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Linux's Achilles Heel Apparently Revealed
ahab_2001 writes "In Information Week's latest 'Langa Letter', Fred Langa points to something that he calls Linux's 'Achilles' heel': 'New Linux distros still fail a task that Windows 95 -- yes, 95! -- easily handles, namely working with mainstream sound cards.' After lamenting his difficulties in getting a particular sound card to work with nine Linux distros, he concludes that his experience 'empirically shows that, despite its many good points, Linux still has some huge, gaping holes--holes that Windows plugged almost a decade ago.' (Oddball note: Information Week prefaced the e-mail alert pointing to this article by saying 'Occasionally, we have news or analysis of such importance that it warrants a special alert to you.' Hmm...)"
Some sound cards suck and are not supported by Linux...or the original manufactures that went out of business 10 years ago and took the specs with them
What's with all the Troll articles lately?
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
I have never had a problem getting sound working in Linux in the 10+ personal (and friends') machines I've installed it on, including an array of laptops and manufactured computers. Linux might have a weakness, but I doubt it is support for sound.
Giving windows credit for working with sound cards gets thing rather backwards don't you think? Considering the MONOPOLY windows has, they don't need to to be compatible and work well with the sound cards. The sound cards need to make sure they work well with windows. Microsoft can do what ever they want and the world must switch it's practices and standards to suit it--which of course is the problem now isn't it.
ALSA supports most mainstream soundcards, and (as I'm sure most of you are aware of) it's integrated into the kernel as of 2.6. Linux's sound support is getting much better than where it used to be (OSS). It would really help if the card manufacturers would help us out though (ie. It would be nice if Creative handed us an opensource EAX). Microsoft has it easy because the manufacturers produce Windows drivers with each sound card.
Life is offtopic.
He didn't reveal what sound card he was actually working with?
...this guy's never had an irq conflict where his sound card wants to use the only irq that his isa nic card requires.
We all remember the Win98 Scanner incident, don't we? That was televised...
Give this guy enough blue screens and he'll be begging for penguin.
FLR
So I gotta agree with this guy, Linux does have its share of problems, but its not because Linux is deficient in anyway, its just that there is a different mentality about Linux than Windows. Lets take his sound card example, the manufacturer of the sound card had two choices, support Linux and spend money on potentially smaller market, or save that money and focus entirely on Windows. The company probably hoped that some Linux driver coder would just whip up a driver and save them the hassle. That's the wrong mentality, and until companies see Linux as a financial win, these sorts of problems will exist.
Sigh, I can relate with this guy, I've tried and tried but my DLINK DWL-520 rev e PCI wireless card still doesn't work under Linux.
They damn well are to me. If my sound card doesn't work in Linux, and it works in Windows, me AND my MP3s are staying in Windows.
Luckily, sound cards really aren't that difficult to setup in Linux, though there are some hitches to overcome.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It's no record moment; it is (as-ever) a wake up call to the slashdot croud who perpetually fool themselves as to how good linux is. As this article highlights, failing to interact with such basic hardware as a sound card makes it unviable for mom & pop situations! How can you possibly expect people to have to try 9 different distros just for them to get the music working?
Wake up guys. You need freeze the work geared up towards developers. You need to support these distro's that really make linux child's play. They need the support of as many developers as possible, because unless Linux can really break into the home deskop market it will never suceed truely as a competitor to Microsoft other than in server and techy environments.
People talk about this being the year of linux. Well, i've been reading slashdot for the last 5 years, and every year in Jan - April it's been Linux's year; if only it were true.
And your sound card that worked fine with Windows 95 may not work at all with Windows XP either. Such are the breaks - if it's not made or supported anymore, that's not Linux's fault. Usually Linux is substantially better about supporting several generations back hardware out of the box than Windows is.
You should trot out the bullshit detector before posting something like this.
Yes, Linux has a broader potential hardware base than Windows because it runs on multiple platforms. However, Windows has much broader actual driver support on its platform.
Don't compare what is supportable with what's supported as if they were the same thing. They're not.
