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Simplifying Linux Driver Installation
prostoalex writes "O'Reilly Network posts an update on Project Utopia that produced Hardware Abstraction Layer for Linux simplifying device changes. They also link to the Driver on Demand project on SourceForge, whose goal is to create a central database to enable Linux desktops download the drivers automatically when the user plugs in her new hardware device."
Hardware Abstraction Layer cos we all know how well that worked in Windows NT
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Next thing you know there won't be any reason anymore to stay with XP :)
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Also when will the major heads of the different distros define a single good, method of packaging programs.
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What gets me is that this would be geared for either for distributions trying to enhance the user's "linux experience" or just to help newbies configure their devices "painlessly".
Meanwhile, anyone with an ATI card, for example, would still be just as dead in the water as before. Of course, I would be curious to see how well this turns out.
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would be great if i could simply #apt-get install sblive or #apt-cache search wintv not neccessarily wanting apt to do it but just something as easy as apt.
they were of course speaking of the new microsoft USB vibrator.generally hers but hey who am i to judge?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Missing was the description of what exactly this "hardware device" is.
After all, I can get wireless ethernet, type stuff like Salvete, amc!, and all sorts of stuff on Linux.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
If getting drivers becomes that easy, I'll be considering atleast dual-booting. Drivers have always been something that have kept me away from Linux, but if they're as easy to find as plugging in a device, I'll switch in no time. Now, if only those manufacturers would put out some decent quality drivers, I wouldn't have much reason to stay on Windows.
Don't take it personally, I think wishful thinking was playing a role in that statement ;)
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"oops, you wanted a driver for an ipod? not a printer? my bad..." Not even microsoft is stupid enough to puch drivers into your lap.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
Finally, I can tell the GF to ditch her mac! for a PC :D
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Not speaking that it would be technically inpossible: It is always him who plugs in hardware device...
and distro just has to make sure all drivers are compiled as modules (I think that is done already) and that the kernel is always latest (not done yet, too much work, and sometimes a bad idea when a point release fucks up something). Magic, then you do not even need to know which driver, all are included. Only clear con I see is bandwidth.
What, like a kernel?
Simply the truth. Go into any chat or mail list and ask when something is gonna work or be fixed and most of the time they tell ya when you send the patches
For what it's worth, I'm somewhat sympathetic to Linus. Look at what HAL did for/to Windows. Crappy driver/HAL implementations were responsible for a lot of Windows perceived and real stability problems. Now Microsoft likes to certify drivers (WHQL), so they only take the blame for their own damn bugs.
Basically, it's a double-edged sword. Convenience vs. Stability. Personally, I think if Linus is serious about the desktop there needs to be some compomise. Me, I just dumped Linux on the desktop for my sweet new OS X system. Viva la UNIX!
They also link to the Driver on Demand project on SourceForge, whose goal is to create a central database to enable Linux desktops download the drivers automatically when the user plugs in her new hardware device." So it will just fetch the driver when I plug in my network card to get internet access...wait a minute... No, seriously, this sound pretty nice, and is just the logical extension of the hotplug system we now have (it can be nasty, but most of the time it makes life really easy). Would be cool if this would fit nicely with the existing package system (Debian has module packages e.g.), I hate it to have two of those package/module/whatever databases fighting over the ownership of my filesystem.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
It is obvious that I as an corporate user, would refuse to install *anything* on my Linux system that has not gone through my distributor. After all, that's why I pay them. And pushing third-party binary modules in my running kernel would be a very quick way of nullifying their support agreements.
For the home user, things might well be different. But most people are running a distribution anyway, and would probably feel more comfortable getting drivers from them. That's how they get the security updates, so both the trust and the technical procedure is already in place. So if the distributors are to share the workload of getting these drivers, then a open project may be the right way -- but only for distributing the module source. Not many users would get drivers from here (Gentoo users come to mind).
The article has an ivory-tower stance to it and I think they solve the wrong problem. First we need to establish what the problem actually is. If the drivers are few and small then all drivers could be included in a typical distribution and updated with the rest of the system. Perhaps all that is needed is for distribution to update their kernel packages more often?
In the article the ABI was mentioned as the interface of the drivers to the kernel. Maybe it could be possible to create a higher level driver API on top of that? This API could then be ported to newer linux versions?
