to keep Microsoft from tying up the hardware...
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$tar -xvf
You've obviously never had the luxury of using a Centrino laptop. A 1.6 ghz laptop that performs like a 2.4 with a 7 hour battery life. Hmm quite outdated I'd say.
802.11G isn't even supported by Cisco yet so it is far from being a standard.
Last march I bought a Centrino notebook, only because chipset support seemed to be there, powerstep looked about to be implemented AND wireless LAN drivers were promised to be released very soon by Intel. Now, almost a year later, still no wireless driver and they still say "real soon now". I guess I am too gullible.
Oh, I also believed them that their crap keeps cool. Even at 600MHz (instead of 1300) and doing nothing this thing gets freaking hot and makes lots of noise.
I am MUCH happier with my Crusoe (Toshiba Libretto) notebook. I guess my next one will be an Efficeon.
I did some reading on the linux kernel mailing list and the general concensus between the developers seems to be that binary-only drivers as modules for the linux kernel are not legal.
The only case they sited as a legal binary only module so far was the nvidia video card driver because the driver was not written for linux, it was written for windows and merely repackaged into linux.
The concensus seemed to be that a driver written specifically *for* linux is a derrivative work and therefore must be GPL'd.
Liberty.
Centrino != Pentium Intel must be fixing their HUGE mistake here in not allowing us to program F/OSS drivers for the Centrino chips like they did when the introduced the x86 chips and letting us program F/OSS drivers...
Intel has released source for other drivers in the past. I'm using one for the onboard NIC on my motherboard. They kept the development for it in-house and put a non-GPL, but still moderately OSS-friendly license on it while they were putting in all the features. I think they've contributed it to the Linux kernel at this point for 2.6. I'm willing to cut them some slack based on their past behavior.
They've released the "enhanced" stuff for Windows.. but not Linux.
Any info?
Let's talk of those laptops.
I am the head of IT for a corporation and I make the decisions regarding computer technology. Currently, we have a three (3) year plan for replacing laptop computer systems. At a previous employer, they were replacing laptops on a 2 to 2.5 year regimen. They did so, like we do so, in order to stay within the manufacturer's 'arbitrary' warranty, extended or otherwise, period.
Since we are replacing laptops every three years, that means that every three years we will have the 'latest and greatest' supported hardware for our needs. We don't have to worry about a laptop 5 to 10 years old that we might want to put Linux on someday in the far future. What we 'guarantee' is that our people will be able to use the current hardware and software combinations to keep the speed at which they use the computer at a reasonable speed.
If you have anyone still using a 486 or early Pentium as their primary laptop and they are attempting to use any modern business software, I know that they aren't as efficient as they could be with a much more current laptop system.
The only thing that I can say about Enterprise hardware is that when you buy said hardware your contracts often involve the vendor providing you support on the hardware/OS combination. This is far from inexpensive, but you have significant recourse if said vendor fails to live up to their end of the bargain.
If you are talking about using commodity hardware for Enterprise computing, well the good thing about commodity hardware is that such hardware is often so inexpensive that it would often be much less costly for you to purchase a replacement network card then to fight and battle for even half a day, based on average salaries for such a position, if said network card was no longer supported under your OS of choice.
So, why is it a huge deal again? If they stop supporting your network card tomorrow, does that mean that the network card suddenly stops functioning? Does that mean that you have to buy a new card tomorrow? Don't be so asinine as to suggest such a thing.
You would still have your current drivers that still work, you would have a significant amount of time, at least 3 months and as much as a few years before you really would have to replace that piece of hardware. If you don't have time to research how that would affect you, then you either need more assistants or need to spend less time on Slashdot.
Your arguements here have no weight or meat on their bones.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
when drivers which extract IP out of hardware and put it in software where it can be updated and refreshed and most importantly doesn't take more chips, power, or other hard costs. IP should be in the software wherever possible, but if Linux users demand software be open sources, the IP for their products will have to be built into the hardware. What a waste of our hard-earned funds. Yuk.
A generic piece of software that does not include any significant IP, OTOH, should always be open-source.
If you can reverse engineer it (i.e. study the products behaviour and write a spec and then write you own version) that's fine. If you disassemble the code, you aren't any different than someone copying a chip using an electron microscope.
This will be a binary only release, pretty much hands down, pretty much precluding the more esoteric and non US centric distros getting a driverset. Still the big deal for me isn't distro, OS lockin because of drivers is no news to me.
I sit here typing this on my Presario X1000 which would not agree to function with the DriverLoader hack. The only way I'll be able to get reliable support for mini-PCI wifi will be to replace the intel card with something like this.
