Microsoft Begs Hardware Makers To Take Support Seriously

Banana ricotta pancakes writes "Microsoft has confirmed that there will be a widespread public beta of Windows 7 in early 2009, while urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release to avoid the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista. 'There is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released,' Microsoft has warned them. Better hope that testing goes well."

Comments

Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[NoobixCube]

Now that Microsoft are feeling the pinch of competition, they no longer have hardware manufacturers over a barrel. The hardware manufacturers now have the power to control the public perception of Windows, rather than Windows controlling the perception of hardware.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Anonymous Coward]

you linsux users are really delusional, ain't ya? you get 2% market share and you act like you're motherfuckin pascal.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not sure that really has much to do with it. This isn't about MS keeping the OEMs from shipping other OSes, something that they are still pretty good at, this is about MS trying to get the device makers to ship drivers that don't suck, something that they've never had all that much luck with, though they seem to be very gradually improving.

MS doesn't have the power to coerce decent drivers out of the manufacturers ("Hmm, I see here that your latest wifi chipset driver has 37 unresolved trouble tickets. If you ever want your silicon to run on Windows again..."); but none of the device manufacturers have anything to gain from manipulating perceptions of windows. If one device vendor makes horrific drivers, consumers will blame windows; but OEMs will just drop that vendor. MS has a bit of power, with their driver certification stuff; but driver quality mostly comes down to the battle between the desire to save money by skimping on engineering and the desire to actually be able to sell products that don't ruin your reputation completely.

If MS were out there, begging vendors to write drivers for Windows, that would be a role reversal.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[eebra82]

Now that Microsoft are feeling the pinch of competition, they no longer have hardware manufacturers over a barrel. The hardware manufacturers now have the power to control the public perception of Windows, rather than Windows controlling the perception of hardware.

How did you come to this conclusion? The number of Windows users is still growing. OS X is taking a small percentage from that share, but their software is still restricted to their own hardware, making it very uninteresting for hardware manufacturers.

It's the fact that Windows is open to any hardware that makes manufacturers prefer this operating system. Also, the two factions live in symbiosis since none would exist without the other. Basically, Microsoft wants their software to work well and the manufacturers surely want their hardware to work well in what is to become the next major operating system that over 90% of the world's population uses.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[CheshireDragon]

You posting as AC proves that you know not what you speak of. May I point you here: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/10/how-linux-supports-more-device.html

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[kbrasee]

Because we all know this is the Year Of The Linux Desktop.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Anonymous Coward]

<quote><p>Like Compaq, Unisys, SCS, Wang, et al, Microsoft is loosing the war and will be gone within the decade. Mark my words.</p></quote>

They'll have to pry my Wang from my cold, dead fingers!

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[binarylarry]

I think the biggest sign of Microsoft's impending fall is the fact that idiot business guys are in charge now.

All the geeks that made Microsoft the behemoth that it is today are gone.

Ballmer and co are all that's left and it has been showing.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[kiddygrinder]

There's more than 2 operating systems, nubbinchops

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[rcw-home]

MS doesn't have the power to coerce decent drivers out of the manufacturers

No, but they do have the power to write drivers themselves (carrot) and they do have the power to maintain a public knowledge base of third-party driver problems (stick).

Microsoft is only in this mess because they've been pawning that responsibility off on OEMs for years.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Well, MS does have one major competitor, which has caused nontrivial trouble lately: its own older OSes. As much as I'd like it to be otherwise, I don't think that MS is under much immediate threat from Linux or OSX. However, watching the rather pitiful attempt to get the Vista launch off the ground suggested quite strongly that MS has a real problem with pushing its "ecosystem partners" to upgrade in sync. The whole Vista Read/Vista Capable thing, where MS basically screwed over buyers and retailers to let Intel unload their old graphics chips, the fact that NVidia couldn't be bothered to have drivers that actually worked for months after launch, having to extend XP availability several times, etc.

MS isn't going anywhere; but they face a real risk of getting bogged down in their own backwards compatibility. With Vista, they ran into the nasty trap of not being able to muster enough customer enthusiasm to drive support from hardware and software vendors, and not having enough support from hardware and software vendors to ensure safe upgrades for their customers. Vicious circle time. They'll pull through; because they have the bulk and the power; but that isn't a pretty dynamic.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[poopdeville]

No one saw the fall of Rome

Are you kidding? Alaric was garrisoned outside Rome for OVER A YEAR before the emperor betrayed him and negotiations for a piece of Switzerland (a la the governorship of Judea) broke down.

On the other hand, declining military drill as Goths and Vandals joined the Roman military was a contributing factor to the decline of the Roman empire.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[EvanED]

No, but they do have the power to write drivers themselves (carrot)...

What? MS would have the same problem as Linux does, just to a lesser degree. HW manufactures would have to provide specs to MS, something they haven't done for Linux. The only saving grace would be that MS would be capable of signing an NDA with them.

Microsoft is only in this mess because they've been pawning that responsibility off on OEMs for years.

"You create a device, you write the driver" seems like a perfectly reasonable policy to me, at least for manufactures that don't open their specs to all.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[FictionPimp]

They could also take the long hard road. Realize this next version of windows will take a hit and force all drivers to be signed to be installed. Do the signing for free, but be very selective on what passes as quality.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[gabebear]

I own two pieces of hardware that are Microsoft branded... and they have had far worse driver support on Windows than any other hardware I own.

• MN-720 802.11G PCCard: No Vista(or even XP SP3) compatiblity... WHY?
• Microsoft Intellimouse optical: The driver in the link doesn't recognize this mouse... What's really funny is MS's Mac Intellimouse driver works perfectly. This is a rather old mouse, it was one of the very first optical mice available($70 back in the day).

I may just have bad luck... but Microsoft's driver compatibility is frighteningly bad.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[FishWithAHammer]

When XP came out, didn't Microsoft end up writing drivers for a boatload of Logitech hardware?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Tubal-Cain]

2%? Already?
The Year of Linux on the Desktop is at hand!

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[bigstrat2003]

Microsoft Intellimouse optical: The driver in the link doesn't recognize this mouse... What's really funny is MS's Mac Intellimouse driver works perfectly. This is a rather old mouse, it was one of the very first optical mice available($70 back in the day).

Huh? This is my mouse of choice, and I have never had any driver troubles with it under Windows. Windows comes with a driver that Just Works, what more do you want?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[The Bungi]

Now that Microsoft are feeling the pinch of competition

Too bad a large segment of that competition is made up of their own operating systems.

The only trouble Vista ever had was that XP worked well enough for everybody and didn't offer any incentives to upgrade.

But it's not like Apple is taking over the world any time soon.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, because when your average user has a hardware problem, they're going to go right to MS's horrid KB and look up the solution themselves and then fix it (assuming they find it). If the hardware manufacturers can barely write reliable drivers, then how do you expect MS to do that on all of their behalf, even if they do have some advantage in terms of time and access to Windows's internals etc.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jandrese]

It's not that the hardware manufacturers are developing for MacOS, it's just that they've been too lazy to port their drivers to Vista, especially for older hardware. I mean look at what happened to people who had SoundBlaster Live based cards (which still work fine and are considerably better than most built-in sound still). Compare that to Linux where the support for them is actively maintained to this day.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Tubal-Cain]

Remember how powerful IBM used to be? It's only a shadow of it's former self but it is still a strong company.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jandrese]

I'm more shocked that you still need a driver for a PS/2 wheel mouse (I'm assuming it's not USB given the age). What the heck did they do that it needs special driver support?

I'm not surprised you have trouble with an 802.11 card. There are so many chipset variations for those things and they're revised so frequently that almost nobody bothers with driver support beyond what's on the CD in the box. This goes double if it's unusual in some way (USB, Compact Flash, Compact PCI, etc...). Just be glad you don't have a TV Tuner card.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Billly Gates]

Actually macosx is insanely popular at any university and its marketshare is almost at 8%.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[rcw-home]

If the hardware manufacturers can barely write reliable drivers, then how do you expect MS to do that on all of their behalf

Microsoft has claimed for a long, long time that Windows' instability isn't Windows' fault; it's drivers. They should put up or shut up.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jd]

Well, yes, which is why they're desperate to kill off all the old lines as and when they can. (Not that Vista was a serious competitor in the embedded market.) In the end, though, the only advantage in having a genuinely licensed copy of Windows is that you can use Microsoft's update - but as soon as the updates stop coming, Genuine Advantage is no advantage.

But back to the drivers. Microsoft badly underestimated the reaction of users (they didn't just put up with it) and also underestimated the reaction of vendors (they didn't bother with it). This may not offer much of a window of opportunity for alternatives, as users are demonstrably sticking with XP over switching to non-Microsoft OS'. It might, however, persuade those vendors who have not yet taken the Vista OR Linux plunges to listen to Linux "representatives" like Linus, Red Hat or Ubuntu. The reasoning here is that if you're going to write a driver anyway, (a) Linux is simpler, and (b) because the kernel API keeps getting buggered up, the driver will need to be made fairly easy to port. Provided the driver is written correctly, it should be easier to write for Linux and port to Vista than to have written for Vista in the first place. More marketshare for less effort.

The probable net impact of Microsoft's predicament is likely to be close to zero. A few additional vendors might eye Linux, but without a lot of heavy-duty hard-sell, the number likely to add Linux to their list of supported platforms in consequence of Vista is going to be single-digit at best. Most interested vendors already supply the docs or the drivers, the rest don't give a damn.