Dunno, but as a computer developer I'm having serious trouble setting up my computer for linux. I've seen a few full crashes already, which are probably due to flaky drivers. Not all my devices have been picked up automatically either. Currently my HP deskjet printer is not working, even though it should be supported by the kernel, and is USB, so it should be plug and play.
The way v4l and scanners are working on linux are great examples, I would like to see higher levels and even user space processes dedicated for this kind of hardware. Let the disk IO, memory etc. be left to the kernel, but try to lift all non-critical drivers to a higher level. A common API for that would look to me as a great idea.
As cute as that little pun is, PnP on WinNT 5.x Just Works(TM) the vast majority of the time and life is good. It's one area were Windows has a clear advantage over Linux and it's great to see the gap is finally starting to be closed.
Though I fear Linus' hardliner stance on ABI compatibility will hinder all this. Idealogical issues aside, from a user's standpoint a stable ABI for drivers is a significant plus for a desktop OS. I can only hope at some point the Linux kernel becomes stable enough for it to be considered.
My wife installs all the new hardware on both our computers. This started when I got her a few gigs of memory, large HDs, better video card, etc. for birthdays, Xmas,etc. Rather than wait for me to have time to install the gadgetry, she RTFMed and took off the side panel and went to work.
I never have any trouble finding a present for her. BeastlyBuy, CircusCity, and CompUGH are all on the way home from work and allow last minute shopping.
I in turn have the simple pleasure of working six and seven days a week at a nontechnical job. The General Manager once asked me about a problem with a monitor. I went to the tool cart, returned with a 10lb. sledgehammer, and asked where it was. I have never been asked a computer question since.
Once I load all those cool window manager things and that X so they work and then download all those XP themez and icons and crap I can hardly tell them apart, f#ckin' A it's so cool !
what I'm scared of:
>unkown hardware device detected
>please wait while linux installs drivers for your new hardware
Is it too late to contribute to the openBSOD project...?
http://request-header.info
How does a Computer know that when I plug in a USB mouse that the computer knows it is a mouse, and what drivers to use with it?
It would be interesting to incorporate the drivers onto the pice of hardware. I mean what if insead of including a CD [that these days are filled with crap] with the hardware, that they just put a small flash memory onto the item, and stored the drivers there. Then as new drivers were avalable, the OS would update the flash mem with new drivers as they were avalable. This may raise the cost of the item, but I would rather have a item that I can use anywhere on any machine without having to search for drivers, or cary a cd around with me.
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Question for the Kernel coders, what perctage of drivers are reverse engineered?? 60-70%
The percentage would be near 0% if not 0%. Plenty of hardware manufacturers have released open or open-enough programming specifications for their hardware. Intel, AMD and National Semiconductor are a few examples.
For example, here are the programming specifications for my network card, a Netgear FA312 - DP83815 10 100 Mb s Integrated PCI Ethernet Media Access Controller and Physical Layer (MacPhyter)
Companies like NVidia and ATi are the exception, not the rule.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
it downloads the device drivers for you automatically - thats far easier than windows or a mac. its as easy as adding xbox hardware to an xbox infact.
Why is that flamebait? Is the truth starting to smart a bit??
I'm actually quite satisfied with the way linux handles devices and their drivers right now (this is stuff for nerds after all).
But I always wonder why there isn't a huge effort to build an abstract abstraction layer... it could look like this:
Every piece of hardware is equipped with a standardized storage chip, which contains detailed information about the purpose of the device and instructions on how to "talk" to it. Basically I'm looking for a way to enable any OS to figure out a driver on its own.
I know that many vendors (like nvidia) would never support such an idea, since they prefer to keep the source of their drivers secret. And I also doubt that it would be easy to write something like this for modern video cards. But something like this would be great for input devices or nics.
I don't read replies by ACs.