Hell I'm not even worried about the wifi drivers until I can actually get decent battery life. Maybe if the speedstepping was 100% complete and verfied by an intel OSS coder then I'd take this to heart. Until then, this is just more of the same empty promises Linux drivers are "under development" and have been for nearly a year for the wifi, from intel's page anyways.
What if they release an a portable binary-onlt driver with a portable open source kernel interface, which anyone can write on *BSD? I know that doesn't address the issue of non-x86 architectures, but binary-only doesn't imply the grim situation you envision.
If you want to play the latest games your stuck with these proprietary drivers. This is only tolerated by many in the community because its either use the binaries are don't play the latest games under linux. btw yes I am aware of drivers for ati's older cards. When it comes to linux and gaming nvidia is the status quo.
Now my main point is this could lead to some problems for us linux users. Like he pointed out its possible in the future that we'll all be stuck with mobo's that don't work unless we load a dozen proprietary drivers. We did without in the 90's and we can do without now. The nvidia, now the Intel, next the VIA chipsets, its a dangerous trend. You tried to deflate his point at the end by saying just the free nv or vesa etc. What about when that's no longer possible?
The way I see it is this. You should be able to install your OS, have it support your mobo chipset, video card, mouse+keyboard, and ethernet card all with Free software. You should be able to surf the web, get email, use a calendar and contact list, play movies and music, and be able to create Office documents all with Free software. Those are the basics. Anything less is a failure. Right now all of the above is possible. Start throwing in a Nvidia card, a centrino chipset, and the truly Free desktop starts disappearing. Right now its the not the end of the world. But if in the future proprietary binary drivers become the standard a Truly Free Desktop won't exist and there will be no point in using Linux. After all if I need binary drivers for my hardware like in Windows and I continue to use all of my Windows apps via WINE, wtf is the point? Just stick with Windows and the closed source model. Throwing an opensource kernel on top of all that proprietary software is a lost cause.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Open Source is what makes Linux great!!! It is not merely an alternative. It is more secure and less buggy.
Linksys, which is a division of Cisco, sells 802.11g equipment (including the WRT54g router for which they released the Linux based firmware source code).
Until after i actually see the crap they promise. I'll stick with AMD and superior add-on/pcmcia cards that have native linux support.
Intel is pschizo. They "support" linux, they don't support linux. They say one thing, do another. They are, in a sense, merely Bill Gates' and M$'s Poodle.
Boycott Intel until they pull their multiple personality head out of their anal sphincter and actually go OS neutral the way a CPU maker SHOULD be.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Proprietary drivers are not optimal, but they may become a fact of life for newer hardware. Too much of the functionality of many devices (and therefore their advantage in the marketplace) is now in the drivers.
One novel approach would be for the company, in this case Intel, to produce a binary driver and place the source code in some form of trust, to be released when they no longer support the driver or the company no longer feels that the source code would provide an advantage to other companies.
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
Intel doesn't give a crap about non-x86 CPUs, nor should they.
That does seem to be the case, but they are the manufacturers for StrongARM/PXA processors now.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Interesting that since MS has forced Intel to adopt x86-64, Intel has decided to publicly proclaim greater support for a non-MS OS.
IIRC Intel actually *Hired* some people to write the open source DRI (*3D*) drivers for their i8x0 graphics chipset.
The problem in which you are describing is actually a limitation of XFree86, and not the Intel driver. (My understanding is that Xfree86 doesn't work with resolutions not advertized by the Video bios.)
XiG's binary only X implementation does not have this limitation and can support the odd resolutions you desire. My friend was a similar situation as you, and so he ended up having to purchase XiG's X implementation for his Fujitsu Lifebook. Sunny Dubey
you can download Radeon Mobility drivers from here (click ati radeon link in navigation sidebar)
It is likely that Intel cannot release an OSS driver, if the driver itself controls a large portion of the radio hardware. This is probably the case, in situations I've used Centrinos -- the CPU useage is notibly higher when using the WiFi hardware then when not.
Software access to the radio control portion of the system would mean users could adjust the frequency and power output of the system -- something which would run them afoul of FCC regulations requiring that equipment of this nature be fixed and not changeable by the end user. And, the FCC would not take kindly to this. Both Intel, and the modifying user, could be liable.
I have many contacts in commercial hardware and software companies that produce proprietary products. I advocate open source and it's benefits as often as I get the chance. For the most part, the message is heard and appreciated.