A far bigger impact will be if the EU rejects any ongoing Microsoft appeals and/or applies further penalties, and/or Obama pushes the DOJ to rip into Microsoft (assuming there's anything definitive they can pin on them). Microsoft hasn't had enough bad publicity to really hurt them. If Vista never sold another copy, Microsoft has sufficient loose change to carry on through to Windows 7, and the sales of their other products pretty much guarantees they could outlast the end of the world if they had to. (3.5 billion years until a species intelligent enough to need a desktop OS evolves? No sweat. Besides, gives them time to apply all of the necessary bugfixes before the release.)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, they should. But do you really expect them to do either?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[nschubach]

But it's apparently worth your time to post and come back to check for responses.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[lluBdeR]

Bullshit.
When I can throw my Digisuite DTV into a Linux box and have it work I'll believe this, until then "Linux supports more devices (minus one) than any OS ever"

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[rcw-home]

No. I merely think it'd be in their long-term best interest.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Anonymous Coward]

ok a few things , first if it's so easy to code drivers for linux (i don't know) then it would be very cool if a tool existed to compile that driver code, unchanged, as a windows driver. in other words it would take some kind of "glue" layer to separate the driver from the os a bit. if several different translation things like this could be made, then a driver for linux would work on xp, vista, 7 when it comes out, and also mac osx and maybe the open/free/netbsd too. that would save tons of work for driver writers and give companies incentive to make the driver for free os first

second i dont know what the eu will do but do you honestly think obama will push the doj to fuck with microsoft after bill gates supported so much to get obama into the white house? think about it. obama says he is for the little guy but the people who got him elected are billionairs. who do you think paid for all those ads? when these billionairs say they dont mind paying more in taxes i dont believe that bullshit. microsoft for example all their profit goes to a ireland company. all big companies and millionares can do this. it's simple especially for a software company. this is how it works: the rights to all your intellectual property, trademarks, patents, copyrights, belong to an overseas company. your america based company sells products at billions of dollars but has to pay the holding company billions of dollars in royalties and licensing. thus the money is sucked out of the united states and to more tax friendly countries. the profit to the america based company is zero or close to it. so they pay about two dimes in taxes while people who earn a paycheck, half of it is chopped off before you even get it in income tax withholding. think about it. the tax code was written by rich people. they didn't get rich by paying more in taxes. and they're not stupid either. who will be stuck with this high tax bill? you and me. ppl who dont have the resources to take our money off shore. so is obama gonna go after bill gate's or microsoft? no way. he'll go after small businesses but microsoft will sail on through. think about it. think long and hard and you'll see. then go over to www.fairtax.org and see how you and me can fix this situation. get rid of every kind of income tax and replace them with a consumption tax. rich people buy lots of shit so they'll pay a lot. the rest of us will pay less than we currently do but we'll get to take home our entire paycheck. obama might be great looking and popular but his tax policy will not put any more dough in your pocket

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[tietokone-olmi]

Company adoption is past 50% in many countries, though. Consumer desktops don't make up too much of Microsoft's revenue anymore, since there's so few of them to go around due to a slowing update rate (consoles etc. competing for gaming-motivated upgrade cash) and quite a few people getting their surfing done at work or school. Also Apple, but they're minor in the device driver question since they produce their own OS and drivers anyway.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[rwyoder]

MS isn't going anywhere;

That is been becoming more obvious every year. ;-)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[bigstrat2003]

Actually, the mouse in question is USB, and it does not need a special driver (at least since Windows XP, I'm uncertain about before then).

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[supernova_hq]

Sure the driver works, I just wish it wouldn't ask me to reboot afterwards...

Note: I'm not even joking here unfortunately

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[XDirtypunkX]

Something like a 3rd of Obama's campaign was paid for by donations of 300 dollars or less. We're not talking billionares here.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[ToasterMonkey]

I think that was a polite way of saying a discussion with the type of audience this article will draw is not worth the effort of logging into Slashdot. If I weren't already logged in, I wouldn't either. You know how much of a pain it is to copy the message you just wrote, log in - this confusingly takes you to the main page, find the article again, find the dork you were replying to, paste and finish editing.. bah, for what, +1? A chance to be heard? HAH!

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[igb]

users are demonstrably sticking with XP over switching to non-Microsoft OS'

Apple now have, what, 20% of the laptop market by volume and rather more by dollar revenue? I'd say there's a strong argument that a significant demographic --- young, affluent, university educated, pick any two --- has already left town. I lecture occasionally at a University which is amongst the UK equivalent of the Ivy League, and have a friend who is a full-time lecturer, and both of us (me CS, she English) are under the clear impression that Apple are making massive inroads into the student laptop market. That's the classic opinion-former group, and losing that market is usually regarded as a very bad thing.
ian

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

C'mon, it's an anonymous coward posting about Obama, you weren't seriously expecting something other than a breathless screed about how he is a tax and spend marxist socialist communist jew banker fifth columnist babykiller liberal terrorist, were you?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Idiomatick]

lol when i format a computer and start installing shit i put on all the drivers and all the aps finish all the setup THEN let windows reboot otherwise it takes like 60 goes.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[the_womble]

1. More people use embedded devices than PCs
2. I know several non-geeks who happily use Linux - although one of them is showing signs of becoming a geek since she discovered the command line is sometimes "more logical"....
3. Given the ">amount of software available for Linux, I do not know what you mean about developers not taking Linux seriously.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[purpledinoz]

The reason why manufacturers don't give a shit about a new release of windows is that 99.9% of their customers are using the current version of windows. The only way this worked with Vista was to strong arm consumers into using Vista, forcing the HW makers to care.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[the_womble]

The result of that would be that many manufacturers would not bother with drivers for anything that is not in current production or that they do not expect to sell for too long after the introduction of Windows 7.

Te result would be lots of people would need to buy new hardware to upgrade the OS, or would buy hardware that does not work with it.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[EvanED]

Isn't Microsoft supposed to be the poster child for things like this? "You can't get drivers on Linux because of NDAs, etc." If you _can_ get NDAs and you _are_ filthy rich, and would like to make a superior product, go out and DO IT. Not whine and beg.

MS at least could do it if HW vendors would cooperate, which many would. But at the same time it's not like MS could just dump money into this and have it be sustainable; maintaining drivers for all the HW out there they want to support would be an enormous effort.

Making a wild guess, I wouldn't be surprised if it'd double the cost of Windows. (I seem to remember driver code being at least about half of the size of the Linux kernel, so this guess isn't completely out there.) HW would be cheaper, but basically people who buy little and/or common hardware would be subsidizing the cost of driver development for people who got more exotic hardware. I think it makes far more sense to tie the cost of developing the driver with the HW that it's for.

Also remember the "you create a device, you write the driver, we change the API, we beg you to update all your drivers to the latest beta API, with all nifty DRMs and UACs."

There's a new version of Windows issued what, every 3 years on average? (At least now that 9x and NT have converged.) Let's see, NT 4 was late '96, 2000 was 2000, XP was 2001, Vista was very late 2006 or very early 2007. 4 versions in 10 years, so just over 3 years is about right. (Windows 7 is scheduled for late 2009 or early 2010, which is about another 3 years.) The driver model changes even less frequently. (E.g. my impression is that you can use basically the same code for 2000 and XP.)

Not only that, but the changes for Vista were largely rather for the better, with MS trying to push most drivers out into userspace (where they can't cause bluescreens).

Contrast this situation to Linux, which almost has a stated goal to NOT have a stable driver API. This works fine for them, but if what you want is a stable kernel interface Windows is about as stable as you're going to get.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[mattytee]

I'd say there's a strong argument that a significant demographic --- young, affluent, university educated, pick any two --- has already left town. [...]Apple are making massive inroads into the student laptop market.

Sounds like part of the much-discussed iPod halo effect. The younger generation are the main people using iPods, and when the time comes to buy a laptop, Apple's their first choice. I see iPhones aplenty on campus too.

I would like very much to see Apple as a serious market-share competitor, but it looks like Steve prefers to sit on his fat computer margins while concentrating on other consumer electronics and online sales.

I was disappointed that Apple's "refresh" amounted to, "everything we did was to make production cheaper," and not only did they not pass the cost savings along, they actually *increased* prices. And the people rejoiced!?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[hairyfeet]

Well I can add that I had to give up on having Linux machines thanks to those damned Lexmark all in one printers that everyone here seems to have. So I had to give up even showing Linux machines in the shop because it is pointless without Lexmark drivers here. I swear trying to get one of those bastards to even print in Linux will drive a rational man stark bonkers.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Paradise Pete]

You know how much of a pain it is to copy the message you just wrote, log in - this confusingly takes you to the main page, find the article again, find the dork you were replying to, paste and finish editing.. bah

Some browsers no support having more than one window open at a time. You might try to get one of those.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[hairyfeet]

Winfuture XP ISO Builder for the win. So simple my nephews could do it. Takes about 20 minutes to integrate service packs(including SP3),hotfixes,drivers,software,integrate XPize(under add hotfixes) setup a full unattended with the user accounts,etc. So much better to just use it for an unattended 2K/2K3/XP that doing the MSFT reinstall dance IMHO.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[eh2o]

Bitter geeks cling to their Wang and VS.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[leomekenkamp]

If he has got his messages (http://slashdot.org/help) set up to send an email when someone replies, the checking would be trivial.

Needless to say that I do agree on the message you relay.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Idiomatick]

agreed! buuuut i format my computer like once a year and dont give a shit about other people. When i format i download all new drivers (i like them fresh) new programs new everything, i like trying out stuff, helps me from falling hopelessly behind.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Urthwhyte]

I have the exact same mouse as well and its worked perfectly without installing any drivers with both XP and Vista.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[gmack]

Or better yet: they could demand all devices conform to a set standard and then produce drivers for standard hardware only.

There is no reason for printers to all have different ways to talk to the OS. Same goes for scanners. This could all be standardized.

I suspect the reason they haven't done this before is that having 1000 devices all needing different drivers is a huge advantage for the incumbent OS. Unfortunately for Microsoft that incumbent OS is XP not Vista so it's all come back to bite them.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[beuges]

Microsoft doesn't charge for driver signing, only Windows Logo certification. All you need to have your driver signed is an account with Verisign (which admittedly does cost about $99).

The driver signing is so that the user can be confident that the driver comes from the manufacturer that it says it's coming from, rather than a trojan pretending to be your video card driver. The logo certification is to indicate that it has passed some set of tests at Microsoft's labs.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Yvanhoe]

The eeePC showed that linux works fine as a preinstalled OS. Its driver structure doesn't change every release in an unpredictable way. That makes it very attractive for computer makers. Microsoft really fears that the eeePC would be the first of a new kind of cheap low specs PCs

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Lonewolf666]

No, but they do have the power to write drivers themselves (carrot)...

What? MS would have the same problem as Linux does, just to a lesser degree. HW manufactures would have to provide specs to MS, something they haven't done for Linux. The only saving grace would be that MS would be capable of signing an NDA with them.

MS could start writing drivers for those hardware vendors that provide specifications and let others write their own drivers. As an example, right now AMD/ATI would get support for its graphics cards but NVidia would have to provide its own drivers.
I guess that would translate into a significant advantage for hardware vendors who publish their specs.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Killjoy_NL]

I got the AOL thingy in my ICQ working to tell me if there's'a reply :)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[EvilIdler]

Aren't Apple responsible for their drivers on OS X? Of course, if Microsoft were to do the same, they'd have one hell of a long list of hardware to support, compared to the limited list on Macs.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[seanellis]

I think that the lesson here is that hardware support is very variable, on any OS.

I bought a digital TV card for my box at home, running Kubuntu, and it was the simplest installation of anything I have ever done. Pop it in, it just worked. No driver installs, no nothing.

