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Know Any Hardware Needing Better Linux Support?
Dev Null writes "The Linux device driver project has hit something of a snag: they have lots of developers, but few devices to work on, so they're looking for input concerning which devices aren't well-supported in Linux. If any of you know of devices that could use better support, you can help out by listing them on the project's wiki."
..of all, why are they excluding printers? The fact that Linux printing is done is userspace is not an excuse. When I want to print or scan on a Linux machine, I don't want to hear that technicality. I just want it to work.
-- Subvert the dominant paradigm. Repeat as desired. http://ownlifeful.com/
Know Any Hardware Needing Better Linux Support?
Pretty much any Windows PC, I'd say.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
No, I mean drivers that support 3d acceleration, and docking and undocking, and xrandr, and xv, and suspend to RAM, and power management, all without crashing. I've been waiting for years.
Hmm, that's a lot. However, how many of them actually will end up doing real work when real work comes? But still, very impressive number.
Maybe that's an X thing rather than a Linux thing but why is it so that in 2007 that feature looks broken? most times any flavor of win9x or NT correctly detects the screen and allows to choose res and refresh according to the monitor limits. I'm part of an association that builds PC from parts donated or lying in the streets, we use more or less crappy CRTs.
Editing the xorg.conf and tell bullshit about frequency ranges to get 1024x768 85Hz gets boring. Also PCs with improperly blanked screens aren't a rare sight. There are many computers labs full of them at the university (X terminals, diskless VIA C3 PC with 17" CRT), wasting a ridiculous amount of energy displaying black rather than being stand by. That should be urgently fixed.
Powermanagement for laptops seems to have consistently been inconsistent. As someone who uses laptops regularlz, having basic functions like hibernation and going into sleep mode causing complete system lockups on a fairly regular basis is a pretty big show-stopper. While I'd love to see the range of supported hardware expanded, I would really love if existing things like ACPI and various suspend technologies worked better and more consistently. It seems every few releases it works for a while then it completely breaks again. I am about to downgrade a laptop from Ubuntu Gutsy back to Feisty for this very reason.
Having the ability to quickly suspend my machine and bring it up again is extremely high on the list of priorities.
Also, there are plenty of cards that work, but still have problems. My Audigy NX operates at the wrong frequency when playing UT2004. Everything sounds higher pitched than it should.
Also, sound cards that support Dolby Digital Live hardware encoding. For that matter, it'd be nice if AC3 encoding worked well with alsa. Pretty gimpy last I tried it.
For example, Presonus Firebox and Firepod. Not just support but proper latency support I guess ( if I can so bold to demand them )
The USB keyboards ( like M-Audio keystations and others ).
It would be really sweet to work on audio in Linux for us CS geeks ( write scripts for audio effects rather than knobs and bars in weird custom interfaces ).
Linux is a kernel. Almost every other program running on a Linux-based system, be it GNU/Linux or uClinux, is an application running in user space, a part of memory separate from "kernel space". The drivers for printers are "filters" for an application called CUPS, the drivers for scanners are modules for an application called SANE, and the drivers for video cards are modules for an application called X.Org X11.
The people who made this request for proposals are interested in projects that need specific support from kernel space. The kernel side of scanning and printing is solved through libusb.
I have an nvidia 8600 on a P35 motherboard. Tried 4 different distros, each crashed in the installation. Then I tried a text-based installer. Works fine.
These wireless cards are integrated in so many laptops, and using ndiswrapper is still pretty crappy.
Really, I have about half a dozen webcams here which I cannot use, alas I only have one of each so it sort of kills any gain for me to send them the webcam so they can develop the driver (Great, another webcam supported but not in my set of cams :( ).
What's dreadfully bad about webcams is that even with the same model number/name you can end up with a completely different bridge or sensor chip inside either due to a revision change or locality, really, it's pot luck at best.
