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Kernel Builders Appeal For Open Source Drivers
snydeq writes "The Linux kernel development community has released a statement emphasizing the need for open source drivers. The statement, signed by 135 developers, is aimed at preventing future vendors from following the closed source path. One holdout cited is Nvidia. The Linux Foundation has also released a statement in support: 'The Linux Foundation recommends that hardware manufacturers provide open source kernel modules. The open source nature of Linux is intrinsic to its success. We encourage manufacturers to work with the kernel community to provide open source kernel modules in order to enable their users and themselves to take advantage of the considerable benefits that Linux makes possible.'"
Lexmark not only doesn't provide the details needed to write OS drivers for its newer printers, it won't even provide proprietary drivers like ATI and nVidia do. I know, because when my sister moved from Windows to Ubuntu about a month or so ago, she had to buy a new printer because there wasn't any support for her fairly new Lexmark.
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Scenario: Mom asks you to install Ubuntu on her Dell computer setup.
Problems:
1) Open Source libata driver for the SATA optical drive causes frequent timeouts and hangs. Looks like a problem with the Ubuntu kernel. Tell Mom it's just like Windows XP, there are problems which will be updated and fixed "eventually".
2) Dell printer not supported by CUPS and open source drivers. There is no support from Dell, but a 20 minute Google search effort turns up the model is a re-branded Lexmark. The Ubuntu community forums detail a process to install proprietary Lexmark drivers for Debian GNU/Linux. Tell mom it's just like Windows XP, some printers need a certain version of driver for the device.
3) Displayed video is incorrect on Dell LCD display. Search Google for about a solid hour to find an answer. Looks like an Ubuntu problem with an open source driver. Tell Mom that there's nothing wrong with her computer, even though the screen is completely black for the whole boot process.
My own conclusion:
Ubuntu is a hit-or-miss installation for Dell hardware owners. Mostly miss. The open source or closed source nature of a driver does not factor into user acceptance. The user is uncomfortable when their hardware is "broken" due to a missing or incompatible driver.
Mom's conclusion:
The Ubuntu Hardy "bird" logo is "pretty".
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
If that was a troll it wasn't even a good one.
The Linux kernel (as in, what comes with the source) is bloated because a lot of the code that runs in kernelspace on a linux machine COMES with the kernel, this is not the case on other OS, such as OS X and its XNU kernel. If you grab the XNU source from Apple it contains probably less than 50% of what ends up actually running in the kernel space.
This isn't a bad thing, it just means a lot of the code running in kernel space is open source and is distributed together.
As for stability, Linux is one of the most stable systems I've used, especially for web services.
The graphics card industry is cutthroat. The hardware is only part of the story - the drivers also do a lot of optimizing. They are probably worried competitors will use their own tricks against them.
Drivers compile shaders into something the video card can run - maybe they think their compiler optimizes better. On Windows at least, nVidia drivers will try to use SMP to prepare a few frames in advance for more efficient streaming.
Drivers don't make the difference between the high- and low- end cards anymore. It used to be that the card would report a device ID, and then the driver would enable/disable features based on that device ID. This allowed both software mods and simple board mods to switch device ID in order to enable Quadro / FireGL features on GeForce / Radeon cards.
That's not the case anymore, which is why you can't find any mods for recent cards.
In fact, that's precisely how both nvidia and ati differentiate their "professional" cards from their "consumer" cards.
Ease of 'hacking' apparently isn't much of a concern because cards from both vendors have been 'upgradeable' in this manner for more than a decade.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
One thing that I've started realizing lately is that we need to improve the open source drivers that we already have. This may give companies more incentive to open their own drivers.
For example, we are all happy about the free software drivers that Intel provides for the i950, etc graphics chipsets. However, there are still some significant 3D performance issues with this driver. I don't blame the team working on it because they have other important priorities. However, it is a fact that games run many times faster on Windows with this chipset than in X (and I'm not just talking about Wine games). Games like Vegastrike just don't run acceptably in X on a i945GM box -- and it should be able to handle this game easily.
If we could pick a few drivers that need help and make them indisputably good, this might provide incentive for companies to support our efforts.
I would be happy to start working on the the Intel graphics driver with an aim to improving its 3D performance. However, even though I have 20 years of application development, I'm a newbie at driver development. I don't know where to start. If anyone can point me in the right direction.... Even if it takes me a really long time to make any improvement, I'll at least be another pair of eyes.
