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The Linux Modem Problem?
muonman asks: "There is a business in town which refurbishes old computers and distributes them to kids, roughly at cost. Part of this cost is a $5 license for Windows 98 (they do use OpenOffice, tho). I have outlined to them the benefits of migrating to Linux, but the showstopper is modems, which most of their customers require. They buy in bulk at $4 each, with unpredictable chipsets. I can find reliable(?) drivers for Smartlinks, but cant buy them for less than $6 each, and I hate to recommend the switch in suppliers without more info. I haven't had luck getting license info from linuxant for using Conexants. It seems there has been no activity on the linmodem front for some time. Any wisdom from the Slashdot crowd?"
... be sure to let the rest of the world know about the modems that don't work at the Linux Incompatibility List:
http://www.leenooks.com/
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
This is often possible for software when there's good public relations and/or a tax-writeoff.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
This isn't a flaw in the open source development method - plenty of companies don't bother supporting old devices either (or old software for that matter).
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
How can a license for Windows 98 be $5?
You can't get it for that price even at ebay. Something is not quite right about this one...
Total Cost Delta:
+$2 modem
-$5 windows
-----------------
$3 profit
Why not just buy more expensive modems and save money at the same time.
badness 10000
I'm sure you have some numbers of the percent of these cheap modems fail. If the failure rate even in windows is high enough, the conversion to a better modem might be worth it financially as well. Run the numbers, you may be surprised.
Check out modem chipsets from Intel (or Ambient). Many of them have Linux drivers available from Intel for them (and they are less trouble than licensing from Conexant). No idea what kind of pricing you might be able to get on them. There are a lot of OEMs that put them on their cards.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
You really can't argue this one? The argument you need is called math.
$5 OS + $4 modem = $9
$0 OS + $6 modem = $6
If they are concerned about unit prices - this is easy. IF they have other concerns about switching over the Linux due to support or application compatibility issues, then the cost of the modem is irrelevant anyways.
What you should do is write up a proposal that outlines how the switch from Windows to Linux will be relatively painless and will save $3 per machine. This will spark interest if your working with any kind of volume. The $2 dollar increase in modem will likly make no difference if you can show that a lowered pricetag.
So put that in your pipe and grep it
contact the people at Free Geek -- all the machines they give away come with modems, and all the modems they get are scavenged from donated machines, so this is probably an issue that they have dealt with. they're also just a great organization. they can probably help with some of the other issues as well; they've been giving away refurbished linux machines to computer illiterate people for years now (a machine comes with a class on how to use a computer, and i think 18 months of tech support), so they've tackled a lot of these problems.
Probably a silly question, but you have checked http://www.linmodems.org/ haven't you?
A pril/001275.html
The main site is full of information to help identify and get working "windows" modems under Linux. The list still seems to be active. Before ADSL arrived in my corner of the world I was dependant on them to get connected via inbuilt modems. I can't fault the helpfulness of the people on the list.
It doesn't matter if the modem cards you're getting are unpredictable provided that you know that it's one of a small subset and you know how to get each one (or most of them) to work. When I was last looking at this (over a year ago - but I guess that the kit you're seeing isn't new) the most manufacturer that modems identified themselves as was Agere/Lucent, for which there are various drivers around.
Some modems will probably just never get Linux drivers - the 3com 3c556 and relatives are examples of that. See:
http://zurich.ai.mit.edu/pipermail/omnibook/2002-
with a winmodem is related to my laptop. It has a lucent chipset. I'm not sure if this is helpful but I have no problem getting up to date binary packages of drivers for this modem. (Right now I run FC3 and the modem works- installed with an rpm package- I consider that pretty current).
Drivers are available at http://www.physcip.uni-stuttgart.de/heby/ltmodem/
Maybe these are just older modems and you can't buy them anymore-- but if this type of modem is still available maybe you can get them for cheaper.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Well the main reason there are major hardware and software compatability issues is because linux isn't popular enough to justify companies spending money writing linux drivers.
Its a circular problem.
This is an excellent example of why Linux is not being adopted by the masses.
Linux has the best hardware support for mass market machines of any non windows OS. And frankly, it has better out of the box support than windows.
The problem is not any more solvable than it already is, in other words, it isn't a technical problem. It's an economic one - MS can get away with developing almost no drivers because market pressure ensures that the drivers get written by hardware vendors.
Funny, how silent the Linux kiddies become when substantive discussion is afoot.
Silence is common amongst all fanboys when real problems are cited. But this is a troll. The problem is not substantially solvable.
The real question I have is, what are the advantages, in this case, of moving to Linux. Linux has become as strong as it has by being dedicated to practical solutions, not ideological ones. The best one I can see is that the licences for Windows are signifigantly higher than the $5 they are charging their customers. In that case a slight increase cost of hardware is acceptable.
Lucent modems are reasonably cheap, and the chipset has drivers (shipped with Linspire, back when it was Lindows). Also, Lucent is one of the better performing Winmodems (although my experience here is with the windows driver, so your milage may vary). If slight increases in hardware cost are acceptable, the Lucent driver is stable under Linux, and ships in serveral major distributions.
I work at a place where people develop on Unix. Not exactly n00bs. Yet, we almost all use either OSX or Windows at home. Why? While Linux is better at some things (like being a server), trying to install desktop software only to go through dependency and obscure problem hell is something we don't like to spend our free time doing. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and Unix. It's just not designed as a desktop OS, even redhat admits as much.