:) In other words, there are many applications and products out there that just will not work as an open source project. Some products lack the broad consumer base for it to mature fast enough in an open source mode for it to be useful to anybody. Does that mean that those kinds of products should not benefit from an open source platform?
:)
In fact, in a recent job interview with a software company, the following question was put to me: "What process or organization should a product company use to build product on open source platforms?" I thought this was an excellent question and I believe my answer was pertinent to this thread.
I actually don't have a problem with what Intel is doing and here's why. Not everything on an open source platform has to be open source. I know many of us are purists and would rather not hear this, but I believe it's true. One niche that proprietary products fill very well is as niche-filler.
Getting back to my answer to the interview question. I told the interviewer that a commercial software company that wants to build on an open source platform should organize by having a community development group which adds to and supports the open source product that they are using and by having a proprietary development group that uses the open source product to do their work without changing or contributing to the open source product. I added that there should be a wall between them lest you create a mini-SCO fiasco. I mentioned several examples of this that appear to be working. I think a company like CodeWeavers is a perfect example and I think there are many big companies that are starting to figure this out (i.e. how to work with the GPL).
Get ready folks. The Man is coming.
tims
"Ahhhh, best laid plans of mice and men... and Cookie Monster." -- Cookie Monster, Sesame Street
This month's Linux Journal, in the "Cooking with Linux" column, describes how to setup multiple X sessions on the same box. Article is not online (yet?). It was an interesting read though... I had no idea that it was possible. Learn something new everyday.
No, it's not.
Ever heard of a precedent?
Is there a modern video card/GPU/CPU with complete, GPL'd drivers?
Which are they?
You really expect people to believe that garbage
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Sure, this substitution means that the T40 is not officially a Centrino, but who cares? The OS uses the two antennas built into the laptop; it doesn't need a PCMCIA wireless card; it simply works.
...truth means that someone is a Troll to you.
You provided a number of 'strawman' arguments and I succinctly showed the glaring holes that you left in your arguments.
That's far from 'trolling' in even the loosest use of the word 'Troll'.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The current XFree86 driver works, but relies on VESA video modes. The driver released two years ago or so by Intel is useless, as it just causes X to crash immediately.
I really hate it when vendors make one release of the driver then EOL the product. (Kinda like the Radeon M7 in my Dell Inspiron 4150!)
Protection of proprietary technology aside, opening the source on a driver could actually SAVE a company a significant amount of money. Why not simply hire someone to coordinate a driver development project and do some code when needed, then open the source on your driver and let the community get things working better and faster without hiring a complete team of coders?
BenCurry.net
I don't believe the current response from the Slashdot community is in any way hypocritical, considering that most of them only want these drivers for the same reason they're using Linux - it doesn't cost anything. Unfortunately, this is just greed, and greed tends to make one's views short-sighted. The only way to ensure the growth of Linux development is to set a precedent for Free Software drivers - it's not much fun having an OS without hardware to run it on!
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
Who's trolling now? Nvidia supplies FreeBSD drivers for XFree86.
jonman_d said "Sadly, the Centrino support will most likely be a proprietary driver, but it's better than nothing." and mytec concurs saying "I'll take proprietary drivers if it means I can use the hardware I like with the OS I love to get work done.". For them, the debate is appropriately framed under technical superiority.
For people committed to software freedom, releasing proprietary software is not a contribution to our community. I don't want to be treated as a market. I don't want to spend my money to become dependant on some supplier that can vanish and leave me with no way to make their hardware work with my chosen free software operating system. For me, dependency is not support. So, therefore, I will continue to choose to spend my money on products that allow me to enjoy technical advantages while retaining my software freedom.
Digital Citizen
Customers aren't going to play "hunt the driver", and developers aren't going to release 50 versions of their drivers for 50 different kernels.
If Linux wants to success on the desktop, it must put in some form of binary compatibility for drivers, I think the major version idea was a good one.
Intel has in the past said that the drivers will initially be proprietary, but once they are able to protect some stuff, they'll release it under an open source license...
BTW, it says the Centrino drivers will be released at the same time as the Windows ones, didn't those already come out? Isn't it a little late for that?
Will these be easy to deal with drivers like NVidia or ittatation ones like most winmodem drivers. If it's the first, that would be cool. If it's buggy, irritating frivers that only worh with red hat, then it's useless.
Since I'm running Debian GNU/Linux stable (yes, that's right, I'm on woody), I had to install a newer version of iwconfig and modify my /etc/network/interfaces file to make it work well:
Of course, since ndiswrapper use the Windows XP drivers file, it does not resolve the problems about proprietary drivers. But at least, I was not stuck to wait (an eternity) for Intel to release their Linux drivers.This space is reserved.
