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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.
if he did, good for him, if he didn't he just like every other lieing software house out there.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
A list of the twelve companies, please?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Marketing hype or not, I'm always happy to see more hardware supported by free drivers. Thanks, Greg.
To me, the issue isn't so much drivers as patents and usability.
My daughter's mp3 player didn't need any special drivers, because it's simply a standard keychain drive that happens to be able to play mp3's. However, she totally couldn't figure out how to use it on her ubuntu box. There was one problem after another. Ubuntu tried to do the right thing by popping up a gui app when she connected it, but then we couldn't get the gui app to do what we wanted to do. Part of the problem was that getting the mp3 codec to work was a pain, and that springs directly from the fact that mp3 is patented.
My Brother HL-1440 laser printer is 100% supported in Linux. Brother hired the CUPS developers to write GPL-licensed drivers for all their printers. Joy! Unfortunately, I've run into one usability problem after another, all of which are basically problems with the usability of CUPS. I know I'm not the only person in the world who thinks CUPS is a pain, because I've seen other people criticize it for problems that are the same ones I'm experiencing. For instance, CUPS remembers too much of its state, and when it freaks out (e.g., printer spewing page after page of garbage), it's difficult to get CUPS back into a known-good state.
Find free books.
This post brought to you by these two patches, against 2.6.22-rc2:s s.general/2368 s s.general/2369
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wirele
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wirele
The little WG11v2 is a happy interface. Figure I'll need to stockpile a couple them critters.
Now, how is it that I'm off the hook for managing any of that bad, bad firmware with this wee beastie?
Ivo or Michael, though I'm nowhere near as cool as you dudes, I'll buy you a beverage if I see you in Ottawa next month.
Dunno if GKH's driver program actually helped in this matter, but the general trend in hardware is positive, and I feel Realtek and Netgear deserve a free shill.
Best,
Chris
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
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.
Modules. Pretty much all drivers are modules and not compiled directly into the kernel. They don't increase the kernel size unless you load them. Although they do increase the kernel source size (in their own files generally) so it is taking a little longer to compile all kernel modules, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for things just working.
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
Uhhh.. no he wasn't. He wasn't lying at all.
Why would you feel the need to post a "translation" when you have no idea what you are talking about?
The fact that people are willing to write Open Source software without charging a fee for their services is hardly a new concept, but Greg did the smart thing of treating it like it is and, in doing so, attracted the attention of people who thought that it wasn't the case.
This was one of the biggest problems with the Free Software movement before Open Source came along.. no-one talked about the benefits that businesses could get from the community. For a while, no-one talked about anything else, and then it went quiet again. RMS will tell you that we need to talk about freedom. I happen to agree, but we also need to talk about the practical advantages of open software development too.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Then you need to learn how to ask questions better.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I believe it's because you mentioned that they are "Two things that a reliable kernel should avoid?" That makes you sound like you know better, so that's the troll-like bit. Also, everyone on /. is assumed to know everything about everything when posting unless said otherwise...
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
If you had said "I think" or "I thought", you wouldn't have sounded like a "knows-better-than-you" kind of person. Linguistics and all that.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
I wonder if support could get out to little groups who are trying hard. I personally have a webcam with no driver and the group trying to develop one just doesn't seem to be there enough. If someone is offering this support then it would be nice if he found a group like this and helped out. It would be nice to have a website that brings together all drivers that are being worked on and make them easy to find for someone who really wants to help. Here is the driver I was talking about by the way: http://www.actiongames.co.uk/m560x/
Utinam me logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.
Seriously, I don't know crap about kernel development, but:
1) I knew the answer to your question since the first time I even tried to compile a kernel. By "compile a kernel", I mean run make menuconfig, flip through idiot proof menus and say yes when it tells me to.
2) You proposed a bunch of dumb ideas implying that the people who actually do know how to develop one are idiots.
3) asking questions in a dick way and then appending a question mark in no way indicates humility, or even politeness.
Seriously, asking dumb questions is fine, but *you* need to actively treat them as dumb questions if you want them to be treated as legitimate questions in a problem space in which you're ignorant. Don't treat the people you want answers from as dumb preemptively.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
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.
NVIDIA bought ULi and then cancelled development of the M920x, but you can (still) buy DVB receivers which use this chipset.
Requests for assistance or interface specifications have been refused by NVIDIA.
Nemosoft wrote a GPL driver which called out to a binary decompressor module. All was OK for a couple of years. Then Greg decided to rip out the callback. So suddenly the camera would only work in 160*120. Nemosoft then asked for the crippled driver to be removed. Greg did. Then Saillard forked the driver and decompiled the decompressor and put it back in the kernel. Nemosoft then complained that the decompiled code was illegal and got it removed from the kernel again.
Each step sounds like a perfect example of what the original poster was complaining about - people keep making changes that cause things to stop working.
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;
Car analogy:
The last time I used a car, I had to hand crank it myself to start it. It was completely unacceptable!
a few replies later...
From the replies, I'm glad to hear this problem fixed, but approx. 70 years ago, it was a well-known limitation of cars.
Seriously, you make broad criticisms and then admit you really don't know the current state of things? How fair is that?
Next time, be honest about the last time you used the system, state your concerns about how the system behaved then, and then ask if your experience is still relevant.
*sigh* back to work...