I also bought a cheap webcam. On Linux, plug and go. On Windows, even the supplied disk of drivers failed to install (Error -1: Could not configure driver or some such nonsense), and then the drivers from the website regularly cause BSOD.

On the other hand, the in-built sound system (some Intel chipset) on my home box is complete pain in the ass under Linux. I've never got the mike input to work properly.

It is nice to see that some hardware makers are beginning to actively support Linux, or at least allow Linux developers to actively support their stuff by supplying test units and documentation.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[seanellis]

This approach has worked very well with USB mass storage devices. The same driver talks to my camera, external hard drive, memory stick and Ogg Vorbis player. It doesn't seem to have stifled innovation any.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[gabebear]

I did link to the wrong mouse... mine is the "Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer USB and PS/2 compatible" which looks nearly identical to the "Intellimouse Optical". If I remember correctly the Optical is quite a bit smaller though.

Anyhoo, I'm not the only one who has had this problem http://www.vistax64.com/vista-hardware-devices/39944-intellimouse-explorer-usb-no-vista-support.html

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[it0]

I agree, unfortunatley they all switched to XP :( with new releases of the hardware. The linux option is becoming more and more rare.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Laurence0]

If only everybody stuck with that! From what I've heard, iPods are notorious for having a weird connection protocol, and lots of cameras "do things their own way".

It needs more pressure from consumers, I guess... I actually returned a camera last year because it didn't support USB mass storage. But I suspect I'm in a minority...

Next thing to push for is standard connectors. If only every camera/phone/MP3 player/etc was mini (or possibly micro, if they must) USB...

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[hairyfeet]

Let's see......No DirectX,which means no decent PC games(which even the girls the think gaming is stupid still play AoE) no Lexmark printers,no way to play the software that Joe and Jane pick up at Walmart,the need to go CLI is something goes wrong(most Windows users don't know that Windows even HAS a CLI) no easy VB6 support for the small businesses,etc. While I admit Vista was MSFT shooting themselves in the foot,the fact that dual core machines seem to be everywhere and cheap means that all the have to do with 7 is make it suck a little less than Vista and Intel will take care of the rest.

While I would love for MSFT to have some real competition so they would have to actually fight for users again,Apple loves the big margins too much to make anything in the $500 laptop range,which is what I see all over the place in the hands of the Joes and Janes,and Linux still has the double whammy of drivers sucking for things like all in ones and the latest wifi cards,and the huge amount of Windows software out there that folks consider a requirement to get their work done. I am personally hoping ReactOS comes out with a solid OS,and if you really want to see Linux take off you might want to give them a hand. Because having a Linux OS where Joe and Jane could stick in their Windows software disk and have it install and work? Now THAT would be a serious threat to MSFT.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[hairyfeet]

Is it a simple Lexmark printer or an all in one? Because I can tell you that trying to get a damned Lexmark X12xx series to print,much less print, scan and fax is truly maddening. If you do have an all in one and manage to get it to work please reply with a HOWTO since I had zero joy.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Gewalt]

If he has got his messages (http://slashdot.org/help) set up to send an email when someone replies, the checking would be trivial.

Anonymous Coward posts, once posted, are anonymous. As such, the server would not know who to send message to.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Tom]

I don't think that MS is under much immediate threat from Linux or OSX.

Remember that the entire windos ecology is based on lock-in. That means any other OS doesn't need 50% or even 30% market share to be a threat. Enough share to make everyone aware there are others in the market is enough. MS Office isn't the market leader because it's the best, it's the market leader because you have to use it because everyone else does, too. So the Office monopoly is in immediate danger as soon as some other office suit builds enough market share that "send your stuff in .doc because the other guy sure can handle that" doesn't work anymore, and you have to think about document formats.

Same with windos itself. It might take only 15% or 20% until the monopoly breaks. For example, once corporations offer and support, say windos or OS X, as a choice, lots and lots of people will switch to OS X. Right now, the stupid idea to standardize on the system instead of on the protocols, keeps whole corporations hostate to the windos monopoly. You don't need 50% market share to change that.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[hairyfeet]

So you download the drivers and add them to Winfuture. Even making a new disk every year it saves a ton of time by installing all the drivers unattended,along with the user account,the software you need to make it usable(like WinRAR and Klite Mega in my case) having it XPized to get rid of the fugly Win9X icons still in Windows,etc. It is nice to just pop in the disc and go have a smoke while it does all the work. It even has several partitioning options so you don't even have to stick around to partition. Really nice.

I actually burn a new one about every 6 months so I'll have the updated software and bugfixes ready to go. Since I install my games and keep my music and movies on a separate drive I can reinstall at any time and not have to worry about it. Give it a try,I'll bet you like it.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[leomekenkamp]

Silly me, did not see that. Not to lessen my mistake, but the /. interface is a bit lacking in making it more clear that a message has been posted in reply to another message that is outside of one's viewing threshold. A +5 -> B -1 -> C +5 makes it look like C has been posted in reply to A...

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how much of a pain it is to copy the message you just wrote, log in - this confusingly takes you to the main page, find the article again, find the dork you were replying to, paste and finish editing.. bah

Some browsers no support having more than one window open at a time. You might try to get one of those.

Some websites have the ability to login and make a submission on the same page and at the same time!! Slashdot might want to try to make it so their website is usable.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[theaveng]

Whatever. I'd rather use an OS that is supported by >90% of the people, than some other OS. I've already been down the road of non-standard computers (Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Macintosh Quadra) and while I loved all those machines, I did not love seeing my IBM PC friends running programs that I could not run. (The "Mac version coming soon" problem.) I like being able to run virtually any program I feel like running.

>>>...public beta of Windows 7 in early 2009

Good. Maybe I can buy Window NT 7 and skip over Vista (NT6) completely. Vista's a worthless piece of trash. My brother has a computer with roughly the same specs as mine, but his Vista machine runs like it's an old, mindnumbingly slow 200 megahertz computer, compared to the rapid-fire pace of my XP setup.

Of course NT 7 might be trash too... hopefully not. Hopefully Microsoft has learned from its errors.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[tomhudson]

What? You need drivers to use a friggin' *MOUSE*?

Get a real operating system, boy.

What? You need a MOUSE to use a friggin' Operating System?

Get a REAL operating system, boy.

There, fixed it for ya :-)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Hieronymus Howard]

Whilst saying "You create a device, you write the driver" is perfectly reasonable, it's less reasonable to say, "We're releasing yet another version of Windows. We need new drivers for all of your hardware. Go away and write them for us".

This means a lot of extra expenditure for the hardware manufacturers every time that Microsoft release a new version of Windows. Is it surprising that they might be a bit reluctant to comply?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[petermgreen]

Maybe so but I think that is in spite of the actions of hardware manufacturers not because of them.

My experiance is that linux is generally very good with hardware that is both reasonablly old (at least 6 months older than the distro release) and reasonablly common but it sucks for newer or more specialist stuff.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[TheRaven64]

As the original article points out, it's a pretty meaningless statistic. Hardware support only matters to users when it's hardware they own. Linux supports an obscure SCSI card that only three people own - great if you're one of those three people, irrelevant otherwise. FreeBSD supports all of the hardware (with the possible exception of the modem - I don't have a phoneline, so I've not tried it) in my ThinkPad, so do I care that Linux and Windows support more devices in total? OS X supports everything in my MacBook Pro, so do I care that Windows supports more devices?

I used to have a gaming mouse that was supported by Linux but not Windows (it shipped with drivers for Win98, which didn't work with 2K and the manufacturer never supported 2K). Did it matter to me that Windows supported vastly more hardware than Linux at the time? No, because it didn't support my hardware. Same with my VooDoo 2 - Microsoft changed the driver model with Windows 2000 to prevent 3D-only cards working. I could still play GLQuake under Linux, but not under Windows. Again, the fact that 2K had better support in general meant nothing to me. Only the specific cases of failure mattered (and the fact that Linux didn't support my NIC or modem at the time was equally frustrating).

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Threni]

> I'm not sure that really has much to do with it. This isn't about MS keeping the OEMs from shipping other OSes, something that they are still pretty good at, this is about MS trying to get the
> device makers to ship drivers that don't suck, something that they've never had all that much luck with, though they seem to be very gradually improving.

Is that why Vista is the worst Microsoft OS ever in terms of i) getting drivers for hardware and ii) those drivers working properly? And that's even taking into the account the fact that many people opted to buy new hardware to run Vista on (although evidently not that many).

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[TheRaven64]

iPods don't have their own connection protocol, they appear as mass storage devices. In order to transfer music, however, the computer needs to rebuild the database after copying the tracks. It would be nicer if you just had to touch a file and have the iPod OS check the modification time on it when it booted to see if new music had been added, and rebuild the DB itself, but Apple decided that it made more sense to have the fast computer's CPU do the work instead of the slow iPod CPU.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Bearhouse]

+11 on the irony meter, dude. Respect.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Jesus_666]

The amusing part is that Linux and OS X wouldn't even be neccessary for Microsoft to get unter competition pressure. Vista ended up being so bad that many users prefer XP over it. And tat, apart from external competition, is something Microsoft really has to fear: The end of the upgrade treadmill. If everything stagnated over an ever-evolving XP Mixrosoft couldn't continually upsell people on new versions of Windows.

It's be interesting to see whether the Vista Plus Pack - ahem - Windows 7 will be able to get the treadmill going faster again.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Bearhouse]

Ever heard of Murphy's law? It has many sub-varients. The 'driver hell' one states that the device you really want to use, will never work properly on the OS you really want to use it with.

OS/2 was much better than Windows, but I could never get the fusking thing to install on anything other than an IBM PS/2. Not funky stuff, either. Compaqs and other mainstream boxes.

Plus ca change...

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Bearhouse]

Again?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jellomizer]

Like how the do in Linux?
Linuxs drivers are horible, you can blame the manufactures for not giving the fulls specs. It may not be the fault or the skills of the developers but they are bad. They may work but not that great if you are willing to take off your Linux is God Goggles, you may find out that Linux drivers are missing a lot and some devices run very poorly.
running
Here is an example. My MacBook Pro now has Ubuntu 8.10 on it. Because my OS X (and Windows Vista) CDs are packed up as we are moving. And OS X crashed (a bad inode in the wrong spot from running my laptop to no power, then letting it sleep until all juice is gone)

So I put Ubuntu on it and let me tell you a lot of thing work horrible on it. Wireless disconnects randomly and it is very slow, I get what looks like changing an analog TV with with a dial when the screen does a quick change. My Keyboard light is always on by Default, it doesn't detect the right click on my mouse pad. When I put it to sleep. Sometimes it randomly wakes up. If I make it hibernate, when I reawake it chances are my trackpad will not work or I will not be able to connect to the wireless network again.