As for wifi cards, it's really more of a situation where a few of the current drivers are incredibly fickle - perhaps it's the nature of the beast? I've got a RT2400 type card which if it doesn't get its setup parameters within ~2 seconds of the module being loaded it utterly refuses to accept anything else until a complete restart. Things like that make me feel like I'm playing in Windows again.
It's already been voiced in the thread, and is said very well in this post about the need for complete drivers instead of just drivers that work - but not fully.
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?
There is a complete lack of PC532 support.
Advice: on VPS providers
Since all the problems listed have been related to userspace... and if the kernel writers don't have enough to work with... can we not encourage some of the kernel writers to move to userspace coding?
Wireless.
The current driver space for wireless components in Linux is an odd hodge-podge of ndiswrapper, madwifi (two versions), beta drivers external to the mainline kernel, minimal built-in support and blind luck. Cleaning this up should keep a good number of people very busy.
Why don't they go out to Staples, close their eyes, pick up a box in the wireless networking shelf, with preference to the 802.11n boxes and pick one and start writing. What about USB wifi cards? Those still are pretty well hit and miss. What about Broadcom wifi chips, you know the ones shipped with half of HP systems. Start working on a free driver or firmware or whatever is needed. Then, when all the wifi chips are supported and I don't have to worry about my new laptop not being able to get on the internet because HP locked the mini-pci slot to only one card, then we can take a walk down to the Video Card isle. Until you are done with Wifi, we will hold off on the hard stuff.
:)
Don't get me wrong, This is a great service. Just pick something that doesn't have X, be it firmware, a driver stack, whatever it may be and just start coding. I am serious, pick a random box at some store and start working. Look at the Sunday flyer, what is being put on sale. Find one of those devices and if it does not have linux support, buy it, start working on it.
Why do you need to wait around for manufacturers to give you devices? Find what people can and will be buying and start supporting that first, the stuff that won't come out for a year doesn't matter if I can't go in a buy a 802.11n card now and get it to work. And if it doesn't support WPA2, I don't want to hear it, go back to your desk and do it over. I want to see the work this time. No doing it in your head.
NDIS is not an option, it is not debuggable or portable across architectures. I have a few PPC machines I would like to use a 802.11n USB network card with.
How about any Broadcom wifi card, with firmware so the driver can be stabilized better than their engineers can.
Just because you don't like how hard it will be shouldn't keep you from starting on it.
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
A very good use of these folks' time would be to reach some milestones on the Linux driver API so that the dang thing will stop changing all the time. A fundamental assumption of Linux is that constantly changing interfaces is no problem because the legions of faceless programmers will gladly rewrite everything each time around. True (but annoying) for generic hardware that everyone cares about, but not at all true for oddball stuff.
... by a tiny group of people ... every few months.
I'm maintaining a driver for a bus adapter interface (for connecting old minicomputer peripherals to PCs) and it's a much bigger time sink than it needs to be. The source code is on my web site, but the users are, well, USERS, so when a new kernel release breaks it they just chuck it back at me to fix. So much for open source taking care of itself by magic. I won't bother submitting this driver to the free driver project because it's kind of useless without the $3000 piece of hardware it works with (and that's not counting the crates full of minicomputer hardware needed for testing). I need mine and I don't picture these folks buying their own no matter how much they care.
Anyway I understand why Linus needs the freedom to get better ideas in the future and doesn't want to be weighed down with tons of backwards-compatibility stuff, but I still think it would make Linux more useful to split the difference and occasionally define an interface (doesn't have to be the default as long as you can ask for it somehow) which is guaranteed to work for some number of years. Then flush it at the end but at least some large amount of rarely-used stuff worked OK in the mean time, w/o having to be rewritten
OK so I'm still stinging from udev. Sure, it's cute. But it required driver hacking (yet again) *and* broke my user-mode application by changing some of the device names. That would be OK back in kernel 0.x days but this is way too late in Linux history to start breaking applications, and after 16-17 years it's really time for the external interface to the kernel to start quieting down too.