Does Linux have drivers for things that Windows doesn't? Of course! Are there more devices supported under Linux than Windows? Depends on what you mean by supported. Are there more drivers availble for Windows than Linux? Sadly so!
What should have been pointed out was that he's using brand new OEM integrated hardware. In a Windows architecture, that means they need Windows drivers before they can ship, and creating the drivers is the manufacturer's responsibility. With Linux, they likely don't plan on releasing drivers, and certainly wouldn't hold up the release because they'd see it as someone else's responsiblity anyway.
If he were to use Microsoft's standard arguments, he should be blaming the vendor for releasing unsupported hardware, rather than Linux for not supporting everything under the sun. Until the major hardware manufacturers support Linux at the same development level as Windows, this will continue to be a problem.
I'll bet OS/2 didn't have a driver for his sound card, either.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
Oh yes, it's definetly the linux communities responsiblity to write drivers for sound cards from companies that won't even give specifications.
Get a clue, dude.
You know hardware would be easier to support if the companies that make the hardware would either supply more information for people to write the device drivers or supply linux drivers for download.
Only so much can be done without the needed info.
(But yes, things like this are quite annoying to Joe Computer User)
-- taking over the world, we are.
still true after all these years: unix is the system of the future; always has been , always will be untill geeks wake up and smell the coffee: stupid marketing drives sales, not tehcnical chops
Linux isn't all that great at sound, though the article is complete FUD. I've never had a problem running a Soundblaster card on a Linux machine. They always autodetect fine. And since Soundblaster is about the most common soundcard on the market...
At any rate, I've hardly ever had a linux machine with a soundcard in it. I hardly ever have the GUI enabled. If I want to play games, I use my windoze box...that's what it's there for, to be a toy.
That's what Windows is for. Not to do anything real, or useful. Can't check your email on it, or browse the internet without worrying that its executing code from every damn website, or that its autorunning attachments. Doesn't come with any useful compilers or development tools. The included webserver sucks. Windows is a toy, and it has always been a toy, and the fact that people are looking at a kick-ass powertool and complaining that it's not a toy is absurd.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This is assuming we give a shit about average mom + pop situations. Personally, I use Linux for development and my servers.
And therein lies the problem - albeit in a very in-elloquent manner, you've highlighted perfectly how linux dev's and advocats simply don't appreciate the problem - and arguablly won't for a few more years to come.
Ok, so we have one guy who couldn't get one un-named sound card to work under Linux. All we know is it's "An utterly mainstream Intel Motherboard". Uhh, yah, thanks for the details so someone can replicate your findings, Fred.
The fact that there's onboard sound, or a soundcard that isn't supported by Linux just isn't too surprising. Why this gets posted as "news", or as "Linux's achilles heal" is beyond me. Is 'ol Fred going to buy a soundcard for his Mac, and then pronounce that lack of support for every soundcard to be the bain of the Macintosh?
I'm actually surprised sound support for Linux is as good as it is. The sound on my laptop worked out of the box when I installed RH9 on it, a first for me! There's also sound support for my N-Force motherboard. Sound support is actually something that's matured quite a bit in the last few years.
I won't say Linux is perfect. There's plenty of things to complain about as far as Linux desktop usage is concerned. My personal complaint is the fact that copy/paste support is still kind of crappy. I can copy/paste between emacs sessions (as long as they remain open), but I can't copy/paste from emacs to somewhere else. That's just pathetic. Windows has supported universal copy/paste since 3.1
AccountKiller
I'm not sure I see the problem. You were the one claiming that Linux will never take over the desktop.
He said 'so what? I don't want it on the desktop'.
So from his perspective, there isn't a problem!
I'd like to point out that it is better to have good, widely available hardware documentation than vendor-provided proprietary drivers.
Not mentioning any names...
Ha! Does Linux have a software mixer, you ask. Linux is much better than that! Linux has numerous software mixers! None of them are compatible with each other, much less any player applications, but you bet there are software mixers around! It's all about choice! Of course, they are all userland programs, so they skip now and then, but that's a small price to pay for ensuring that something so trivial does not offend the great Linux kernel by depriving it of some of its low-latency resources. Such resources are critically important towards providing optimal networking, disk I/O, RAID, and other things that are invisible to the user which he or she clearly does not appreciate enough.