And NVidia i a real burden this way. Their driver installers for Linux move aside your existing your OpenGL libraries, without notifying the package manager. This means that your next software update or rebuild will ruin your NVidia drivers, because the package manager does not know about these semi-manually installed files.
Huh? On Ubuntu all this 'just works'. I applied a Kernel upgrade a few weeks ago on Gutsy and the Nvidia drivers *were* dealt with totally invisibly by the package manager. Maybe other distros don't do this but it's obviously possible.
Portage includes nVidia drivers which are installed "automatically" when requested. It even provides a command line interface to switch between the binary nvidia drivers and the xorg-x11 default ones.
Can't speak for other distros, but installing the drivers was never a problem.
Is it technically impossible to provide for closed-source drivers in Linux? Or is this just yet another religious issue from people who want to force their own views on anyone else?
Many people simply want Linux as an alternative to Windows, and a good alternative it is already. But insisting on open-source drivers will make the situation worse, not better in the long run: more and more special-purpose hardware is getting attached to the computer; mobile devices, chipcard readers, entertainment devices, GPS devices ... the list goes on and on.
It is simply naive to think that we will get open-source drivers for all of these. We can be happy if we get some sort of half-baked closed source driver.
At the current moment I have the following devices that do not work fully with Linux:
- A canon camera: PTP transfer works, but under Windows I can also remote control it, do timed picture grabs, remote view the sensor -- none of which works with Linux
- A Garming GPS device: nearly nothing works under Linux, the software for managing (proprietary of course) maps is only available under Windows, routes management only works with that software
- A Sony-Ericcson mobile phone: mounting as a removable device works, but there is no decent support for synchronizing as under Windows
- All-in-one printer/fax/copier most of these do not work or are limited under Linux in comparison to Windows. Nearly all ink printers still have severe limitations under Linux.
- Wireless: several cards I have tried to not work at all or do not supprot WPA
- A digital multimeter: only comes with software that runs under Windows
- A chip-card reader and the infrastructure to use it for secure payment and authentification - only usable under Windows and Mac.
I do not think that the make everything opensource issue is of such a high priority yet when all these things actually prevent the use of Linux: if somebody does have to use Windows or Mac to use any of the things they need, why should they use Linux in the first place?
On openSUSE it works. One click install and all.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
In Debian this is a package that is managed by apt.
I have a Lexmark color laser printer too. It's a C522N. It worked out of the box with Linux - no special drivers required. In fact it works with everything - it accepts PDF and Postscript and just prints them - no trouble, nice quality. It works with CUPS, and correctly tells my desktop when there's a problem like no paper.
It was cheap too, and is now a few years old - but it has newer successors in the same range.
As mine was so cheap, I don't understand why anybody would buy the versions which need special drivers.
I highly recommend this printer for Linux use.
The problems is also that there's a lot of "imaginary property" from very diverse source going into both the graphic card and the driver.
Companies can seldom "just release the source" of the drivers. They should either go the trouble of contacting all the 3rd party which were mandated to built parts and renegotiate a new agreement allowing the opening of the final product.
Or they should go the trouble of slowly re-writting a non NDA'ed documentation, that could be published freely on the net. But which would require systematic checks with legal department and such to be sure that nobody will suddenly sue because that publication was an infringement.
In both situation the work is non trivial, and lots of efforts are necessary. Several company simply decide not to go through all those hoops just to please what they see as a very small and marginal fraction of their market.
Nonetheless that didn't prevent Intel to pay teams to build drivers that where open source in the first place, ATI/AMD to decide to take the bull by the horn and *really go* through all the adventure of building legally releasable documentation (see also their promise that the next generations of GPU will have their video acceleration built more independently from the IP-protected DRM - currently their license of HDCP technology poses problem for opening the video unit) and VIA to finally release their code open because they don't have much 3rd party IP in there to begin with (see the whole "OEM will have to provide their own software solution for the H264 coding - we didn't buy one, we wanted the chip to be cheap" fiasco on Windows. It's a fiasco on windows, but makes it more easy to release on Linux).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Brother has pretty good linux support, their models are not quite as fancy as HP, but they release drivers for LPR and CUPS and the CUPS have source available.
I think I read about that here a year or so ago.
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html
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