And that, in a nutshell, is why Linux will never be mainstream.
You see, nobody *cares*. They don't understand the first thing about kernel space and user space. They've never *heard* of it, don't know what it is, and couldn't give a rat's ass about some fancy "ring zero".
This seems to come as a surprise to many Linux advocates, but they just want their recently purchased device to work. They want that shiny new game they just picked up at Best Buy to run. They want it to play those online streaming movies from Netflix! If it doesn't, then Linux is useless to them, and they'll keep using Windows. You have to solve people's *actual problems*, not make their eyes glaze over with details they don't care about.
If Toyota was selling cars that worked, but the Honda cars wouldn't start and wouldn't run on any of the fuels sold by the corner gas station, it wouldn't matter at all if the Honda engineers could talk a good line about the skillset needed to design the pistons being different than the skillset needed to design the brake rotors. Nobody would want the cars! That's the position Linux is in now in the desktop, and until this attitude disappears, it always will be in that position.
You want Joe Sixpack to adopt Linux? Make it work with his hardware and his software. Make it seamless, so when he goes to Netflix the online play "just works". No excuses, no "but...", or "you don't understand that...", or "netflix needs to...". Nobody *cares*. Just make the damn thing work! If that is too hard to do, then Linux will never compete with Windows. It has to work for the things real people really do, not just for the l33t hackers who live to type arcane commands into bash prompts.
Almost all PIII-era Intel Integrated Graphics chips won't allow Live CD's to start. They just hang when you try to load the kernel.
It would be nice to put all those old boxes to use.
The government can't save you.
By your god-awful definition, Linux has perfect open-source support for nVidia graphics cards because the kernelspace shim exposes the memory to userspace, which is all the kernel needs to do. Well, for me and the 99.9% of the rest of the world that don't play word games, drivers are about functionality. "Does it have a Linux driver?" == "Is there a system, running the Linux kernel, where this device works as expected?" If you can't get results then it doesn't have support in any meaningful way I can think of.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Last time I checked webcam support was implemented as a kernel module (gspca or spca5xx):
http://mxhaard.free.fr/index.html
Its about using the correct tool for the job.
Would you prefer printer drivers being in the kernel?
There are already appropriate projects which handle the bits which the kernel driver team are excluding.
Dont have a supported printer? Talk to the CUPS guys.
I can see where the fustration and confusion is coming from.
I just dont agree with it at all. These guys are kernel developers not CUPS or SANE developers.
It's user-space support and integration. While I've got a CS degree and can get things going myself, most people don't and can't. Telling them they need to upgrade some part of the kernel and do a recompile isn't going to do much for people. Much more work needs to be done along Ubuntu's philosophy of "it should just work". If it's easier to get working in windows, people will just use windows. I'm very happy to see that more and more hardware is becoming easier to get going under linux than windows, like my HP 3055 all-in-one unit.
If kernel developers have time they want to commit, but can't find anything to do, my humble suggestion is:
- Pulling in other drivers into the main kernel tree
- Testing, Optimisation & QA
- Consider working on user-land drivers such as USB devices.
As for the overall goal of supporting users, I think cutting down the time between software/driver release and packaging is critical. This is of course a distro issue, and a very good reason as to why too many distributions is a bad idea. Co-operation on common goals and focusing of efforts is one weakness I've found in FOSS, at the same time it's also a strength, but it's something to be mindful of in a less regimented development process.
I still think that the perspective should be just a LITTLE bit more oriented towards the user. The response of "it's not the kernel, it's the userspace, so go whine to someone else" is akin to the "You are in a hot-air balloon, Sir" joke - true but not useful.
I'm a user. I have a printer/GPU/whatever. It doesn't work on my Linux-running machine. I don't know or care whether it's a userspace or kernel issue. Heck, I don't even know the difference between the two. Hell, my only association with the word "kernel" is "the part of the nut that you eat", and all the word "userspace" reminds me of that I really should try and get a bigger cubicle. I just want my friggin' printer to work! And as far as I know, either Linux (and to me Linux refers to the WHOLE GNU/Linux suit) either DOES it or it DOESN'T.