I, being an educated and l33t hacker, know that I would much rather get an extra 5kB/sec on my downloads than be able to listen to two streams of audio at once. You already have two ears, isn't that good enough? Software mixer, pshaw.
Random and weird software I've written.
One shouldn't have to should they?
I personally have never had any problems with sound, but at the same time I amused by all of these comments. Pick one: "He's either dumb" or "He should have checked into before installing linux".
Granted as somebody posted, he did not list his video card, but that does not mean he did not discover some previously unknown bug.
Sig it.
What problem?
Do sports-car enthusiasts think it's a problem that I never learned to drive a standard transmission? Are the going to redesign their cars for me? Of course not.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Actually, I can attest, from personal experience, that Linux has better support for legacy cards. I tried to put one of my old sound cards in my mother-in-law's computer. It was an Ensoniq soundscape from 1995. I managed to find some legacy drivers for it on Creative's website, but it just would not work under Windows 98. This card works flawlessly under Linux.
Where Linux tends to have problems is with the latest bleeding edge cards that require some sort of funky drivers. Legacy cards are rarely a problem for it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I know a lot people here on /. plug Linux as the best thing short of the Second Coming...
But... The real issue is that most people don't install their own operating systems. They take what comes on their PC from the factory, and that's it.
That said, the only way in which Linux is going to gain significant ground on the desktop is if:
Linux's big hurdle for the desktop is that for most people, Windows is Good Enough(TM). Any difficulties installing Windows are simply irrelevant because the average user never installs their own OS - when it crashes, they take it back to the store.
For Linux to succeed on the desktop, hardware detection and driver installation is going to have to be completely automatic. A distro which can't autodetect the video card or sound card would do better to inform the user that their hardware is unsupported than ask them to select their hardware from a seemingly endless list of meaningless names.
Linux developers are going to have to stop following Microsoft's lead and start really innovating.
* - yes, I know that many windows apps mangle the system. Let's just ignore this and pretend that they work as advertised for the sake of argument, shall we?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
He tried it with several distros: Xandros 2.0 Deluxe, two versions of Slackware, two versions of SuSE, Debian, Lindows, Knoppix, Knotix, Morphix, and Gentoo.
"one of the Linux distributions I tried specifically claimed compatibility with the sound system in question"
He didn't like the advice of "get rid of the brand-new, fully functional sound card and install a card from a few years ago, and Linux would work just fine".
The Achilles Heel is "For broad hardware support, Windows is still much better than Linux." It's not "My sucky OEM sound card didn't work."
Yeah, it sucks that he didn't mention the card. It sucks that he didn't try distro X, and that Knoppix couldn't detect it. It sucks that the forums didn't help. It sucks that he didn't try a half-a-dozen things. But, the fact is, a good amount of hardware that works out of the box with Windows won't work with Linux. Every user that trys and gets a bad experience will hold the opinion "Linux Sucks" until they are proved otherwise, years later perhaps.
I think you have a wonderful opportunity to consult with them and educate them about how you could fix this problem for them.
If you care about the Mom&Pop market for Linux, and think there's a problem, you're 100% empowered to do something about it.
It wasn't Achilles' fault that his heel was vulnerable. But it was.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I've been a Linux user, pretty much continuously, since 1993. I use it constantly, and have become deeply familiar with Gnome/KDE environments since both were < V1.0. (prior to those I was an fvwm guy, although I'll always hold a soft spot for twm).
/., where the ignorant roam free) by the ostritch-like, "there ain't no problem here" posts that seem to have mushroomed as per usual.
As a server OS, Linux is great. But I'm flabbergasted (hey, this is
They are all wrong.
Sound under linux sucks. Big time. It always has.
If it's not drivers, it's sound daemons. Yes, it's possible to get everything working just fine providing you don't want to use more than one. Mandrake linux is the only distro that works sensibly with sound. And believe you me, I've pretty much tried them all.