Most movies will not play even when installing the (eh hemm illegal codexes) If they do they are choppy and the sound isn't in sync.

I actually wished I had my Vista Disk Vista actually ran quite will with my hardware compared to Linux.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[mabhatter654]

You realize what they're really asking... they want OEMS to spend $250K+ of their OWN MONEY so that EACH device they've ever sold works nicely with Windows 7 and MICROSOFT looks good.

All the Linux detractors really think about that...

Now think where linux would be if hardware manufacturers spent 1/10 that much contributing drivers to Linux for each device they sold versus the zero they contribute now.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[TheRaven64]

What kind of innovation are you expecting in a mass storage device? You write blocks to them and read blocks back. There are a few things that can be improved - for example allowing the device to re-order requests for more efficient transfers - but not a huge amount.

Now, compare that with graphics cards. We actually have a standard for these, the VESA BIOS Extensions. This defines a way of initialising the framebuffer, setting the resolution, and even some acceleration functions, such as Bit Blt, off-screen sprites, hardware cursors, and even drawing 2D polygons. A modern GPU doesn't bother implementing this, however, since you don't want to use such a primitive interface.

Think about the new features that have been added to GPUs in the last ten years. Hardware tranform, clipping and lighting. Pixel shaders. Vertex shaders. Geometry shaders. Removing the fixed-function pipeline and emulating it with shaders. In the early '90s, a cheap graphics card was just a framebuffer, and an expensive one had commands like 'copy this region of memory to here in the framebuffer', and 'draw a line from here to here' - really expensive ones had enough memory for double-buffering. Now, they are complex stream-vector processors. The VBE acceleration standard defined in 1996 seems hopelessly archaic now. In contrast, USB storage devices in 1996 stored blocks and retrieved blocks. USB storage devices now store blocks, and retrieve blocks.

A standard interface for storage devices is easy. IDE lasted for two decades. A standard interface for video is much harder. Even sound has changed a lot, with the addition of 2, then 4, then 5.1 then 7.1 channels, hardware mixing, spacial positioning, signal processing for effects, resampling, and so on all being added. Sure, you could create a standard like AC97 which just lets you output and record sound, but that limits devices to the lowest common denominator.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[blackjackshellac]

As I recall, Billy Gates was still around when the Vista debacle began. But I take your point. You need a good balance of suits and geeks in any technology company, I've personally witnessed several tech companies brought to their knees because they demoted, fired or released the geeks from upper management roles, and ignored product design, planning and schedules in the name of marketing features.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Dan667]

I so agree with this, but actually I think it is Microsoft Marketing folks (who Ballmer is a part of) that is causing them to go belly up. They are so concerned with marketing initiatives that they have completely forgotten about who the actual Customer is and how to make them happy. For example, they want to partner up with music companies, but then put draconian DRM in the OS that no Customer wants to deal with. There are just too many examples of this to be a product that people actually want any more. And they have run off Developers as being all, but unimportant and break all compatibility and then wonder why no-one wants Vista. I do not think they will recover.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[R3d Jack]

As a Pascal developer, I'm deeply offended!

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[wmguy]

MS has a bit of power, with their driver certification stuff

MS Driver certification can only go so far. Sure, they make sure that things like basic power management, device insertion, and device removal work properly, but MS has no way to test every feature of every driver out there. Since every driver works differently, any product-specific features are not verified by MS driver testing.

My real question to MS would be: If you want us to test Windows 7, why is there no download on the MSDN website? Expecting driver developers to use some pre-pre-pre-beta that they obtained because they happened to attend WinHEC is silly--put it up on your self-proclaimed developer network. BTW, the one engineer I know who attended WinHEC is still waiting for his copy to arrive--so there is not much Windows 7 testing going on here!

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Jesus_666]

Not just the iPhone halo. For example, in my university's CS department Apple is among the most popular notebook brands, duking it out with Lenovo and - as of lately - the bulkiest Sony Vaio model (among the students; the lecturers tend to use mostly MBPs, followed by ThinkPads). A nice thing about Aple notebooks is that they're pretty price-competitive as long as you don't buy a bigger HDD/RAM from Apple.

Why is the Mac so popular? Because it not only has a really nice GUI but also is a hassle-free full-fledged Unix. And, of course, it gets stuff like Photoshop. Linux is a decent alternative (guess why everyone likes Thinkpads so much) but it requires much more time and energy to keep running... And with a student-discounted version of Parallels or VMWare you can still run it in a VM - or you use Boot Camp.
So with a Mac you get OS X, a nice bootloader that allows you do dual-or triple-boot into Linux and Windows, Unix goodness, big proprietary apps and decent hardware in a relatively compact form factor for a decent price.


So yeah, in some cases people buy Macs because Macs really are a good choice.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[LWATCDR]

"Contrast this situation to Linux, which almost has a stated goal to NOT have a stable driver API. "
Linux Does have a stable API. What it does lack is a stable binary interface. And that I think is a problem.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Jedi Alec]

I was working the Logitech helpdesk back then and this doesn't ring a bell whatsoever. As far as I can remember the software package with all the drivers was out pretty quickly after xp came out.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[JamesP]

No, the main competitor to Vista / W7 is ... Windows XP

But I'm 100% with MS on this one. Manufacturers, don't be slackers!

They had a lot of time to support Vista and then they act "Deer in headlights" surprised when it doesn't work properly "WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!?!?"

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

... which only works for replies to posts made while logged-in yes?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jebrew]

I hear they've got things called cookies too...apparently they can remember you.

what do you bake those with?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Dorkmaster Flek]

That's what http://www.rockbox.org/ is for, provided you don't have a newer iPod with BS firmware encryption.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Dog-Cow]

The driver API is not stable either. If it was, simply recompiling would work when the binary interface changed.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Lodragandraoidh]

I have a SanDisk mp3 player (it does other things too -- FM radio, recording to MP3 from built-in mic, picture viewer, mpeg viewer, etc) - anyway - I just drag and drop the MP3 files onto it. It extracts what information it can from the MP3 header (like artist, genre, etc). This must be on the fly -- because it is immediately available when I page through the music list. If connected to the internet it will also grab the album art when it can find it.

Its pretty much a no-brainer, and doesn't impact the user in the least (after downloading the files to the machine, I unplug and immediately begin using it...no waiting).

I guess my question would be, if Apple's music format has information embedded why don't they do something similar on the fly, instead of requiring a compilation process?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[maztuhblastah]

The only saving grace would be that MS would be capable of signing an NDA with them.

That kinda implies that the barrier for Linux drivers is the lack of devs willing to sign an NDA. AFAIK, that's not often the case. In fact, from what I remember hearing, there have been quite a few developers willing to sign an NDA in order to get documentation -- but manufacturers just don't want the help of the OSS community. MS has the upper hand because 1) they're a corporation, not a random collection of developers and 2) they have money.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Shotgun]

OS/2 was much better than Windows, but I could never get the fusking thing to install on anything other than an IBM PS/2. Not funky stuff, either. Compaqs and other mainstream boxes.

Plus ca change...

What?! Compaq == mainstream? Dude, Compaq did more than any other manufacturer to make their boxes as anti-mainstream, with the possible exception of HP. Bother were about as funky as it gets and still call themselves PCs.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[DannyO152]

First of all, from the device manufacturer's point of view, it's a cost to write and then test every driver for its line against the Win7 beta. Every time a new beta or rc build comes out, another round of testing and possible rewriting until final release so as to make the earliest migrators who have bought the devices happy.

Meanwhile, don't manufacturers use new releases of Windows to push people towards buying new devices? In any case, for the money spent, not one dollar of revenue will be realized until someone buys that device new for their Win7 upgrade or OEM purchase. And device makers should spend this money now to be ready on Win7 D-Day-1 without return so Microsoft looks good?

In order to be somewhat constructive, I invite you to complete the following thoughts: (1) Money talks... and (2) Were Redmond to pay device makers for pre-release writing and testing...

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Chabil Ha']

Maybe I can buy Window NT 7 and skip over Vista (NT6) completely.

You just don't get it, do you? Windows 7 is nothing more than an enhancement to Vista, one with meaningless features. A new taskbar? New UI for Notepad? Less crazy UAC messages? C'mon, where are the real features? What the hell happened to WinFS?

Windows 7 is just Vista in sheeps clothing...

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[ultranova]

The eeePC showed that linux works fine as a preinstalled OS. Its driver structure doesn't change every release in an unpredictable way.

Yes it does. If your driver isn't included in the kernel source tree, it will stop working at random releases as some API is removed or changed. This is true even for drivers distributed entirely in source form; for binary drivers it is nothing short of a nightmare.

This is an especially large problem for video cards. For other components, you can pick ones Linux has in-kernel support for, but there is not a single decent 3D card included in that list. Add the fact that NVIDIAs newer drivers have dropped support for legacy cards, and I'm apparently forced to upgrade my machine if there's a critical kernel bug.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Grandim]

Graphics cards drivers are an horrible example of drivers that should be developed by Windows. Not only is the quality of code extremely important for graphic cards but AMD, Microsoft could control the market by writing good code for those paying them more. Devices that can run on simple standard drivers written by Microsoft is fine, if the quality of product is severely affected by how good the driver code is then it shouldn't be something Microsoft get involved with.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[LWATCDR]

It is stable "or should be" between major releases. There was a big change between 2.4 and 2.6 for instance.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[leomekenkamp]

Yup, see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1019807&cid=25659415.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[CrazedSanity]

That is an interesting tidbit. Do you have any sources for this information (i.e. links to the internets)?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[LWATCDR]

"if I was running a business of 10+ computers, I would want to do it the binary/package way."
Let's face it 10 machines isn't a lot. And a lot of home users don't want to compile anything.
And I do think that low performance drivers should be moved to user space. No reason for a serial port driver, mouse, or keyboard driver to ever cause a kernel panic. Not only that but a high performance driver could start off in user space and then migrate to kernel space when it is mature or if the admin wants it to.
So a server could have it's video and sound drivers moved into user space for extra stability.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Zironic]

You seem to have a tradition of trying to use really old hardware with new operating systems.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[BronsCon]

You mean young, impressionable and desiring of acceptance from the "in" crowd?

The iPod became "cool", one of the "cool" kids bought a Mac, everyone that wanted to be their friend went out and bought a Mac and an iPod to be more like them.

Yeah. That's how it happens. Think Adidas, Nike... hell anyone remember Girbaud? That wasn't just middle school, it was high school and college as well.