If there are too many kernel programmers for the kernel problems to solve, then maybe more should try to specialize in userspace drivers, or whatever happens to be the problem that currently needs to be solved (and PLEASE don't get started about how "they don't get paid so don't tell them what to do", because all you do is reinforce MS's primary argument to "why Linux isn't as good as Windoze").
I like Linux as much as the next geek, but unlike the Fundamentalist Linuxist (who will undoubtedly mod me down as Troll for my insolent heresy towards the Sanctity of the Linux Kernel) I keep my eyes open about issues from the perspective of those who need those issues fixed, not in the Ivory Tower of Theoretical Separation of Kernel and User Space on which far too many people are sitting).
Added in 2.6.19.
What's it going to take to get people to see that technological ignorance is NOT OKAY? Any technology can cause damage if it's used by people who don't know how it works. I'm not saying people should know how to code, but you don't know the difference between a client and server, stay the fuck off the net until you're read your first "for dummies" book.
Here's how to get rid of botnets: license computer users. If you don't know enough about the technology to keep from harming the rest of society, you don't get to use it. If you can't keep your computer secure, you get to use snailmail, POTS and get your videos at Blockbuster.
Quit making excuses for people who don't want to learn how their computers work. They are the cause of may of the problems that people who want to use appropriately
When I got my first net access in 1988, the ISP owner interviewed me personally to make sure I'd use the resources responsibly. We should go back to that.
Don't make excuses for idiots. If Joe Sixpack doesn't want to learn how his computer works, take away his keyboard.
The seperation between kernelspace and userland is NOT theoretical. This is slashdot and it would be like saying that the people who worked on your cars powertrain should fix the issues with the electrical subsystem. It then offcourse becomes obvious why this is idiotic, people who know engines don't need to know anything about electricity, yes both are "power" but at the same time totally different.
The kernels task is to provide the base system that other software can then use to run on. You really don't want to tie to much stuff into the kernel, and if possible migrate stuff OUT of it and keep only the bare fundementals inside. Why? Windows is an excellent reason why. If the kernel crashes your are fucked, if a userspace program crashes, then you just restart that program while the kernel goes on.
Take printers, the kernel does the USB protocol, but CUPS talks to the printer. The kernel handles the AGP bus, but is X11 that does the video work. Therefore the drivers for your printer and video card need to be part of these later projects. Offcourse it gets confusing with video cards because they ALSO need to be part of the kernel.
Say you call up the electricity company to complain your PC don't work, they are very nice and send an engineer over. He will check the outlet, confirm it supplies the proper current and then leave. Your PC still don't work? Not his problem, not his job and most important, he may very well not even know where to start. Call Dell instead.
Cups is a totally different project with its own team of people and own goals and ambition. To say that a kernel developer should just switch to that project instead is starting to smell a lot like extreme arrogance from your part. Who are you to say what an other person should do?
People often start speaking of elitism, but what do you call it when a person like you expects everyone else to jump at their demands?
The strength of Linux comes from its volunteers, who work hard on the stuff they are passionate about. Sadly there are also weaknesses in this which according to the reactions so far seem to be, don't buy Lexmark. I can live with that, if you can't. Well there is a small company called Microsoft operating out of Redmond. YOu might want to give them a call, I am sure they will JUMP at the change to develop drivers specifically for your hardware needs.
Oh but wait. MS doesn't do that does it. Does MS provide code to run old software that don't wanna run on their latests OS? No. Does it provide drivers for hardware that has problems? No.
Odd, that you are so undemanding of a product you pay for, but think volunteers should be at your beg and call.
Next time something don't work, blame the company you paid for it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The 300 of you are all kernel driver devs but most drivers don't belong in the kernel. So 10 of you can hang around and maybe a few years before 2038 the rest of you will be needed ;).