So it's piss poor. But as linux is primarily a server OS, what more can we realistically expect? Sound is utterly unnecessary in this capacity, for the most part.
The best unix desktop by a country marathon is Mac OS X. By some considerable margin. Anyone denying this simple fact is kidding themselves. Really.
Read my online journal: http://chris.carline.org
No you miss the point. It is not our goal to wake up to that. You want an app...pay me I will write it for you. Until then either:
a) Write it yourself
b) Wait for someelse to do it.
but for gods sakes man don't expect that we are out to serve your needs.
what?
I completely agree.
//gs had a built-in multi-channel audio sampler, Mac had the desktop publishing and high end graphics market.
Next soundcard i'm going to buy will be by a company that actively supports linux or opens up the specifications: a product that can't work with both the OSs i use is a crippled one.
Linux is progressing in many directions, as the installed base gets bigger more companies will look at it, audio card makers included. The number of linux hackers trying to support exotic soundcards will increase too.
Look at Wintel machines: When the PC came out it won the desktop market by being an office machine first. Amigas had better graphics, apple
Only with the advent of 3D cards and the amiga crisis the pc became also the #1 gamers machine and ubiquitous.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Funny thing the timing of this article. I've been using Linux for quite awhile on my servers and love it. I don't install gui's on them and do everything from the CLI. On my desktop I've been using XP, and as much as I don't want to, I love it as well. I went to the Real World Linux conference in Toronto last week and talked to some of the Xandros guys, and decided I'd dual boot my XP box in the hopes that I could eventually replace XP with a good Linux Desktop.
The install was incredibly easy, and it handled partitioning my HD and installing the MBR with minimal input on my part. That part blew me away, it was easier than installing Windows (any version).
Unfortunately, I had no sound and my printer wouldn't work. I have a Sound Blaster audigy2 card and a Canon I320 printer...both very common and both work flawlessly on XP. After messing around for a couple of hours I got them both to work.
I also use 2 monitors on this box and have a 128M Nvidia GeForce video card. The install handled my video card without any user input and set a decent default screen resolution. Unfortunately again, it would not support the dual monitors. After googling for awhile I discovered Xinerama and reconfigured my XF86Config-4 file to support the dual monitors...which now work as well.
I discussed this with a friend who also wants to see huge adoption of Linux on the desktop. I explained that as much as I was impressed with Xandros it still is IMO not ready for your average computer user. We agreed to disagree on this point, but until you can install a Linux distro without having to drop to the command line to get things working, it's going to be a hard sell to Joe Q Public.
Now I realize that my setup may be a little out of the ordinary compared to regular users and they may not experience any of the problems that I did but the point is this all works out of the box on Windows. I prefer the command line and didn't have that much trouble getting everything working that I wanted too, but you can't expect the average user to put up with it...not when it just works with Windows.
We've still got aways to go but we're definitely getting there.
-Pat
" Yes, if Linux is going to be the OS for newbies. "
It's not. That's what Macs are for.
Linux is going to be for the corporate desktop where the techs will set up a locked down config that can be managed remotely and kept secure.
evil is as evil does
There are two things that really bother me that make me believe this person flat out fabricated their testing:
1) The system is a brand new, state of the art, Intel system. Windows 95 wouldn't recognize half of the components on the system. It wouldn't recognize the USB, it wouldn't recognize the chipsets, it wouldn't recognize the video, etc.
To get all of this to work, he would have to download drivers from Intel - assuming they're even available (unlikely). If he did download drivers, then that probably included the sound driver - game over.
2) It is inferred that the sound card is very recent technology. That being the case, Microsoft must have been exceedingly good to create drivers 9 years in advance!
It's also worth recognizing that Intel is notorious for making hardware that is dependent on specific Windows functions. We all owe Intel a big thanks for the wonderful WinModem.
LarryD
Bush makes our troops prey...
Windows isn't an OS for newbies either. Regular Joes rely on manufacturers to put toghether systems for them and support them. They don't do it themselves. Why do you think computer stores charge $$$ an hour for service? Why do you think people line up at them and pay for it?