So, someone creates a stable as in abi/api HAL for linux. Then all sorts of manufaturers start releasing binary only drivers. Hypotheticly these are of good quality and we don't wind up with the windows BSOD type problems, this is very unlikely. We still get lots of binary only drivers with wierd licensing that limits distribution and what you can do with the hardware. Because drivers for stuff are avalible noone have interest in maintaining open drivers. Linux becomes as encombered as windows when you want to do anthing with it besides desktop PC. Forget having a cheep OS with lots of hardware support to build and sell your custom solutions with. Now since the hardware support will still probably be better and more complete on that M$ os all those little embeded things are gonna end up with winCE/pocketPc200X/XPembeded or whatever. This will kill the one market where Linux is begging to become the player to beat rather then the other option. If this takes off linux is gonna end up where it was five years ago on the desks of us geeks, rather then were it is now on half of the little and BIG network appliences out there even if it is unknow to the user. Once that happens we will lose lots of the corporte support and contributes to the kernel as well. Linus made the right call to not stabilize the ABI and force vendors to either make open drivers or at least have to put up with a wrapper.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This is where open source shines - maybe if there is enough backing for something like a 'desktop kernel', someone can maintain a version of the kernel that mirrors the big security updates of the main kernel, but is geared towards a stable ABI. This is basically what distributions do with the kernels they ship (the only updates you are likely to get from the package manager are patches backported from newer kernels, but your kernel version won't change), except that if this was something outside of the distributions, it could be the same abi *across distributions*. What a dream for hardware manufacturers - release a driver coded for one API and built for one ABI and have it work on a majority of the systems out there.
and see how stable it is. Much as I hate Microsoft (and I do), Windows XP is a stable operating system when it's running good quality, name brand software/hardware. At least the desktop is, no comment on server stuff. Where you run into problems is all the crappy 3rd party drivers and add ins that run in the background and make tons of changes to they system. If you start adding that stuff to Linux you'll have the same problems. On the other hand, Linux's openness makes adding this crap harder, and often unecessary...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
hi! it looks like you're trying to install a new device! what do you want me to do?
* Crash your pc
* Cause your pc to become unbootable
* Automatically call the helpdesk for you so you can have background music while you try to figure out why you can't connect to the internet to find drivers.
* All of the above.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Already development is taking place in the 2.6 branch rather than a 2.7 one, as used to be the case. It is now up to the distros - as far as I've understood - to provide a stable kernel and update it with selected patches.
Couldn't a distro create and maintain a stable ABI for the kernel line it distributes? I'm assuming if one of the major distros does it, others will follow suit and will create a de-facto standard if lots of drivers spring up for it (perhaps with backing from major hardware vendors).
Would such a move significantly limit the applicability of patches with future work from the developers, to the ABI-stable version? My simplistic thinking is that the distro would leave out anything that breaks the ABI spanning a reasonable time-frame (e.g. 2 years). Only when something really cool happens, it would introduce a new "stable" ABI including any blocked functionality. This would suck if often cool new stuff can only be added by breaking the ABI and thus the distro gets left behind.
Could someone with the necessary technical knowledge enlighten us regarding the feasibility of such a thing? Is the ABI so constantly morphing?
To err is human, but to forgive is beyond the scope of the Operating System...
-nt-
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
So? You're asking people who are doing things *in their spare time* to give you a deadline for fixing something that may be needed by exactly one person (you).
If you want help feel free ask what the current state of the driver is, but don't expect anyone to do anything about it unless you're prepared to help, or give them money.
btw. MS are exactly the same. Try asking them when 'feature x' will work. They'll want money before you'll get a sensible answer about it (in that case you don't even have the option of doing it yourself).
Oh goody, politically correct propagandising hits slashdot, news at 10!
"_her_ new hardware device"?
Q: How hard would it have been to write " plugs in _a_ new hardware device."?
A: Not hard at all, but then we wouldn't get a nice warm fuzzy feeling in our twisted panties from being PC assholes then, would we?
The geeks here need to stick to propagandising linux, apple, Linus and Steve (in that order) and leave mainstream political correctness to the professional assholes.
I was actually just thinking about this sort of thing the other day ... with a Gentoo slant of course.
I'd just set up hotplug, which I'm now using for a number of reasons, my Alcatel USB ADSL modem, Canon Digital Camera, USB MP3 player, etc. It dawned on me that these devices are supposed to have unique identifer codes, and that it would be great if *someone* would keep a centralised database of codes against software / config changes. Then I thought a device being added could trigger an 'emerge' process on my Gentoo box and an 'etc-update' to merge in the config file changes.
Of course there are a lot of missing pieces in my ideas. But anyway, I agree with the general idea. Good on 'em!
Just a friendly warning--- this response is in good fun from a female /.er so don't Flamebait me, but here goes... (Most)guys on /. seem to wonder why they don't have girlfriends... Not only are you comparing a girl to hardware and visa versa (which trust me is not the best pickup line =P) but you're also forgetting that for all the complaining you do about computers/women, you seem to think about little else!