Meanwhile a fair number of us need:
1) RAID monitoring tools (bad to have a RAID system but no way to know if a drive has failed)
2) Temperature/fan/etc sensor monitoring.
3) did I hear one or two mentioning printer drivers?
4) Video drivers.
5) Sound drivers.
6) NIC drivers.
7) Virtualization hardware stuff.
The problem I see is for a fair number of these is you might actually have "drivers" (I use the term loosely) for say RHEL4, but not for RHEL3, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE, or whatever.
The main problem I suppose is hardware companies not wanting to cooperate in ways that the Linux people want.
But with 32 bit Windows, you can typically use the same drivers from Win2K onwards at least until that crap called Vista. Whereas with Linux, there's a fair chance that a kernel update would break something.
Just because there aren't enough new driver requests doesn't mean they don't have shit to do. I have installed Gusty Gibbon on a number of systems and found that what does work, only works in a half decent way.
What they need to do is take these guys, go back about 2 years worth of hardware and update and make the existing hardware better.
Once my Touchpad works without freezing in psmouse.c randomly, and sound, video, and all the other issues are fully resolved and solid, then please don't waste our time making more hardware barely work!
LAPTOPS
Things like ACPI, internal modems, infrared ports and card readers should work just like we see in the operating system with the four-colour-flag.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I don't know what the current state of broadcom built in wireless cards is, but they were the source of endless frustration when trying to install linux on my last (HP) laptop. I had to use NDIS wrapper and it was never much fun.
or else!
Considered ditching the printer for something that works? yes, it would be nice to not have to do so, but given that the cost of the printer is far less than a Windows license... next time you upgrade O/S, get a new printer instead of paying for Windows?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Incidentally, this hardware doesn't "just work" in Windows, either. The advantage Windows has is that the manufacturer writes the driver for Microsoft. Why can't the manufacturer write the driver for Linux, too - especially for USB, where there's a stable library and the usual complaints of no-stable-kernel-ABI don't apply?
Some companies are coming around, HP, Intel, AMD. But many are not and that's not the fault of Linux developers - especially if the companies keep their interfaces "super seekrit" requiring a massive reverse engineering effort just to get minimal functionality.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Uhm, have you checked the kernel in the last 12 months?
Coverage of webcams is patchy at best. I've got a Creative Live Motion, pretty much the cheapest PTZ cam you can get, and there's absolutely no support for it. But then Creative are (in)famous for their poor support on non-Windows systems.
I suppose there could be some minor difference between the version that causes yours to break, but my Radeon 9200 SE works just fine. After tweaking the xorg.conf settings I even got the open source ATI driver in xorg to play nice with compositing. Mind you, I rarely use it for anything really fancy, so I guess there could be issues I'm not aware off, and as always, that it works for me doesn't preclude it from being absolutely broken for you. Of course, in any case the problem is with ATI and not the DRI developers.
Anyway, this is about as big a hint as companies could get that: There's people who will work for free if you just let them do so!. Seriously, cut the crap already, you're not going to manage going toe to toe with Intel by keeping the "intellectual property" in your crappy wireless drivers secret. In case you are obliged by some NDA to not give them the specs, well then GOOD FUCKING JOB. You've managed to put yourself in a situation where you have to turn down people willing to work for free. I'm sure this helps you improve your efficiency and that your stock holders are overjoyed about it. Really , good job. Maybe for your next product line you could start to require activation codes and on-line registration. You know, just to create even more goodwill amongst your consumers...
GPS Receivers (USB and/or Bluetooth)
Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
Devices that use userspace USB drivers:
- Printers (CUPS)
- Scanners (SANE)
- Cameras (gPhoto2)
Devices that use kernelspace USB drivers:
- USB Mass storage (card readers/pendrives/media players/etc)
- USB Networking
- USB Bluetooth
- USB to serial/parallel converters
- USB HID Input
- USB Audio
- USB Video Capture
That USB devices are a userspace issue is a lie. They go both ways.
