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The Linux Incompatibility List
Jonathan Lassoff writes "The Linux Incompatibility list is a wiki project that attempts to document hardware that is incompatible with Linux rather than list what is compatible. In the wiki, it is possible to add alternitives so as to push hardware manufacturers to make good binary drivers, publish specifications, or even better, publish open drivers."
Ok. This incompatability list is gonna be useless...why?
Hmm...I wonder if my DWL650+ is incompatable. Well...I don't see it in the list.
I wonder if it's because it's compatable, or no one has assessed it yet!
Jee...I guess I'll STILL need to search a million websites, etc. etc.
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
This was in order to force hardware manufacturers to release the source code.
Not at all. This is to prevent people from running old modules against a new kernel version, where symbol names and other internals may have changed, thus resulting in potential crashses, instabilities, etc. As I understand it, you can turn this off by disabling kernel module versioning, but the module itself may refuse to load if it detects the wrong kernel version.
Fortunately, there's a really easy way around this that nVidia and other folks use. nVidia distributes their drivers as a binary driver, along with some source which acts as a thin layer between the binary code and the kernel itself. This layer is then compiled for the specific kernel version, while the binary driver portion remains the same. This is, incidentally, how I install the driver (since they have no modules for my specific kernel version).
Most hardware is useless in a few years anyway,
Holy crap, HIBT? This is the dumbest thing I've read in a *long* time. Hardware is *far* from useless, even long after it's been "obsoleted". It's only the silly gamerz that require the latest and greatest... most people get by with fairly modest equipment. Heck, my firewall ran on a 486 DX/100... that is, until the power supply died. *sigh*
I'm probably going to end up with a troll mod but...
I think the first thing should be ACPI. ACPI support plain sucks under linux. I would pay the same amount for a linux distro as I do for MS XP pro ($200+/-) if that distro supported ACPI just as well as the MS operating systems.
What could possibly go wrong?
That touches on a problem that is probably going to make this project a lame duck. There are far more people out there who will give up or accept a compromise after repeated failures than there are those who keep going until they get things working. I suspect a large number of "x doesn't work" entries are more likely to represent "I couldn't get x to work". Clearly the latter doesn't necessarily mean that the device is incompatible with Linux, although it certainly implies there is room for improvement.
No harm in trying though. ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Most hardware is useless in a few years anyway, so what good is having the source? Compare that to the OS, where it can live on for decades.
The exact opposite is true. The hardware is going to live on for a very long time, while the kernel is going to change rather quickly.
Let's say you buy a SnafuCard.v2 today in August 2004. In five years which do you think will be more likely: the SnafuCard.v2 driver for Linux 3.2 will be available on the Snafu website even though they have not sold that card in four years; or; Linux 3.2 will have a source based driver for the SnafuCard.v2 that has been continuously updated along with the kernel? While the later isn't guaranteed, I think it's much more likely than the former.
The hardware is hardware. It's a material item whose characteristics will not change unless it corrodes or you break it. But the kernel is an ever changing dynamic collection of software. It WILL change. Unless you plan to be running Linux 2.6 five years from now, you had better not rely on today's binary-only driver.
p.s. There are reasons for Linux to allow binary drivers, but hardware obsolescence is not one of them.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Maybe they just have a little more class than to dump a potentially large bandwidth load onto wikipidia.
Once upon a time, people on the 'net weren't a bunch of assholes, and would politely inquire before knowingly burdening your machines with a ton of bandwidth. (*cough* slashdot)
Or maybe, the info might be a little dynamic for wikipedia to handle effectively, I dunno.
This list could change daily, or even hourly.
"GooberTech PCI Master Xtreme is incompatible"
No wait
"GooberTech PCI Master Xtreme is supported with kernel patch 3432-231"
no wait
"GooberTech PCI Master Xtreme is unsupported again" (patch withdrawn because of patent infringment)
no wait
"GooberTech PCI Master Xtreme is supported from rev 2.6 and up, excluding rev 3.4"
etc, etc..
This list is a good idea though. I hope they're smart and put a good "cellphone/PDA" compatible interface on it. This is the type of search I'd like to do while standing in the checkout line of CompUSA.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Last week I had to return 3 webcams from 2 manufacturers. No support for linux at all; or even worse, a flat out refusal to release any form of specifics. I think it's outrageous.
We need this list. Maybe not for the most common hardware, but there is a lot of stuff out there that has no driver support for Linux (and other opensource OSes) at all. I rather know in advance there is no way of getting it to work, or when there is only an incomplete 'experimental driver' made from sniffing usb devices.
And then we could also reward companies that do make opensource-friendly products and drivers by buying their products, which hopefully has an impact on the other, windows-oriented companies.
One of the reasons the Linux kernel has improved so much, is so stable, and can scale as well as it can, is that when there is a technical reason to dictate a change, the changes is made. They don't have to support bad decisions made years and years ago (actually they do if it affects userspace applications, but if it's internal to the kernel, it gets killed with impunity). To pick a particular example from Windows, the GDI memory goop that Win95, Win3.x and Win98 had. When you ran out of that, your machine was cooked. It didn't matter how much RAM you had, that amount of that was relatively fixed. It was a stupid problem, that caused me no end of pain, but there it was. I'm sure Solaris has one. Well, heck, I hear the TLI/STREAMs interface is vile, but it was one of the two standard driver models that was easy to write. However, it had very poor performance.
The other thing that's nice about Open Source only drivers, is that there's one and only one implementation of a lot of stuff. Tons of network cards have essentially the same structure for a lot of the driver. All that gets refactored out into common modules for all drivers to use. If a bug is found in that shared code, it's fixed in all of them at once.
Linus doesn't support Binary interfaces, because he has to choose between making it easy for you to have a non-open driver, or for making it easy for him to make the Linux kernel be as good as it can be. I'm all for making Linux as good as Linux can be. You might want him to choose "support a driver model for the lifetime of a kernel series", but I just buy hardware that is known working with Linux. Yeah it sucks at times that I can't get a specific piece of hardware that sounds cool, but I get Linux for free. I'll take that trade 8 days a week.
Kirby
Sites like this which only list what doesnt work, and other such sites that only list what does work, all suffer from the same problem: you cant distinguish unknown from does/doesnt work.
The printer people (linuxprinting.org) have the right idea, the site lists every printer thats known, and wether it does, or doesnt work, how well, and why.
This way you can more easily tell the difference between 'my device is too new, nobodies tried yet' and 'the manufacturers a pest, itll never work' and the more common 'theres half a driver that mostly works, give it a go or wait a bit'
If the same philosophy was applied to all devices it would be a really useful resource