I should tell you, I had Adidas shoes last a couple months, Nike shoes last a couple weeks, Girbaud clothing I could only wear once or twice before stitches came loose. Were they popular? Yes! Were they quality? Hell no.

Nike is still a popular brand, though I haven't seen MUCH of an increase in quality. Why? Because the cool kids buy it, so everyone that wants to be LIKE the cool kids buys it, too.

That's all that's happening with Apple. Whether it will be a passing fad or it will stick is yet to be seen.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jkrise]

"We're releasing yet another version of Windows. We need new drivers for all of your hardware. Go away and write them for us".

Excellent point, well made. Another thing that irritates h/w mfrs. is that their product becomes less valuable every time Microsoft decides to change their driver model. A network card for instance costs just about $2; where is the money to keep writing drivers every few years? What to do with all the unsold stock? It is impossible to keep on re;leasing newer varieties and part nos. and time them perfectly so there's a model with every single version of Windows.

XP has provided a stable API for drivers for almost 8 years now, and with the rise of Netbooks, XP will have a life of 10 years or so. There is too much inventory right now for h/w mfrs. to carry, and make them work with yet another OS. A better approach would be, for Microsoft to make all devices work with XP drivers instead.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[BlackSnake112]

Maybe because the XP drivers were insecure and could be used to hack the system? I know XP is easily hacked, but the device drivers running as root/administrator all the time is something that microsoft was trying to get rid of.

Driver backwards compatible? 2000 driver working in XP that worked most of the time. NT4 drivers working in 2000, didn't work for the stuff I tried. 98 to 2000 (or XP) totally different. If microsoft made a new OS (not just a face lift on the old one) having new device drivers for that OS makes sense.

I still think microsoft should have said no to backwards compatibility for apps as well as drivers. New OS, new apps and drivers for that OS. They have a free VM use that VM to install the older OS to run those mission critical older apps. Then they could have made one 64 bit version and move forward. Instead they made 6 (or 8 or 9 if you count all of the 32 bit and 64 bit) different versions and confused the people they want to buy their stuff.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[BlackSnake112]

You also have to turn on disk access on the ipod through itunes. Otherwise the OS knows something is attached but cannot access it.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[BlackSnake112]

Do you actually think that if Asus, Gigabyte, AMD, Intel, Nvidia, HP, Dell, (enter in name of other big computer or computer part company) asked microsoft for a copy of windows 7 they would not get it?

Microsoft most likely emails/mails them a copy of the major release builds. What the other companies do with it is up to them.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[BlackSnake112]

90% of Obama's TV ads were paid by labor unions. Why would labor unions want Obama elected?

For those that are in a union you know that secret voting you do from time to time. The labor unions want that to go away. They want everyone to know which way you are voting. So peer pressure will play a role. This is a very bad idea.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[greed]

iPods are only special if Apple's iPod driver is installed.

Otherwise, they show up as a USB Mass Storage Device.

I actually set up a rule in the Linux hotplug thing a few years ago so that I could plug my iPod into the FireWire port on my workstation to charge it, but the system wouldn't attempt to bind a USB driver. (Linux loves to log on to devices that aren't open, which makes the iPod do its "DO NOT DISCONNECT" thing.)

Basically, the iPod driver matches the vendor code + device class, so it is preferred over the generic driver which just matches device class. (FireWire and USB share this concept.)

So no iPod driver, and you get the generic bulk storage adapter.

And you don't have to enable disk mode on an iPod you've never seen before (at least on a Mac). Just leave iTunes displaying the window that asks if you want to erase the iPod and manage it from this computer. The iPod will remain mounted as a normal filing device; visible in the Finder and accessible under /Volumes.

Very handy for copying the files off someone else's iPod.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[theaveng]

You just don't get it, do you?

No I didn't know that. So I have to wait for Windows NT 8 for a working OS? (Same way I skipped-over M.e.)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[theaveng]

Windows 7 is just Vista in sheeps clothing...

Wait a minute. Microsoft said they were entirely rebuilding Windows 7 from the ground-up, trying to get the kernal to run more-efficiently. That doesn't sound like mere window-dressing (like M.e. was merely Win98.2). That sounds like a complete overhaul.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jvkjvk]

Now think where linux would be if hardware manufacturers spent 1/10 that much contributing drivers to Linux for each device they sold versus the zero they contribute now.

Hell, think about where they'd be if they just let developers see their specs! I mean really, they don't even have to spend money to develop it themselves. There is probably some hacker out there who wants that particular device/brand to work with Linux.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[aztracker1]

MS at least could do it if HW vendors would cooperate, which many would. But at the same time it's not like MS could just dump money into this and have it be sustainable; maintaining drivers for all the HW out there they want to support would be an enormous effort.

Actually MS writes a lot of drivers for various hardware mfg's, though in these cases MS is a hired contractor for said hardware company. It does work out pretty well though.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[RobertM1968]

The big question is (for Microsoft), will the vendors even go this route? Many got burned during Vista because so many things changed after the "pre-betas" and "betas" - of course, if Windows 7 is just Vista rehashed, then this may not be as big an issue, but perception is everything. The vendors still may not care to take that chance and waste a bunch of time certifying compatibility for pre-betas that will in all probability change (perhaps again drastically enough that their work becomes useless).

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[dmbasso]

Finally the public will really get the facts! :)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Blakey Rat]

"You create a device, you write the driver" seems like a perfectly reasonable policy to me, at least for manufactures that don't open their specs to all.

I'd go a step further than that, and say the driver for X is part of the hardware. We shouldn't be thinking of these as two different things; it's all one single product. If HP makes a laserjet and then cripples it with really crummy drivers, then it's a really crummy printer. Period.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[sgt scrub]

I think you'll find the majority of those devices that "just work" use drivers written by the OSS community. Drivers that don't work worth !@#$ on Linux tend to be from device makers geared specifically for the Windows environment. Thanks to apple going with a BSD based OS there is more incentive for hardware makers to open source their drivers so BSD and Linux coders will do the work for them. That, and the fact that writing drivers for Linux is getting easier thanks to all of the work done by others, you'll find things will keep getting better.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[JesseMcDonald]

Probably an Intel HDA chipset. They're notorious for never being implemented the same way twice; knowing that it's an HDA chip doesn't actually tell you much about how the channels, volume controls, etc. are arranged. That has to be coded in differently for every case where the chip is used.

I have an Eee PC with an Intel HDA audio device, and had similar problems getting it to function properly; it would act like the volume was muted, but none of the volume controls had any effect on the output. Eventually I stumbled on a configuration that worked. You might have some luck using the "model" module option to override the kernel's autodetection.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Atrox666]

As far as supporting more devices I would remove all the devices from that list where Linux does a half assed crippled implementation.

If I have to compile anything to get a device to work then FAIL it is not properly supported.

As far as all this Linux software goes..well most of it is crap that should never have seen the light of day. In terms of reasonable quality software there isn't very much decent software for linux and I can get all of it on windoze. It'll be easier to install, support and use on windows.

I didn't want to say nice things about windows..but you Linux people really do work very hard at deluding yourselves.
   

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[againjj]

Do note, this is the US market only, and only in July/August of this year. It was 17.6% in June. It worse world-wide, 4.6% in March. Of course, these are sales, not installed base, which make Apple look better (you can find installed base numbers, also called market share, out there; basically halve the numbers).

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jd]

I'll only bother with the first part.

Technically, a driver can be split into three parts. You have a part which talks to the bus (or an abstraction layer that looks like a bus), you have a part which talks to the OS (or, in Microsoft's case, an abstraction layer that looks like an OS), and you have the logic of the driver - the bit that takes an instruction to do something, performs whatever internal operations are needed, and sends to its two interfaces suitable output.

Most drivers combine all of this into one monolithic unit, usually for "optimization" reasons, but you can get good source-to-source and source-to-binary optimizers that can do the conversion for you, if it's really needed. Thus, your raw source can be split as described. You don't care if the driver binary is or isn't, so long as it works and works fast enough.

The only time you absolutely have to know the kernel internals is within the OS interface layer. You also need to know what sort of threading the kernel supports IFF (if and only if) the driver needs to be run as a kernel thread, say when the interface it drives can deliver data to the kernel without the kernel asking for it. Other than that, the OS interface can hide most of the detail. (This layer and the interface layer would likely be a mix of inlinable functions and macros. You want the source to contain the divisions, for portability, you don't care about the binaries.)

Finally, you either write to an existing spec, such as Linux, or you can write to an idealized spec that no OS supports. The former means that you can skip the OS interface layer for the target OS if you want, it's all null operations. Porting to Windows then means you write a new OS interface layer, and all drivers written to the driver spec will then work on the new target OS. Let's say Linux 2.6.27 is your baseline OS, then a conversion layer that'll let you run the driver in Windows is doable - provided the core of the driver is OS-agnostic and uses only APIs that are intended for driver use and documented as such.

The difficulty in driver portability is that drivers are very rarely OS-agnostic. They are written small and fast, but rarely are they written to be clean and portable. OS' also tend to prefer drivers that are "dumb" end-points rather than kernel applets that can take independent action or can be driven from any of their interfaces. This last point is important, in that even if you were to write a "driverlet", it won't work on any OS incapable of handling the concepts involved.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[EvanED]

The problem with that statement is that "major release" has basically ceased to have meaning for Linux. 2.6 was first released five years ago, and there's no 2.7 or 2.8 in planning.

(And in case you're wondering, no, the kernel APIs aren't stable from 2.6.x to 2.6.x+1, at least for generic kernel modules. Maybe the subset that most device drivers usually are, but I've written a kernel module that I needed to make fairly substantial changes to when I upgraded a couple point releases.)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Bloodoflethe]

Blaise, stop hijacking the thread.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[EvanED]

That kinda implies that the barrier for Linux drivers is the lack of devs willing to sign an NDA. AFAIK, that's not often the case. In fact, from what I remember hearing, there have been quite a few developers willing to sign an NDA in order to get documentation -- but manufacturers just don't want the help of the OSS community.

The problem is that those devs would still be releasing code under the GPL. Sure, they wouldn't be releasing the specs as presented by the manufacturer, but I would guess that good, maintainable driver code would be almost as good anyway to any competitors wanting to reverse engineer their product.

The sort of NDAs manufactures usually would want is probably basically entirely incompatible with OSS.

But MS wouldn't have this problem: code wouldn't be released, so only MS would see the drivers. I would say that is why MS would have the upper hand in those negotiations.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[EvanED]

They shouldn't have had a problem with Vista drivers, because they should have designed it to be compatible with 2000/XP drivers. The only thing I can think of is their desire to implement "secure audio/video path" junk that is of no benefit to the user.