Besides, Trance Vibrator support is already in... the kernel.
It's not just enough that they write a driver for Linux, as they do for windows. Sure, that's nice, and some have. But in practice, it's not enough to provide a binary-only driver as is commonly done for windows.
/usr/src/linux/include and expected a symlink, but witness how well even that works on many modern systems).
Linux often breaks compatibility for old drivers. Kernel APIs change and Linux has a very poor history of maintaining backwards compatibility for binary drivers. Companies that have tried to go down this path have quickly found they need to release MANY different version of the driver for different kernels, or support only a narrow range of kernels, such as a couple versions of a particular distro like RHEL.
Even when the driver is released as source, if it isn't GPL, or if it contains a non-GPL binary blob, or it doesn't follow practices the kernel devs use, or the code isn't up to other kernel standards including aesthetic considerations, it won't ever get integrated into the kernel. And really, the only way for a driver to "just work" in all common linux systems is for it to be integrated into the kernel. Take, for example, the vmware and nvidia kernel modules, which have an installer that automatically tries to search among many precompiled copies for one that matches the running kernel, and then falls back to trying to run gcc to compile the source. Even that is error prone, as gcc may not be installed, or the offical path to the kernel headers may change of the years (once scrips had
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Do you honestly believe that there are 300 people in the project with nothing to do beside waiting for a new device that needs a driver? All of them have a life (of some kind) with other stuff to do, and most of the are likely involved in other development projects. They just feel they have the expertise and surplus to also work on a device driver, should the need arise.
The original message was hardly a complaint, just a way to make hardware manufactures aware of the possibility of having this group write drivers for their devices.
Peace sells, but who's buying?
That has the one thing that has really put me of ever running Linux on a laptop (along with the terrible selection of commercial software) - its great on the server, great on the technical workstation but when it comes to the laptop and general purpose computing, it falls apart.
Such a thing already exists, it's called The Linux Documentation Project.
Need I say more?
Following up to myself here: maybe the foregoing was confusing, because printing is a bit special because the low-level functions (how long to wait etc.) are presumably standardized (either standard parallel port or send it over ethernet I guess), but here the high-level functions (i.e. how to encode the data to be sent to the printer) is not. And this high-level encoding is done in user-space by a program library called CUPS. And if the printer maker refuses to give the documentation necessary to write a CUPS driver (Adobe .ppd file) for your printer, well then you should just return the printer to them or complain to your country's consumer organization because you're S.O.L.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Yes, and don't forget that power issues are not for laptops alone anymore. I can see that it's hard to get around all this ACPI stuff and such, but this feature is too important not to get right. I am running a VIA EPIA mainboard, and I can currently not go to hibernation or suspend due to USB driver problems. So there you go: fix USB for VIA CN700 motherboards (it uses a VIA VT8237A South Bridge, also found on some laptops I head, so this fix might be for both laptop as well as "desktop" users).
Fortunately it was designed for an always on system. Currently it is off because of display problems after upgrading from feisty to gutsy.
Better than suggesting, I'd like to pay a bounty for some drivers I need. Anywhere I can do that?
"I'm not saying people should know how to code, but you don't know the difference between a client and server, stay the fuck off the net until you're read your first "for dummies" book."
You're an elitist retard.
My Dad just wants to order a CD and it's cheaper on Amazon.co.uk than it is in Tesco - why the fuck should he care about client, server or anything else? All he needs to know is that Internet Explorer allows him to get to a place where he can safely buy a CD for a certain price. All the rest of it is just detail, in the same way that I don't need to understand Tesco's supply chain to be able to effectvely purchase from them. Computers are a commodity household item these days. Stop trying to make yourself feel special by pretending it's important that you know more than other people - it really isn't.
--- Band: Joey Ultra
gtkPod works great. Check it out.