;) My /. boyfriend certainly knows how ^_^
Oh, btw--- if you are going to compare the two, just realize that a guy who can push the right buttons knows how to handle both computers and women.
I think this would be great.
Once I had the experience of trying to install Linux on my Dad's machine, and Linux was up and running, and all that was left is to get the computer online using the USB wireless dongle.
But when I googled around looking for drivers, apparently that dongle has 3 revisions, each with totally different drivers. Still, I wasn't discouraged and try then all in turn!
But somehow it doesn't work!
Then I found a thread in a forum somewhere which says I have to look at the stuff that is displayed during bootup, copy down something, and type a command. I did that, still doesn't work.
Then I did the same for each of the other 2 drivers in turn, ditto.
End up, defeated, I reinstalled Windoze on that machine. That so sucks man. Cos months later I got a phone call from my folks asking me how to get rid of those pr0n popups and stuff.
If only those drivers worked back then.
Currently it is really quite a challenge getting some bits of hardware to work right on linux. In fact, it is not currently, it has always been an issue. Once this is improved, I don't see why Linux won't fly.
2005 is the year of Linux on the desktop (and if John Titor is right, the end of US of A as we know it)
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Oh, and my obligatory plug for my online novel
Project details here.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Easy solution:
fork();
Why?
As much as I like and respect Linus and his decisions, it seems the kernel has become an "entity" of sorts. Times are changing and certain problems will arise when one uses time-honored policies instead of progressive thinking (not to say Linus is not a progressive thinker, on the contrary...)
A fork, based on a recent stable release, that is kept current by applying patches and fixes while preserving the existing driver ABI. Redhat does this when it back-ports features from newer kernels into its production kernels. Basically, let Linus and co. write the bleeding-edge kernels while said fork makes catastrophic changes to the driver ABI every two years or so instead of every three weeks.
I may be wrong in my thinking, but a fork wouldn't hurt anything in my opinion. This wouldn't be a fork due to policy decisions e.g. FreeBSD + OpenBSD or XFree86 + Xorg, but a fork of necessity to provide hardware manufacturers a stable interface for supporting linux, therefore allowing them to focus more on improving their drivers' performance than on keeping up with each kernel release. Then, they can release binary drivers and rest assured that they will work for some period of time.
Just my $0.02
While this is a bit off topic, its relevant.
Don't misunderstand me, as I have the up most respect for the guy, but after reading some of his comments about vendors approaching him about drivers, and his refusal to even discuss a HAL layer ( which IS the right way to, even if he doesnt want to deal with it ), I can see that the arrogance of the Linux community is starting to rub off. ( actually, if the article is correct, it may have actually reduced my respect for him as he's acting more like a child.. ).
Yes its his kernel and he can do with what he pleases, I understand this. But I also understand he would like it to continue to succeed, and being an ass wont advance that cause a bit. Look where it gets Theo..
I do expect to be modded down for this of course, but I see the 'attitude' as the #2 problem with Linux in general. ( #1 being the convoluted un-structured nature in general, which effects things in a detrimental way a lot more then many want to admit. ).
Until people get off their high horse and start acting professional instead of condescending, things here will have just about topped out, and the market share will be stagnant.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Project Utopia is WRONG, at least they way they are going about doing things.
/proc.. you don't need any HAL thing...
Just because Microsofts kernel works that way doesn't mean Linux should.
We don't need an ABI. What we need is a more streamlined kernel config->recompile system. Recompiling your modules should just show up as a progress bar. Debian is pretty good, but it's not 'Utopia' lol. Finding new devices on the system? Just monitor
The only time this becomes an issue is for binary-only (nvidia hint hint) drivers. Linus is right.
Linux community silently "borrows" more and more ideas from there. Make up your fucking mind people, this is getting disgusting.
My fav-
"Windows has found new hardware: CD-Rom Drive
Please insert your Windows CD to continue"
Ok- it's not literal copy, but I once had a friend get into this situation after windows "lost" the CD Drive configuration.
enable Linux desktops [to] download the drivers automatically when the user plugs in her new hardware device
It's easy to rewrite USB device ID strings...
It's easy to put rootkit-like things in drivers...
What is needed is telling me what applications I could use with the devices. Many Linux applications use libusb and don't need a driver (in fact you can't use libusb against an interface that a driver has claimed).