Um, you do realize that Vista is pushing a bunch of driver code out into user space, right? Which means that there's basically no way to keep it compatible with existing driver code? At least without requiring substantial changes to some drivers.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[EvanED]

Linux Does have a stable API. What it does lack is a stable binary interface.

As others have said, no it doesn't. From Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt:

"Linux kernel development is continuous and at a rapid pace, never stopping to slow down. As such, the kernel developers find bugs in current interfaces, or figure out a better way to do things. If they do that, they then fix the current interfaces to work better. When they do so, function names may change, structures may grow or shrink, and function parameters may be reworked."

"As a specific examples of this, the in-kernel USB interfaces have undergone at least three different reworks over the lifetime of this subsystem."

"Kernel interfaces are cleaned up over time. If there is no one using a current interface, it is deleted."

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[wastedlife]

Wait a minute. Microsoft said they were entirely rebuilding Windows 7 from the ground-up, trying to get the kernal to run more-efficiently. That doesn't sound like mere window-dressing (like M.e. was merely Win98.2). That sounds like a complete overhaul.

Can't recall anyone saying that other than some bloggers and newssites mistaking MinWin(or was it WinMin?) to be the Windows 7 kernel. I do recall that being said about Longhorn before it was scrapped and then the Vista/2008 kernel became an incremental improvement to the 2003 kernel. Vista's actual kernel number is 6.0. "Windows 7" will have kernel version 6.1. Vista to Windows 7 is being touted as the same level of change as 2000 to XP.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[CAIMLAS]

You mean like they said that Vista was a 'complete overhaul'? And Windows XP? And Windows 2003 (2000 server w/ XP improvements)? And Windows 2000 (NT4 w/ w9x type graphical interface)?

No, each and every one of MS's operating systems (and dare I say, products) have been incremental improvements of the previous version - to the exception of their first products, which they either made themselves (in the case NT and the non-NT Windows strain) or bought from elsewhere.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[kasperd]

MS could start writing drivers for those hardware vendors that provide specifications and let others write their own drivers.

It is not in Microsoft's interest to give hardware vendors incentive to provide specifications to the public. Getting vendors to provide specifications to just Microsoft would be of some value to Microsoft, but if Microsoft can get the vendors to just write the drives, then it costs less money. Of course the optimal for Microsoft would be, if the hardware vendors would give Microsoft the driver sources, and Microsoft can then do bugfixes and updates themselves.

What would happen if hardware vendors actually provided specs to the public? Well for one the specs would obviously be used to support that hardware in Linux and BSD. Better drivers would get more people to use those operating systems, something which is not in Microsoft's interest.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[dyingtolive]

At the risk of burning karma, actually, I think I have the best idea ever! Maybe what Microsoft should just do is go into the hardware business. Then they could make almost all of their hardware proprietary, and since they manufacture and directly control the hardware, they can guarantee 100% compatibility! We DO love certain other companies for it, so why shouldn't they?

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Lonewolf666]

True, but Microsoft could do it the way I suggested. If they choose to stay with the status quo, it is not an excuse for lousy stability and performance in Vista. Which seems (admittedly) fixed by now, but Microsoft's whining about "it was the fault of the hardware vendors" does not convince me.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[kasperd]

lots of cameras "do things their own way".

My experience (based on a fairly small sample of just four models) is, that Olympus works with standard USB storage drivers, and Canon does not work.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Lonewolf666]

In a way, they had this:

The driver model of XP was a quasi-standard that was pretty stable for several years. But Microsoft themselves broke it because they wanted new functions that were not in the XP model. Some of it made sense (reorganizing the Windows Display Driver Model), other things are mostly annoying to the end user (DRM). The point is that a standard can be limitating too.

The Linux Kernel developers are even more radical about it: they don't want a fixed kernel-driver interface at all because they think it gets in the way of development ;-)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[kasperd]

Sometimes it randomly wakes up. If I make it hibernate, when I reawake it chances are my trackpad will not work or I will not be able to connect to the wireless network again.

Do you think the randomly waking up is caused by the operating system? When the machine is at sleep, the operating system is not running, so waking up would have to be triggered by the hardware. Do you think your Mac have a hardware setting that the software can set to make it wake up at random times? That would be a pretty odd feature to implement. Well, Macs do wake up when they shouldn't. For example a Mac usually wakes up when you unplug a USB device, and that is when using Mac OS X. And the implementation of going to sleep and waking up have a load of race conditions. I'll give a few examples, which I experience frequently:

• It takes a while for the system to go to sleep, and during that time you can actually make the system go to sleep. The result of that is, that when the machine is woken up from sleep, the first thing it does is to continue where it was, which was going to sleep.
• When woken up it will show a password prompt where you must type your password. If it times out, it goes back to sleep. That's of course fine, but the timeout counter starts before it even shows the password prompt. Sometimes showing the password prompt is so slow, that it times out and go back to sleep before the prompt even appears.
• If there is a wireless network around when the machine is woken up, it will open a password window behind the screen blanker, and it will get focus. The end result is, that as you are typing your password, some of the keypresses end up in the wrong password window.
• When installing some security update, the keyboard shortcut for putting the machine to sleep stopped working.

So before blaming Linux, stop and think about all the problems Mac OS X give on a Mac. I'm not saying Linux is perfect either, after all I have not yet reinstalled the Mac with Linux.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Arterion]

That's IF Microsoft can get the specs it needs from the manufacturer. If you have some old HP printer and you want it to work with Windows n, either HP or Microsoft is going to have to make a driver for it.

Chances are, there is some old code that can be easily reused and repackaged for Windows n, but Microsoft isn't going to have that old code -- HP does. Microsoft might have the code, but not know how to use it, because it doesn't have any access to HP's engineers.

I feel like Microsoft does a LOT to accommodate third parties who want to make their hardware work on Windows, but in some cases, they just can't.

It's pretty much expected that there will be a new release of Windows every 3 years, and your old stuff might not work with it. I've gold some old ISA devices sitting around the office here that won't work anymore unless I load up Windows 95 on an old machine. Should I be upset at Microsoft or the manufacturer for that?

(BTW, we still actually use that hardware here for real work. I'm IT for a physics lab, and it's an hardware interface for an old spectrometer.)

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Krishnoid]

On the other hand, the in-built sound system (some Intel chipset) on my home box is complete pain in the ass under Linux. I've never got the mike input to work properly.

Note that audio in general is not completely mature yet. Apparently OSS is deprecated, ALSA has no documentation, and neither is mature enough to provide what everybody wants to get the needful done. It's kind of a sore spot. IMHO, and from what I understand of X's architecture, it could be integrated into in the X server:

• Audio is a human-interface concept, like video and user interfaces
• Streaming audio to a thin X client makes sense with modern networks
• Separating the device-dependent part from a common device-independent request protocol is something OSS and ALSA are already trying to do
• Nearly all Linux systems that would have a human in front of them much of the time are running X
• Network transparency comes for free as part of the X protocol
• Multiplexing and sequencing different client requests onto one piece of hardware is already part of the X architecture
• The window manager could then lower the volume of an X client when it was pushed into the background, and mute a window when minimizing it

Even if it wasn't integrated into the X server directly, I'd think it would make sense to tightly couple it, as audio is a per-'application' (as understood under a windowing systems) concept.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[seanellis]

Yup, spot on. I've eventually got a mostly-functional configuration using the "model" option, but the controls are still mislabelled and the mike input is (a) very low gain and yet (b) very noisy. I've just bought myself a decent USB mike to get around the problem. And yes, it "just works" under Linux.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Jorophose]

rich people buy lots of shit so they'll pay a lot.

The problem is, "you kill businesses!11!!"

I don't think there is a reasonable solution. Drop the taxes and sure you get plenty of companies, but you might make less, and tax havens are always out there. Increase taxes, and well, you fuck over the SMB based locally, and you fuck over any chance of multinationals coming over. And some companies buy a lot but barely scrape by profit-wise; what do you do for them?

Neither candidate had a good policy. Neither did any of our candidates. They're all full of shit.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Allador]

You do realize that you can login while you are responding, right?

On the same page/form even.

You dont _have_ use the login form on the sidebar, you can just hit Reply, pen your response, then put your user/pass in the fields and hit Preview to log you in.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Allador]

Good. Maybe I can buy Window NT 7 and skip over Vista (NT6) completely.

Be aware that Windows 7 is a minor release from Vista, which is why its not NT7, its NT6.1.

It's a polish, speed, and stability release.

This is actually a good thing though, as by now the ecosystem (ie, hardware, software and drivers) has largely matured, and will be even more so then.

Your buddy/brother/whatever that had a very slow Vista box .... it was likely the manufacturer's fault that it was as slow as it was. It took manufacturers a _long_ time to ship machines that were reasonably stable in Vista, due to so much of their trialware, drivers, and OOBE stuff being just flat not stable under Vista.

But right now, if you (for example) go to HP and buy a nice business class engineering laptop (Compaq 8510w or similar), it ships with clean & shiny Vista AND Vista x64 drivers, and has very very minimal crap from HP, and generally runs quite well.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[xaositects]

why is this modded as troll? was it the typo? sheesh...

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Allador]

I still think microsoft should have said no to backwards compatibility for apps as well as drivers. New OS, new apps and drivers for that OS.

Yeah, thats pretty much exactly what MS did with Vista. Thats why nearly every hardware manufacturer had to put out new drivers and did such a crappy job of it for so long.

That is like 60% of the complaints about Vista, is that tons of hardware wouldnt work right away with it until/unless manufacturers release new drivers.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[jellomizer]

Awaking from sleep or hibernation worked fine in both Mac OS and Vista on my Mac. Not on Linux. When it awakes from sleep the OS fails to either reinitialize the hardware or reinitializes it incorrectly. It is quite the OS's fault. I never stated OS X was perfect or Windows. But for laptop or desktop uses. Both OS X and Windows makes Linux look like a piece of Crap. The other OS's are not perfect I wouldn't recommend using either for a Server, but we are talking about crapy drivers here and while we love to bust on Microsoft, Linux has much worse problem.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Allador]

FWIW, driver signing doesnt cost anything that you pay towards Microsoft. And for a business its trivial, its a couple hundred bucks a year that you pay to Verisign or similar. You dont pay anything to Microsoft in any way.

Now it DOES cost you to send your stuff to the compatibility labs and get the higher level of signage you can use, but thats also paid out to a third party company who actually does the work. No one (other than that third party company) is making any money there.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Allador]

Or better yet: they could demand all devices conform to a set standard and then produce drivers for standard hardware only.