Second, nobody who actually cares about Linux wants it to be an 'OS for newbies'. This is left to the producers of well-supported products who want to target that market.
In Linux, people make money through services. If you want to have your hand held, you're going to have to buy a product from somebody where that kind of support is offered.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
oh one more thing...
I think going to 9 different distros hoping one would have the driver is ridiculous.
If there's a driver for it, chances are that either all, or none, of the distros will have it.
Wow, one piece of hardware isn't supported.. It's a shame, but shit happens.. Check it's supported before you buy. Yes all hardware supports Windows, but that's hardly an achievement by Windows, it just shows off the power of monopoly.
GEEEAAAARRGGGHH! How many of these asshats are there? The fact that a sound card works under Windows has nothing to do with Windows. The fact that a sound card does not work under a Linux distribution has nothing to do with Linux. The relevant software is the driver, which under Windows is supplied by the hardware manufacturer (who usually gives Linux the middle finger). Try this: plug a brand-new sound card into a Windows box and when Windows asks for drivers, don't supply them. Does the sound card work? No? Wow, Windows must suck!
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
In case of hardware drivers:
c) ask your manufacturer to do it.
If they refuse or have no interest, make sure you get compatible hardware/software combination next time. There are many manufacturers that happily support Linux without any pain or needing installation configuration whatsoever. I mean you don't go to a store, purchase a Mac-OS-X-only hardware and software, then complain that it doesn't work on your XP, and form an opinion that XP therefore sucks. Not for that reason at least.
I know a lot more about linux than my mother and I think I know how and where to look for information. I'd have more difficulty figuring out the compatibility of hardware on linux than I would on windows. When I can't find a compatibility information for windows for some arcane webcam a friend owns, I fault the manufacturer for not supplying adequate information. But I would be able to say from their website that the webcam would work with what the manufacturer supplies with its product, because I've been able to before with many other products. All the relevant information I get is from a single, logical site. The MS site doesn't come into it, because the power of MS has pretty much ensured that manufacturers tell us whether and how they're compatible.
Check it's supported before you buy.
If the webcam was brand new, I would look at the box. If there's an XP logo I know it will work, without a doubt. No testing required. No searching required. Me not being the shopping type, I find the box info on the product page. I expect it there and it is in almost all cases.
Some manufacturers don't support their products well at all, then I'm down to OEM hunting or mailing them a complaint; again no MS involvement. Manufacturer's fault. I wouldn't expect my mother to know what OEM stands for, let alone know how to find it. I steer her away from habitually getting poorly supported products, because she's about 20,000km away from me. She's constantly on the lookout for a techie in her area to help her when she gets something unsupported... (but that's another story).
Lets take a look at a webcam driver for linux. First place I'd look: the manufacturer's site. beforehand I might sift through the CD that it came with in some vague hope. In most cases it will be no more than one drivers if anything. Often there won't be any support or information pages on compatibility (let alone useability). Where to now? I don't instinctively fault the manufacturer for not having it. Why? Because for I'm not really expecting a driver from them. Who's forcing them to? Why would they bother?
I now must go to google and from there to the webcam linux module site(s) and a myriad of messageboards, newsgroups and howto pages. I don't expect an answer from anywhere that doesn't include "you'll need to recompile your kernel" by someone in jest or otherwise or something along the lines of "we haven't been able to test this yet, but it works with XYZ, so it should work with your device".
There's no single way of dealing with peripheral support on linux. There is on windows. MS made sure of that. Who's making sure that people can expect without chance that a driver exists for linux when they get something out of the box?
Wow, one piece of hardware isn't supported.. It's a shame, but shit happens..
It's not simply one piece. You've got blinders on if you don't see the bigger picture. A printer here, a sound card there are just the tip of the iceberg. Take any random less-prevalent USB device. Can you say by only checking the manufacturer's site if it will work on linux?
Yes all hardware supports Windows, but that's hardly an achievement by Windows, it just shows off the power of monopoly.
Power brings with it the ability to have an impact and achieve something. I wish linux had the power to achieve half the of the things MS has in the peripherals market.
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.