So if I plug in a cell phone, I should be told about BitPim for CDMA phones, and whatever is used for GSM phones. Whatever the scanner app is should appear for scanners. Epson printers should cause me to be told about mtink etc.
And all this can be done outside the kernel.
Although gentoo specific you still get the gist to get this to work on other distros.
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=217412/
NetBSD has long included cross-platform binary driver compatibility. Despite the much smaller (and less friendly, in my experience) developer community, NetBSD has leveraged its comprehensive platform coverage to harvest drivers for much hardware. One Linux advantage that outperformed early rivals in the "Windows alternative OS" was its open community of driver writers, filling all the nooks and crannies of the installed base of hardware out there. Combining the superior community with the superior hardware model will make Linux unbeatable at hardware support. And that's ultimately all that an OS does: support the hardware.
--
make install -not war
So there will be no stable ABI-that's fine. And there will, therefore, be no binary-only modules. That's not so fine to some people. What vendor wants to make their customers recompile their kernel everytime there's a new product? More importantly, who wants to do that?
Here's my solution: provide a kernel abstraction layer; hence, reverse HAL. Here's how it works: a kernel module is the KAL. It provides a semistable ABI to binary-only modules which load into it. I say semistable because it adds new features, not deletes old ones. At the very least, it should provide the older KAL ABIs as patches and compile-time options.
Would this really work? OSS works. It appears to me to be along the same lines. Also LUFS, although that uses a userland program as opposed to the binary-only modules used in my model. Don't ask me how this could be done. I don't program. No, scratch that, I can write a "Hello, World!" app in C...
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
I am a Linux supporter myself and also hold Linus in highest regard. But what about a fork at this point? All this politicizing is really annoying and it hinders adoption of Linux. Having a well defined ABI doesn't change anything except it stops twisting the arms of users and manufacturers. Let the users decide whether they'll buy a piece of hardware with an open source or a closed source driver.
I recently bought a laptop and planned to run FC2 on it. i'm a FreeBSD junkie on the server - I love it. However Linux has been making inroads on the desktop, and I wanted to give it another chance. However my expereience wasn't too rosy.
All was fine until I got into having to install my wireless card support. I bought a Linksys WPC11 card (IIRC). I needed to install linux-wlan.
Problems were two-fold. First I needed the kernel source to install support. I went to install the packages. Thing is I installed FC2 from DVD, and the source packages wouldn't go because it was looking for the source.
As well, I had a hard time getting yum to install gcc, and all the other dev packages. Don't know quite why.
After two days of fiddling around (and i didn't even get to the radeon support!) I decided to move back to XP. Things just seem to work. Two steps: insert CD. Insert PCMCIA card. Drivers install from CD automatically.
Until Linux developers figure THAT out, they are doomed. On the desktop. I should not have to recompile the kernel to install support for my wireless card. That's just retarded design IMHO.
And yes, I understand that hardware manufacturers are to blame, but if Linux is to make inroads on the desktop, that's the first place to start.
Sorry folks, I don't mean to troll, but that's where XP has Linux on the desktop licked: 1) software installation, and 2) driver installation.
yes, I like apt, I like yum, and I like BSD ports tree [and portage], however they are not as simple as an installshield wizard.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
So? You're asking people who are doing things *in their spare time* to give you a deadline for fixing something that may be needed by exactly one person (you).
The "volunteer" excuse. If you think because they're volunteers that that justifies treating users like peons, then don't complain when users whine that Linux is only for developers, by developers. Don't complain when people mention that Linux desktop acceptance is stagnant.
If you want help feel free ask what the current state of the driver is, but don't expect anyone to do anything about it unless you're prepared to help, or give them money.
Consequently, don't expect very many users to stay interested since they could just easily run to the store and buy (or warez) Windows and have the same feature after a quick 30 minute install that some holier-than-thou developer expects your patches or your money for. Not exactly a "free" operating system in that kind of model, is it?
btw. MS are exactly the same. Try asking them when 'feature x' will work. They'll want money before you'll get a sensible answer about it (in that case you don't even have the option of doing it yourself).
BS. Microsoft won't ask for money just because you ask them when a certain feature will work. They'll take your response into their Customer Feedback program, correlate it with their database of entries. Guess what, if a lot of people are requesting something, it gets put in for the next version. THEN they ask for money. They have a financial incentive to please their customers, hence they have the features users want.