The grandparent was not talking about 3D or Xvideo or DRI. Those do fine.
The problem is that there is no information released about how to program the display resolution directly. So XFree86 has no way to do so, not because of some limitation of its capabilities but because of lack of information. What XFree86 has to do now is to rely on routines in the BIOS to set the video mode. The amazingly stupid thing is that laptops are shipped with 1400x1050 resolution but BIOS support to set the native resolution. So XFree86 cannot do it. Windows and XiG do it because they have specs needed for the server to program the resolution directly. XiG might be a viable, for-pay option if it didn't crash all the time. As it is, XiG is not usable unless you can lend them your laptop for a month for debugging.
Intel could really help by releasing information about old equipment so that the community can develop drivers for equipment.
For example, I have an Intel 2200 ADSL PCI card that doesn't have any drivers for Linux or BSD. This card was given out by the Qwest ILEC in the last few years and there are a lot of them out there. I can't do anything with mine though. I hang onto it hoping that someone out there will be more resourceful than I am.
http://www.intel.com/network/broadband/modems/d
Unless I *really do* have a reading comprehension problem, I interpret the part where he says "It is very clear: a kernel module is a derived work of the kernel by default. End of story. " as 'It is very clear: a kernel module is a derived work of the kernel by default. End of story.'
but I could be wrong... not.
Oh yeah, I got one more thing to add:
BOO YAAA motherfucker.
Next time you step up to me, you better come correct.
Liberty.
Xfree86 does not support resolutions not stated specifically by the video bios. Plain and simple, and applies to *all* video chipsets.
(If you dig down deeper, you'll realize that Xfree86 doesn't support a bunch of nifty features that laptops LCD's take advantage of. Plane overlays come to mind.)
Additionally my only reason for making the statement about Intel paying for the DRI drivers to be written is because it is the 3d part of any chipset is the most coveted, secretive part any chipset. 2d support is pretty much a non-issue these days. This has nothing to do with specification. The original poster should do his/her homework first.
more linux support is always good.
Intel is not doing this out of kindness, nor out of love for Linux. No, Intel is doing this to screw Microsoft by supporting Linux because Microsoft is screwing Intel by supporting AMD64 with their new Windows XP 64-bit version. The former partners in crime are turning on each other and Linux is the beneficiary...at least for the moment. Microsoft and Intel could patch up their differences at any time and then that Intel support for Linux would disappear faster than a snowflake in July.
I agree. Of course Intel has now announced their Pro2200 card that supports 802.11b/g. I like what I've read about Pentium-M, but I won't buy a Centrino laptop before 802.11g becomes widely available.
As for why to buy Centrino at all - a comment was already made about lower power consumption. There's also a claimed feature (dunno how much water it holds) that using Intel's wireless card means you're assured of no interference between Bluetooth and 802.11a/b/g. I don't use any Bluetooth devices at the moment, nor do I plan to, but that may be important for some...
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...
Let's see if Intel really supports Linux:
When situations like this change, then Intel can boast about Linux support. Until then, its hot air.
And until then, I'll continue buying AMD, the best bang for my buck, and the new performance leader on 64 bit, which I can use on Linux NOW.
Cool, so why don't you just give a link to the specs that explain how to program the video mode on i855? Then this can be added to XF86. It's not like no one cares.
And you don't think it's weird laptops ship with lcd's with a resolution the BIOS cannot program?
What a pity you had nothing useful after all.
... voila, it's clear you either know something about this issue and are deliberately being obtuse or you have no idea what you're talking about.
It was good to see you confirm the information in the top-level post was correct all along about how the laptop ships with a bios that cannot set the laptop's native resolution.
I'm sure the information that XF86 needs, when finally released, will be some boring simple method. When you tell people to just dump their video bios and then
Silly ignorant clueless troll. Your ad-hominem attacks will get you no where.
Please. Your only goal from the first post was to disparage and insult XF86 and directly contradict a post that was usefully calling attention to this frustrating situation. In all the posts you've made, you have provided absolutely no useful information.
Hey, you still have a chance to turn that around.
The odds to get caught when puting backdoors in auditable code are far higher than the odds to get caught when hiding backdoors in closed softwares. Thus, the potential gains are lower. This is why I want auditable code. This has nothing to do with *me* auditing it.
I know, it's subtle, don't feel ashame not to have got it at first.
--
Go Debian!!!