Extensive Coverage of Ottawa Linux Symposium 2006

cdlu writes "LWN and NewsForge both extensively covered the goings-on at this year's OLS. NewsForge: day 1, day 2, day 3, and day 4. LWN (subscription required for most): article 1, article 2, article 3, and article 4." I especially enjoyed the description of reverse engineering a USB device from cdlu's coverage of day 3; one day wireless USB devices will really work with out-of-the-box Linux! Update: 07/25 04:57 GMT by T : Eric Preston, who delivered that talk on reverse engineering USB devices, kindly linked to both his slides and the accompanying screenshots.

Comments

We Suck!

[JamesP]

The best presentations, IMHO:

Killing Kittens (David Arlie)
LuserSpace sucks (DaveJ)
Myths about Linux (Greg KH)

OK, not the exact names, but you get the picture.

The first one adresses graphic vendors that think their closed driver has fairy poo on them.

The second adresses brain dead programmers that keep mistreating files AND the general OS.

The third has the coolest last slide I've seen in a presentation.

Re:We Suck!

[Fractal Dice]

The "Open Source Graphic Drivers - They Don't Kill Kittens" talk was very entertaining, but was it any good? There was a fairly lengthy debate in the halls afterwards over whether it was productive or not to rant about ATI and Nvidia.

Yes, it got across the point that the video card vendors are not playing nice, but is whining about it going to get the community anywhere? I'd have liked to have seen a counter-presentation from the vendors listing their concerns in their own words and what is required for them to feel safe releasing the required documentation. What can people do to effectively apply polite preasure? What system assemblers should be leading the charge to change the minds of card vendors?

(strangely enough, you can support a bazillion devices without problem, but if the graphics driver blows users seem to notice, get cranky and judge the whole OS by it)

road hazard ahead...

[SuperBanana]

one day wireless USB devices will really work with out-of-the-box Linux!

Getting a driver into Linux is so full of road hazards because the "community"(read: the loudest mouths) is too idealistic, eccentric, and inflexible...and as a result, most companies go "fuck that 2% of the market" and release Windows drivers that, long as they work, nobody complains about, ever. Even MacOS X is easier; it's a much more stable "target" hardware/software-wise, and the community doesn't mix politics with purchases.

Not to mention most likely Brand X wireless card came complete with drivers from OEM company Z, just with Brand X silkscreened on the PCB...and Brand X couldn't "release" the drivers or write open-source ones if they wanted to.

Wireless USB?

[Karma Farmer]

one day wireless USB devices will really work with out-of-the-box Linux!

Has the Wireless USB (WUSB) specification even been finalized yet? Isn't it a little early to get excited about a niche protocol that may never reach the market?

Or does the submitter not understand the difference between Wireless USB and USB Wireless Networking Adapters?

Re:Wireless USB?

[vux984]

Or does the submitter not understand the difference between Wireless USB and USB Wireless Networking Adapters?

IMHO PEBKAC :)

For most of us, "wireless usb devices", -are- "usb wireless network adapters". Given the notoriety these things have and the context of the sentence... "one day they'll actually work out of the box..." it seemed pretty clear to me what the submitter meant, to the degree that I didn't even think about WUSB.

I think at this point, "wireless usb", as the "thing that sort of works just like bluetooth" is enough of a niche that most people, including the submitter might not have even heard of it, so its not really fair to accuse them of not understanding the difference between A and B, when they probably never heard of B.

Microsoft rejoices!

[Maelwryth]

"Corbet says that there's not a firm kernel bug count. As the number of users increases, he noted, so to does the number of bug reports. More code means more bugs, even if the proportion of bugs (bugs per thousand lines of code) drops."

Oh dear. I can see that being quoted.

Demanding programming specifications

[Lost Found]

You know, I used to think just like this -- though I didn't consider it 'whining', I worried about the practice, thinking it might just put the vendors off.

And then I watched the OpenBSD project flame the hell out of a Hifn representative for asserting that his company provided 'open documentation' (when in fact acquiring said documentation required registration that the OpenBSD developers felt violated their privacy). When I first read the systematically harsh response to the Hifn representative (including Theo's threat to drop the free driver from the OpenBSD tree), I was absolutely stunned that a group of free software developers would be so reckless.

But it got me thinking... we can't all bend over and ask for it from the vendors forever. Linux marketshare is growing in every segment, and we do have an increasing amount of support from giants like IBM. If it were possible for the projects to take a unified stance (across Linux and the three *BSDs) and persistently demand programming specifications from the vendors, what's going to happen -- they're going to say "fuck you for asking" and drop their binary drivers too?

Something tells me that giving your customers the finger, even if it's only an operating system or two only represent 6-10% of your desktop market, isn't the sort of thing you do to appease shareholders. So while they might not respond immediately, it's not like we're losing anything.

I'm thinking we should start a unified petition to AMD now that they're acquiring ATI - form an online petition to AMD that says "We are NVIDIA customers who will eBay our GPUs tomorrow and buy ATI if you release open drivers".

Yeah right...

[Brandybuck]

one day wireless USB devices will really work with out-of-the-box Linux!

Yeah right. That will happen the day after video card manufacturers release Free Software drivers...