Don't claim Linux is free and then tell me that for it to be usable, you have to put your life on halt and learn to program, or start mailing people money.
thanks, I just bought a JumpDrive which works just fine on my Mac, but I coudn't mount it on my RedHat box. I thought I needed a driver or something. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong. I'll take your advice and see.
If anyone has specific and detailed information on how to install a Lexar Jump Drive on Red Hat 9, please post it here. I'm trying not to wear out my brain. Thanks for being so understanding.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
"Where you run into problems is all the crappy 3rd party drivers and add ins that run in the background and make tons of changes to they system. If you start adding that stuff to Linux you'll have the same problems. "
Am I the only one amused by the above? Here's a hint: What is one of the strengths of the Windows platform that fanboys bring up?
Answer: All the 3rd party hardware and software that runs on it.
Here's another: What is it that all the "binary drivers and closed source programs are OK" Linux advocates covet so much?
Answer 3rd party hardware and software.
The real problem isn't the kernels and the device support therein, rather, its the devices. Really, how many different ways do you need to send data to a printer, or a disk, or get images off a digital camera or webcam, or sound to and from a soundcard, or a 3d command pipeline to a vid card ? The plethora of different device interfaces for substantially identical devices is the real problem.
Instead, I think there should be a (small set of) _device_ standards.
That is, something like a architecture standard: a standard category of devices which the manufacturers will agree to provide standard interfaces for
Combine that with a standard, architecture independent way of allowing devices to carry their own drivers. Perhaps something like a fast Forth like bytecode interpreter.
Maybe not the best approach, but a lot better than what we have now.
-- Pat
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred
rmmod hal (.ko)
Do you get that little pop up about "not enough virtual memory, increasing swap file size" or something to that effect? Once you're past the minimum virtual memory size, Windows does something to increase the swap file size.
I haven't properly tested or researched this, so YMMV, but several times now, that process has slowed my PC to a crawl - during AND after the increase.
Though, that shouldn't have anything to do with a disk defrag...
then exercise your freedom of choice, and stop using Linux.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
You could, for example, have a graphics library that was setuid root, to allow non-root users to access the graphics hardware through a rectricted API.
This gives you the advantages of a shared library (no context switching, driver is distributed and managed separately from the kernel) without the disadvantages (processes must run as root because the library requires root privileges to access the hardware). There's only one disadvantage that I can think of: all arguments must be passed on the stack because the caller and the protected library have different data segments. If the protected library can be given access to the caller's data segment as well as its own, that problem disappears - the 386 supports six segments so that should be possible in principle. But passing arguments on the stack might be a better solution because it would allow arbitrary nesting of protected libraries.
Simple case of subject and object.
I = subject.
me = object.
people who don't know the difference simply haven't been taught about subject and object, but remember being corrected as a child when they said "Johny and me" without ever being told why it was wrong in that instance.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
The whole fricken point of Linux being a better OS is that a crappy 3rd party program won't bring down the whole OS.
Windows, however, is so fragile that a crappy program can BSOD/Crash/reboot it.
The point would be valid about crappy 3rd party drivers though.
Can there be binary only drivers or will the GPL interfere?
to enable Linux desktops download the drivers automatically when the user plugs in her new hardware device
Hmmm, I know you were thinking of a woman when imagined a user with installation diffculties...
The author was kind enough to remind us that even girls may be using Linux...
Or he was sexist enough and could imagine nothing but a girl having difficulties with driver installation...
Is it too late to contribute to the openBSOD project...?
That'd be ReactOS, then. I hear they're looking for help.
Segfault anyone?
Wow...after countless revisions and a decade of work , programs and drivers are still a nightmare to install on Linux. Dependency this, dependency that, oops wrong GCC version and of course "Oh shit I updated the kernel so I have to recompile my graphics card drivers again."
Can't remember the last time I had to do anymore than a single mouseclick to start installing a program or drivers in Windows.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
I have installed Linux several times over the last few years, on practically all of my hardware configurations.
But none of the times has it been plug'n play. Often drivers that worked in one version didn't work on the next. So after the having a system where the graphics worked, It wouldn't on the next, because that driver had been left out. But now the sound would work. And so on.
I don't remember ever having a painless installation. Untill I do, I won't bother with Linux as my workstation. It will keep running on a simple server with old and safe hardware where the drivers will allways work.
Windows is more than stable enough for my desktop, and I can easily earn the price of XP Pro in the time I save not fiddling with drivers.