If the kid gets a computer with Linux, he'll prolly get someone to put Windows on it (which Daddy/Mommy knows how to use) or just buy another computer. It's much better for Free Software and for kids to put polished OSS on a Windows box (like Open Office, Firefox, and Gimp).
I really hope Linux will get there someday. It's just that today isn't that day, and by pushing a unready product to an audience, you give it a bad reputation.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Even when using PCI hardware based internal modems (such as US Robotics/3-Com modems) it's a crapshoot. Just because a modem is listed as being Linux compatible is no guarantee. Getting online depends a lot on what distro you're using.
For example, on my Linux distro test box I have a 3CP5610 internal PCI modem. It works fine with Xandros, Lycoris, and Mandrake. Knoppix can detect the modem, and dials up to my ISP but cannot truly connect (although my KPPP settings are identical to the settings in Mandrake). Mepis cannot detect the modem, even though I tell it to use ttys4.
With the rise in broadband access, modem support is becoming less of an issue. But for those needing dial-up access, what distro you use can make or break your ability to get online.
When Linux can support ALL of my apps and hardware, I will accept it as a real OS.
When you get real apps and hardware, we'll accept you as a real person.
I'm the de facto maintainer of the CLMD5620DT driver after the guy who wrote the driver disappeared (I just added an AT command parser, it used custom commands before).
:(
My advice : try to find actual, hardware modems somewhere. A real 33600 is better than a 56K winmodem.
In the particular case of the CLMD5620DT, it used to work sometimes with 2.2 kernels (the version I released, with AT commands, is 0.3.0-gg), I made a quick port to 2.4 (you may find it as version 0.4.0) and I have no idea if it works with 2.6 kernels. I don't even have the modem anymore
My website
I wish I had mod points since you'd definately be getting a -1 TROLL from me.
Basically your strategy is to call names, and repeat an old Linux bash. Your statement has virtually nothing to do with the post.
Last I checked Linux is being adopted by the masses. Many many more people are converting to Linux than are converting from Linux. Entire countries are basing their IT infrastructure on Linux. So I will argue that Linux IS being adopted ona large scale. Of course it could be a larger scale, but Rome empire was not built over night; nor did it fall in one night.
I'll also say hardware compatibility is a major problem for Windows, especially given the multiple version of it. The people getting the refurbed computers will likely have a difficult time adding any NEW current hardware upgrades to their system. Since Windows 98 is no longer supported by MS, driver suppoort is waning.
Even when it was the only game in town HW sipport (especially modems) was flakey at best. I would have to reboot after every time I used my scanner. Sometimes my sound card would lock up after conflicting with my scanner. Also, I worked ISP technical support and EDI technical support during Windows 95/98 heyday. I can confidently say that most modems did not work well out of the box with any old flavor of windows.
Besides endless conflicts with IRQs and port assignments, especially with the "plug and pray" of Windows 95/98, most modems needed arcane initializations strings that properly matched up to the particular brand of modems used in the ISP bank. It was a mess. and very very annoying from a support perspective, probably cut years off my life.
Hard/Software compatibility is mostly a non-issue in Linux anymore, aside from bleeding edge components. In this case I would be willing to bet that the modem support will be better for a modern Linux distro, than for a 7+ year old OS. I would venture to say a modern Linux distro will support more common hardware better than windows98, especially since USB support was in its infancy with 98.
You have clearly not spent any time with Linux, nor have you probably spent a lot of time trying to support any significant number of remote machines, dialup or otherwise. I have, and I will say that I would have left the tech industry a long time ago if I had to continue using MS operating systems and products.
Perhaps, your brain is big enough to remember all the exceptions, nuances, quirks within the convuluted and confusing dialaog box hell that makes up the Windows world. With each iteraction of MS product line getting more confusing and more complex. My brain isn't, so once I figure out a problem once, it becimes a simple shell script (kind of like your batch files) so that everythign can be repeated again and again.
Ok I'm getting a little off target here myself. My point is Linux is not a gimmick, and your comment is mean spirited FUD at best.
-MS2k
I've got a Netcomm 56k internal based on the Lucent Mars chipset. Contrary to the amount of flak I've heard levelled at the hardware, the drivers from here work solidly in my experience, with both 2.4 and 2.6 series kernels.
However, not all winmodems are created equal. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I believe it depends on whether or not the winmodem in question actually DOES have a controller chip and just needs proprietary drivers, as opposed to a true controllerless modem. From what I've read, the Lucent AMR modems are genuinely controllerless and thus not supported under Linux.
In a nutshell, because the term "winmodem" is a catchment word and actually describes quite a large number of different devices, you need to make sure you have reasonably intimate knowledge of which specific breed of winmodem you've got. Some will work, some won't...but again, in my experience anyway with my own chipset, both the 2.4 and 2.6 Lucent modules work well.
Of course, a standard hardware modem is always more desirable if you can get one...particularly seeing as the Lucent modules taint the kernel, which may be a problem for some people. (it doesn't particularly bother me) The advantages of winmodems however are price, greater level of availability these days from what I've seen, and marginally better throughput than their standard cousins in some instances. I'm hoping to eventually save up for a standard/external one of these days, and as I said they are more desirable if you can find/afford it...but I'm at least surviving on my Lucent right now.