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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.
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.
No, it will probably be the opposite. As Linux grows in popularity, you'll see more and more vendors shipping proprietary drivers for their products. That's not a bad thing unless OSS is your religion.
People should not accept this or we'll get into another situation like you have with NVidia. Get a brand new box and you can't even do a net install on your Nforce chipset box because you need the nvnet driver which is a proprietary binary-only module and the manufacturer of the motherboard may or may not have included a pre-compiled binary on a floppy for you to use, but it's most likely only for Red Hat 9, etc. Screw all binary drivers, I insist on open source drivers for everything. The only thing I've had to relent on lately is the graphics card since the Nvidia stuff is the only decent graphics card out there but the modules are binary only. Sadly, my Nvidia card is also the most unstable part of my Linux box and it crashes (hard locks up) at least every 2 weeks or so and I have to power cycle the box. Fscking Nforce craptastic Asus A7N8X-Deluxe piece of shit motherboard.
> 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.
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.
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.
Which is what? A ompany providing kick-ass drivers that give superior performance than that same hardware would give in Windows? What do you suggest using as an alternative to NVIDIA? Ati? HAH, good luck trying to get those drivers to work, open-source or not! And if you do get them to work, what kind of performance are you getting from them? And how about their AMD64-support? NVIDIA has AMD64-drivers available right now. Where are Ati's drivers??? Where are open-source AMD64-drivers for Ati?
One word: Forcedeth.
You know, you CAN use the open-source NV-drivers that ship with Xfree. Or you could use the standard VESA-drivers. So it's not like you are forced to use those drivers. I for one haven't had any problems with NV-drivers.
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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
>That's not a bad thing unless OSS is your religion.
Or if you use something other than ix86 platforms. Vendors will probably not make binary drivers for CF-cards on my Yopy.
Although in this Centrino case this might not be a big issue.
Or you want to path your driver. I.e to allow TV-out on your graphics card. Or fix a bug.
Or you use a !Linux OSS OS, like BSD.
Or you use an old or experimental kernel.
I would put it this way: The brand "Intel" should be less important for the buying decision than a GPLed driver for the hardware. I think there are several, real benefits for using GPLed drivers:
- fix bugs/do workarounds for the hardware the manufacturer doesn't care about
- tweak the driver to your needs (this is not a joke: I'm glad that the tmscsim-driver for Tekram SCSI cards could be tweaked by me to work seamlessly with my old SCSI scanner!)
- have support for the hardware as long as YOU wish
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?
That will take much longer if non-free drivers are available. Intel said somewhere that they won't release the driver as free software because they fear that this would reveal too much information about the hardware itself. So when Intel is out, the driver has to come from a third party. And clearly, the urge to develop a free driver is much lower when there is already a proprietary one available.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
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
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,
It's quite a bad thing, irrespective of religion, if the vendors don't release enough documentation of the devices to make open source drivers. We'll end up in a situation where it'll be difficult to install Linux/*BSD on a machine whithout proprietary drivers. As an example, for the NForce chipset I've to buy a NIC due to lack of driver.
As documentation goes, Intel network division is very bad : they release GPL drivers, but no documentation is given (without NDA). That makes it difficult to make good open source drivers. And now the same company wants us to accept more and more hardware components with only a vague promise of drivers, much less documentation?
I disaggree. The problem with proprietary drivers is they never keep pace with OSS development, hell, I can't even submit a patch before somebody else has done it nearly 99.9% of the time. Things just move too fast.
You want to upgrade to new fancy-schmancy kernel 2.7.x and you can't because your CPU-centr-a-yummy needs 2.6.x to install properly. They never keep up or give anything more than half-assed support. I had an nVidia TNT2, and I gave up on nVidia stuff, because I hated being locked in to THEIR schedule... and it crashed a lot, would corrupt the video (you could log in remotely though) and the only thing I could do was reset. I moved on.
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
What sort of "insistance" are you practising here when you are openly admitting that you use one of the prime offenders in the binary driver category? I'd say it's more like you "prefer" open source drivers but will take whatever you can get. That puts you squarely in the same boat with the others who don' really care if the driver is open or not, as long as it exists and they can use their hardware.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
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 people who don't care can do what they like at purchase time and they should have the ability to get their closed source drivers so they can use Linux too. It's all a stepping stone to going completely open source. That's not to say closed source should ship with the kernel, because it shouldn't - that position is reserved for open source only.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
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).
Well, OSS is not a religion. But remember RMS started GNU because of just this -- closed source printer drivers.
What Intel is doing is doubly bad:
1) They are releasing a Closed Driver, killing future development, growth and porting of support to future systems.
2) Really only doing this to spite Lin--s. They are doing this to STOP Lin--s' open-source driver development.... probably not because they want to. Why couldnt they have been forthcoming "we are working on a driver. we intend to release it first qtr 2004. we are making it closed." Why keep the FreeSoftware universe in the dark..? Because they want to hold all the marbles, withholding information is dishonesty. Plain and simple. If you want to be 'trusted', keep no secrets.
But there is something very morally wrong with proprietary software. RMS and co. have already written plenty about it; I have little to add, save that I feel it is one of my fundamental human rights to examine and improve on the source code for any software of my choice -- and if I do not agree to others exercising a similar right over any software I may write, then my remedy is limited to not writing that software in the first place.
.....
Back in the days of drum memories, computer manufacturers would often offer you software gratis -- in return for which, you were expected to offer them something you had written, so they could pass it around to their other customers. This was a form of policed open source. With no such things as high-level languages, there was no distinction between source and binary; one line of assembly language translated directly to one word of machine code. Experienced programmers could read the ones and zeros as ups and downs on an oscilloscope screen and understand them as an instruction.
Then, somehow, sometime it all got stuffed up, when people began trying to treat ideas as property and earn money by litigation
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
No. Full stop, no.
On the contrary, all of those examples show how I am more likely to use and buy a product if I know how to use it.
If I could look at a product's manuals, and from that, figure out how to copy the product, then you can be quite certain I knew 99% of what I needed to know to make such a product beforehand.
For example, if I hand you a black box that takes two numbers as input and outputs a third, and you deduce that it's a multiplication box, you knew everything you needed to know to make a multiplication box before I even handed it to you.
On top of this, if you simply copy a competitor, you're a year behind them and dead meat anyway.
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
He says so repeatedly in his posts, so it's not like it is a secret.
No you are wrong here. As a practical matter binary drivers lead to buggy unstable kernels. The people writing these drivers have no contact with or support from experienced kernel developers due to the closed nature of the process, and code quality suffers. And people posting about binary drivers waste everyone's time, including their own.
Linux has a lot of users outside the "hacker set". Did you miss the part about Linux overtaking MacOS and it's current share of the server market?