The quality of the desktop really isn't the main problem for my Linux usage. I don't find it worse, just different. But using too much time installing the OS is a problem.
I don't do it as a hobby. The OS is a tool, and so has to be efficient.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
Let me guess. You're running a P2P-app on your laptop right?
P2P-apps tend to make Windows swap everything out to disk after a while. I haven't found a remedy to the braindead way Windows caches files yet, other than removing Paging altogether. If you have enough RAM, you should be okay. If not, your computer COULD crash due to too little memory (512 MB is a bit small if you run video editing etc, 1GB should be safe).
I have 1GB on my home machine. Even after using just 350MB, the pagefile is already being used, while in Linux the swap stays at 0 until nescessary. This just shows how braindead virtual memory in Windows always has been. There are some 3rd party apps that can optimize things for you, but they cost money.
Okay, I'm a bit harsh when saying braindead. It works beautifully for a server-setup, but XP Pro is a workstation OS right? What non-technically happens is that your P2P app is so intensive, it gets all the resources while your own apps get swapped out.
If you don't actually use 512MB I would recommend turning off the Pagefile altogether and see if that fixes the problem.
If you're not using a P2P-app, the same can apply for programs using huge amounts of RAM, but then, if you've got too little RAM, nothing can save you unless you buy more RAM. Harddisk activity is a killer for speed.
First thing I did when I saw this article was shudder. Why? The majority of problems I've ever had with XP have been with the shoddy implementation of a Hardware Abstraction Layer, and the associated problems that an 'all your eggs in one basket' approach can bring you. You can see for yourself: Just Google for 'Missing Hal.DLL' and you'll see just how easy it is for this file to be corrupted / disappear etc etc.
I don't think the above post deserved to be flamebait - he made a valid point, just somewhat uneloquently.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
Example:: the 2.6 series kernel ignores most laptop basic hardware requirements. The only way to get a good half-ass installation on a portable is to buy a laptop with Linux pre-installed, and even then, not all standard laptop functions will be useable.
The problem with Linux is Linus. Linus is a dictator. Gates is a dictator. I do not like dictators, rich or poor ones. BSD is superior. DragonFly, in its half-developed state, already runs better than most Linux distros on laptops.
if you think this is typical. if your network has boxes with an uptime of 7 minutes, something is seriously wrong. i'd expect weeks of uptime out of a corporate imaged client under my control, despite users.
That is a common yet, ridiculous belief. Systems are explioted because they are exploitable not because they are popular. Windows is easier to exploit. If popularity mattered then why isn't Apache's http server the most exploited web server on the Internet?
UNIX/Linux Consulting
why should we get clients shutdown over night? how would this help us push out patches and the like at night, without inconveniencing the users? i stand by what i said: you can leave my clients up for weeks without a reboot: the only time they get restarted is when a patch requires it, pretty much.
for servers, we're looking at 5 nines.
While it might not change the nature of your arguement...
int foo (int a, int b, int c)
and
int foo (int a, int b, int c, int d)
Can actually both be function prototypes in C++ code (at the same type). Which one is called depends on how many arguements are supposed (and of which type).
I don't think that's the point. Compiling a kernel module driver is trivial, and in most cases you don't need a whole kernel recompile (just the driver).
It's where you have custom patches etc (say for your USB device, video card, tablet, etc) that this becomes a pain... because a patch for 2.6.5 won't necessarily work in 2.6.6 etc.
I'm not so sure I'd want people to be able to plug some device into my computer and have it start running random code. That way lies madness.
It would be interesting to try to get these same drivers working on different architectures. You'd end up with something like ACPI or Java, where the "driver code" is written to some virtual machine that the host OS has to interpret. (And people thought loadable modules were "slow"? Ha!)
__CmdrTHAC0__
In Soviet Russia, Spanish Inquisition doesn't expect YOU!!
NetBSD has abstracted from the hardware layer for many years: it has abstract "generic drivers" and metal-specific "glue code".
This helps not just navigate the "device" space - it also makes managing ports to altoghether different architectures easier.
I am quite glad that something similar is cooking for Linux, although perhaps 10 years late.
in two years time your project will still be in alpha? :-)
>...when the user plugs in her new hardware device.
Sure, because most Linux users are female.. U know, like Andrea Arcangeli. Or is this the geek's mind's subliminal cry for sex? What is she plugging in, a battery-operated device?
Must-not-watch TV!