There is no reason for printers to all have different ways to talk to the OS. Same goes for scanners. This could all be standardized.

This all exists already in the windows ecosystem.

There are highly generic printer drivers that work with a substantial chunk of printers in existence, but has no extra features like duplex printing, quality levels, etc. And thats NOT include PS print drivers.

If a company who makes a scanner just wants minimal functionality for a scanner, they can also just ship twain drivers (or whatever the current version is) and force the end-user to use the MS scanning software that ships with windows.

You can get a generic laserjet driver that has no GUI, no fancy features from HP that works with nearly every laserjet printer they have ever made. But only businesses use it.

Hardware makers use the 'helper software' as a way to differentiate their products.

It's unfortunate, but makes a lot of sense from the HW maker point of view. They want people to KNOW that they're using a Lexmark scanner. Plus they often provide value-added features, like scanning multi-page documents automatically (using the sheet feeder) and automatically producing a PDF at the end. You dont get this with generic TWAIN drivers.

In other words, this isnt a Microsoft problem, or a windows problem. This is a business problem.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Allador]

Make sure you sue netgear, or whoever sold you a card and counterfeited to make it look like netgear.

MS certification on the 'designed for vista' absolutely, no exceptions, requires both 32-bit and 64-bit drivers to be available when the device is sold.

Someone scammed you by erroneously slapping a 'designed by vista' sticker on a box that wasnt.

Sue them.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Allador]

Fortunately the company I worked for at the time dumped Windows for Linux shortly before Vista was released, because trying to port the drivers from XP to Vista was hell, particularly when so many of the changes were really only needed for supporting DRM.

This makes absolutely no sense.

What drivers were these that you were trying to port in-house? It cant be a product you sell, because just abandoning the windows market for software/hardware vendor is suicide right now if done in the manner you describe.

And why would you port drivers in-house?

And if moving to Vist was so hard, why did you not just do ... NOTHING.

And specifically what exact changes are you referring to that were 'only needed for supporting DRM'?

If it was video drivers, most of the pain was moving the driver to userspace. That had nothing to do with DRM.

Not to mention that hardware vendors were under NO obligation to support any DRM in drivers, unless you needed HDCP or similar labels attached to the packaging.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[rtb61]

To really cut through it all. Home much would it cost hardware developers if M$ just dumped vista and stuck to continually debugging and upgrading XP. M$ makes a lot of money by continually forcing pointless upgrades, upgrades that basically cost hardware developers billions of dollars in what ends up being thrown away code, M$ profits the hardware developers pay.

So the hardware developers at sending the big 'Fuck You' to M$, as they are well and truly sick of M$'s upgrade profits coming at their expense. In this case hardware developers really need to dig their heels in, and not create any drivers for windows 7 but also wind back of drivers for Vista. For them the best solution is to force M$ to the XP debug and upgrade route, thus they can largely stick with the same driver with only minimal additional expenditure of software. Of course you can add to that M$ not only costing them money but the ass hats are also charging them licence fees for compulsory bits and paying for compatibility checks to avoid customer threatening warnings about evil drivers (hmm, class action law suit).

This leaves hardware money to spend on Linux driver development for the expanding netbook market and of course for the Linux server market.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Bryan K. Feir]

Actually, for a significant portion of the market, the lock-in is based on dozens of documents with customized Excel macros implementing business logic.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[gmack]

Not even close.. They need a hardware standard.. not a driver standard.

Imagine if you plugged in a printer and the OS said "oh you plugged in a printer" and just handled it instead of having to go off in search of a driver.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[gmack]

Think about all the new features they have added to the CPU in the last few years yet somehow software compiled for Intel works on AMD and vice versa.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Lonewolf666]

In the sense that the devices are "more intelligent" and handle a lot of the device-specific stuff themselves? That would make sense, at the expense of driving up hardware costs because you now need a general purpose CPU in every device (no drivers means the OS knows nothing about the innards of the device and thus cannot handle them from the computer's main CPU).

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[gmack]

No in the sense that for example a printer would show itself as say an "AC 2008" printer with Quality control but no paper sorting bin and the OS would load a generic printer driver and handle it.

It doesn't require the device to be smarter since it would have the same capabilities as before. The only difference is that each printer maker would now implement the standard interface instead of inventing it's own.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[krenshala]

In terms of reasonable quality software there isn't very much decent software for linux and I can get all of it on windoze.

In terms of reasonable quality software, there isn't very much decent software for windows either ...

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[badkarmadayaccount]

Some of us use Lynx on AIX, which doesnt have a descent scree-like utility, you insensitive clod. *waits for karma*

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[hairyfeet]

Thanks for the attempt,but I already tried the Z600 trick with my X1270. Xandros won't print or scan with it and Xandros is the only distro that does WPA reliably on my laptop's wifi card. I'm starting to get the feeling that like those damned cheap wifi cards that the same model number can have more than one chip config in the printer. But that is why I gave up trying to sell Linux boxes. here Lexmark is king and trying to get a customer's Lexmark to work reliably was such a hair pulling experience I just couldn't deal anymore.

So now when a customer gives me an older machine they don't want I just reinstall whatever OS is on the CAL(Win98,ME,etc) and sell it with a copy of Mac Puppy in the CD ROM if they want to play with it. That way there is NO expectation that I am going to support Linux like there was when it was preinstalled.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[ToasterMonkey]

No, you can't. Maybe it's the just new moderation system, but that would be a huge regression IMHO.

This is what you you get after hitting reply.
"You are not logged in. You can log in now, Create an Account, or post as Anonymous Coward."
The "log in now" link returns you to main page. It has to be a bug.

You know, I do seem to remember doing what you say, so maybe it is the new system. That just worsens the situation, it's pretty silly that something like Slashdot can't login and submit at the same time.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[FishWithAHammer]

A buddy of mine was working for Microsoft and as I recall, he said that a lot of Logitech drivers sucked ass, to the point of Microsoft writing a set of drivers for them. But I could be misremembering the company he mentioned.

Re:Seems to me like a bit of a role reversal

[Atrox666]

True..but it's better than Linux.
Taking into consideration the installed base of both OSes Linux is kicking windoze ass. In terms of real numbers windows trounces Linux.

Why bother?

[WK2]

Why would hardware manufacturers bother to write drivers for a Windows Beta release? Especially one that probably won't be released for several years, and the driver requirements and API and such are likely to change several times before then. So many people are happy with XP or Linux, they can wait until the first RC to come out (Microsoft calls it Gold).

Re:Why bother?

[QuantumG]

Maybe Microsoft should do what the Linux community does. Work with manufacturers to get the drivers written and then maintain the drivers for the manufacturers forever.

Ya, that's likely.

BTW - I own two webcams now. Neither work under Windows since I lost the driver disk (and those drivers were useless under XP64/Vista anyway), but they both work just fine under Linux. What's the world coming to?!

Re:Why bother?

[RuBLed]

What's the world coming to?!

The Year of Linux on the Desktop

Re:Why bother?

[zappepcs]

What was that slogan? "Plays for sure" It's a long way from that to begging hardware manufacturers to play along nicely.

Yes, I know they are not related... just seemed appropriate to mention it here having read what has been said already.

Re:Why bother?

[Necroman]

I'm thinking Microsoft has wised up after the Vista debacle with hardware support. Once Windows 7 hits beta, MS will do their best to keep the APIs the same. My company does some driver development and support for some MS Server services and we like to start at least testing with new OSes as soon as possible so we have an idea of what kind of work is going to be needed to get our stuff to work with the next version of windows.

Also, for everyone that bitches about Windows changing their API so regularly, you should look at your little child called Linux. If you are a hardware or software vendor that writes drivers for the Linux kernel and do not have your driver integrated into the kernel, it is extremely painful to maintain. Much more so than Windows ever has been. I did a year of driver development support SUSE and Redhat releases with our out-of-box driver, and the amount of API changes in some of the base level kernel interfaces is down right sickening. Sure you can say "why not submit the driver as a patch"... well, if you designed your driver in a way that doesn't fit the model the Linux bigwigs want, there is little to no way it will be accepted.

As much as people give Microsoft shit for their OS, I find them to be much more friendly and easy to work with when it comes to writing device drivers for their OS.

Re:Why bother?

[Techman83]

Had the same thing with a cheap ass bluetooth dongle someone gave me. Lost the driver disc, so it got shoved in a box of junk. Been a while since I'd checked that box and no longer use windows as my primary desktop. So after doing a clean up one day I figured, well my pc is turned on so no harm in trying it... Plugged it in, the little bluetooth symbol appeared next to the clock and hey presto it worked!! That was compared to the many many hours spent trying to find a working driver for windows!

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a tablet PC with several options that don't work under newer versions of Ubuntu. What is the world coming to?!

Re:Why bother?

[rubycodez]

let's just spin that a little, the 21st century will be the century of Linux on the desktop

Re:Why bother?

[QuantumG]

I assume you've filed a bug report or two, right?

People really do want to know about this stuff.

Re:Why bother?

[AdmiralXyz]

let's just spin that a little, the 24th century will be the century of Linux on the desktop

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Why bother?

[vux984]

Maybe Microsoft should do what the Linux community does. Work with manufacturers to get the drivers written and then maintain the drivers for the manufacturers forever.

Maybe the community should just step up and write them? I mean they do it for Linux, why not Microsoft? Plus, for any device supported under Linux, the hardest part of the work is already done... figuring out how to communicate with the device.

And don't whine about driver signing, if a large OSS group came to MS with a large body of updated drivers for x64, they'd take them in a heartbeat, sign them, and even stick them on the next Windows CD if we let them.

BTW - I own two webcams now. Neither work under Windows since I lost the driver disk (and those drivers were useless under XP64/Vista anyway), but they both work just fine under Linux. What's the world coming to?!

The difference is the manufacturer abandoned the hardware a couple years ago for Windows, while they never bothered to support Linux at all in the first place. So the community stepped up for Linux, because that was the only way it was going to happen, while the manufacturers did a passable job long enough for the hardware to be non-mainstream enough that most people really don't care.

Re:Why bother?

[0123456]

"well, if you designed your driver in a way that doesn't fit the model the Linux bigwigs want, there is little to no way it will be accepted"

So, uh, design your driver in a standard way that's compatible with the kernel development model. Or stop whining if you choose to make life difficult for yourself.

Re:Why bother?

[darkvizier]

Yes... and try installing Windows XP on a RAID array without using a driver floppy disk. Even Houdini couldn't pull that one off! Linux on the other hand is a breeze. The array is automatically detected and the appropriate drivers are installed and initialized.

Re:Why bother?

[Narpak]

Well it is pretty obvious that for every new generation of programmers the amount users, contributors and developers of Open Source software expands. Having at least a general familiarity with Open Source and Linux has almost become a industry requirement. Not to mention that analysing Open Source code to learn is simply a good idea. The program is there, the code is there, you can study it and learn. The code for Windows, and other Microsoft products,is not so easily available.

At least this is what I hear when I talk to people working in the Norwegian IT Industry and friends current undergoing later stages of their education. The documentation and level of expertise increases at a far far higher rate than what Microsoft, or most other Closed Source companies, can compete with. Open Source might not be for all products or services, but it does to a greater and greater extend serve the need of the average user. And with the Open Source products for the large part being free it makes it very convenient for a student to use Open Office instead of Microsoft Office. Or for administration and educational institutions to switch to a Linux, or other Open Source, products. Not only have it been estimated that such a switch will save the Norwegian Government millions, it also means that the code for the products they use can be scrutinized to a far higher degree than Microsoft would ever allow.

Re:Why bother?

[chill]

What's the world coming to?!

The Year of Linux on the Desktop

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya', tomorrow! You're always a day away!

Re:Why bother?

[FishWithAHammer]

And who's going to cover the costs of broken NDAs, exactly? Because the "way they want" is generally open-source, and whether you or I like it or not, there are legal hurdles to making that work.

A stable ABI is a damn good thing.

Re:Why bother?

[mattytee]

Actually, Houdini pulled it off


...the lengths some people will go to for a laugh...

Re:Why bother?

[Tehrasha]

Maybe the community should just step up and write them? I mean they do it for Linux, why not Microsoft?

Yes, why dont they? There are obviously far more Windows users out there to be affected by antiquated hardware.

Re:Why bother?

[Christophotron]

BTW - I own two webcams now. Neither work under Windows since I lost the driver disk (and those drivers were useless under XP64/Vista anyway), but they both work just fine under Linux.

Seems like you're too lazy to go to the manufacturer's website to check for drivers, but even beyond that it is possible to get those cameras to work in Windows. I had the same issue with a Creative cam, and let me tell you Creative SUCKS when it comes to drivers. So of course there were absolutely no drivers on creative's website for this 4-year-old cam on Vista x64.

So I go to searching google and I find people on linux-related forums who have determined the make and model of the chipset for the camera (presumably by opening up the camera and examining the chips) in order to find working Linux drivers or to request that someone write them. So I then check the chipset company's website (Vimicro.com) for drivers and BAM, there are the modern 64-bit drivers for windows. Sweet. This method also worked with an old Airlink PCI wifi card (ralink chipset).

I know a lot of you will say "Why not just try it in Linux" but I was pretty determined, and apparently support was lacking there as well.. I also like throwing the example out there because apparently manufacturers are LAZY and sometimes will even refuse to provide new drivers to their customers if they ALREADY EXIST. Sells more new cameras, I suppose. The point is, you shouldn't abandon all hope for support for your hardware just because the company whose name is on the box doesn't provide it, let alone because you lost the friggin driver disc. For someone who promotes Linux use, that goes against the entire spirit of Linux and open source. Sometimes it takes a little effort. What if your Linux distro didn't have the driver? You might have to (*gasp*) download the driver from a website and compile it yourself!

Re:Why bother?

[ion.simon.c]

Maybe the community should just step up and write them? I mean they do it for Linux, why not Microsoft?

'Cause it's Microsoft. Really, there's no other reason than that. Why should we reward their reprehensible behaviour by adding valuable functionality to their systems?

If they don't have developers, their operating systems are useless. : D

Re:Why bother?

[ion.simon.c]

Heh. I bet that you could install Windows 98 on that same RAID array.

True story: I have a system with a Silicon Image 31(something or other) SATA controller. The WinXP installer didn't know what to make of it and required a driver floppy. The Win98 installer (and DOS for that matter) installed just fine. (Albeit very *slowly*. : /)

Re:Why bother?

[ion.simon.c]

Cute! What're you using to generate that?

Re:Why bother?

[ion.simon.c]

I don't think that you know what you're talking about.

Re:Why bother?

[nabsltd]

What is with all these Slashdot users who "lost the driver disc"?

The first thing I do with any driver disc (or any other software, for that matter) is copy it to my install respository that sits on a RAID array and is backed up regularly. I pretty much never clean that up, so I have drivers for hardware I don't own anymore.

A quick check shows I have Soundblaster drivers from 14 years ago.

Despite being such a pack rat, and literally keeping everything there (like install source for the last 3 versions of MS Office, every game I've ever purchased, etc.), it only takes up 330GB, which is less than $50 worth of disk space.

Re:Why bother?

[Dunbal]

Because the "way they want" is generally open-source, and whether you or I like it or not, there are legal hurdles to making that work.

      You sold the hardware. What more do you want? God forbid everyone finds out exactly what order stuff has to be written to whatever port to make your hardware work...

Re:Why bother?

[masdog]

No...the real question is how does Microsoft keep up with all the changes while trying to make sure the drivers don't create problems for the operating system and the user?

I believe you are wrong when you say that Microsoft is doing it out of arrogance. They do try to do it, but technology products change so quickly, especially at the consumer level. And when your core operating system disc is a year old and doesn't contain the latest service pack, it may not have a working driver for your new printer or the upgraded video card you installed.

As for driver signing, you can't have it both ways. I remember a time when people complained about DLL-hell and how drivers would crash the operating system. Microsoft makes a change that requires drivers to be certified before they can be installed, and some of the community complain because they can't easily write drivers. Give them some credit for at least taking some steps and doing some testing.

Re:Why bother?

[Techman83]

What kind of slashdot user bothers with the drivers that came with the system? They are quite often outdated and buggy.

Aside from that I have all the drivers for everything I own, but when you get given some rubbish little device that was flaky at best on windows, the urge to be so worried about the whereabouts of said disc diminishes.

Re:Why bother?

[mattytee]

This

Enjoy.

Re:Why bother?

[nschubach]

Nobody ever said it was an Earth Year.

Re:Why bother?

[ClosedSource]

"On Linux and Mac, printer drivers are tiny, userspace programs that translate postscript into the right printer commands."

If your description is correct, Linux and Mac users must SOL when they want to print ASCII text.

Re:Why bother?

[Casandro]

But if they try, why don't they manage to do it? Install Ubuntu 7.10 onto a modern laptop, and it'll run just out of the box. Do the same with Vista and you'll have to get lots of extra drivers. That's especially problematic when your network card doesn't work, because it's missing a driver.

Why can't Microsoft just package the most popular drivers with their OSes anymore?

I don't think the certification causes the quality of drivers to raise even the slightest bit. If they actually wanted to have better drivers, they'd just write them themselves, or offer substancial help in writing those drivers. For example they could have published free testbenches which test the whole API of the driver.

Re:Why bother?

[nabsltd]

OK, so you don't install the device at all, in which case drivers don't matter.

Seriously, if I download newer drivers, then the same thing happens to them...they get stashed away. And, when it turns out that version 2.4 of the driver screws up the hardware, I can always revert to version 2.3 (or 2.0, or 1.8, etc.). It doesn't matter to me where the hardware came from...the driver gets saved away.

And, if I bought hardware that didn't work regardles of the driver, it gets returned. So, I wouldn't have had a "rubbish little device" sitting around to work a few years later once Linux got around to supporting it.

Re:Why bother?

[wilsoniya]

So I'm assuming the Enterprise D runs Linux then?

Re:Why bother?

[philipgar]

you do realize that much of the "hardware" we have today is little more than application specific instruction processors (ASIPs) and memory on a board (or SoC). For these hardware devices, much of the development work is in the firmware running on the processors. Oh, and much of that code was probably written by the processor vendor, and likely was obtained under a license agreement that doesn't allow you to release it. Now, if the hardware device contains flash or an eeprom, this isn't really an issue, as the code for these processors can be stored on there. However, many store the program data in the driver. This has a couple advantages, it's cheaper to manufacture the device (fewer components), more reliable (fewer components to fail) and if a bug is discovered in the ASIP code, the manufacturer can release new device drivers that automatically update the firmware of the device, without forcing the user to manually update it. Seems like device manufacturers would have to be stupid not to upload binary blobs to their devices. These binary blobs can't be open source for the reasons outlined above, and thus the device driver cannot be added to the linux kernel.

Phil

Re:Why bother?

[Techman83]

Well I have lots of stuff lying around, you never know when you might need something. Some things I've just collected, which rarely come with driver discs. Some bought and drivers that come with are useless for "Insert current Windows OS" and none available on the net. Just because something is old, doesn't make it useless.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the community should just step up and write them?

Why should the community "just step in" and write them? We pay for that stuff, it should work under Windows because they're mostly dedicated to home users and about 90% of them run Windows. Sounds reasonable enough for me that the hardware manufacturers should "bother" to write proper Windows drivers.

(I've checked with Google before punching in that number)

Re:Why bother?

[QuantumG]

Actually, I've downloaded just about every driver I can find for it. None of them work on anything after XP SP1. I really want them to work under Windows, but hey, don't let the truth get in the way of your spite.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

let's just spin that a little, the 24th century will be the century of Linux on the desktop

There, fixed that for you.

So then... Linux = LCARS?

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maybe the community should just step up and write them? I mean they do it for Linux, why not Microsoft?"

THIS shows the difference between Linux [open-source] developers and Microsoft developers- open-source people do it for fun and the good of the community, Microsoft developers do it for a buck and there won't be many bucks in writing drivers for crappy no-name blue-tooth dongles.

Re:Why bother?

[syousef]

BTW - I own two webcams now. Neither work under Windows since I lost the driver disk

So did you buy cheap web cams from a manufacturer that doesn't have a download site? Or are you just too lazy to go looking? If there are 64 bit Linux drivers there will possibly be 64 bit Windows ones too.

Re:Why bother?

[PitaBred]

There are those of us who actively dislike the shitware that is installed with 90% of drivers, and the fact that those drivers are complete crap half of the time and need updated from the web to just work anyway.

It's nice moving away from Windows... you don't need to keep those archives of crap. I always have the latest version of everything, and have access to the source if nothing else, and the number of copies of it around the world makes it very unlikely that it'll ever go away, and I can use the 330GB of space for something better than useless ancient install discs.

Re:Why bother?

[0123456]

"And who's going to cover the costs of broken NDAs, exactly?"

Tough. If you refuse to release the source for your driver, you can hardly complain when other people won't maintain it for you.

"A stable ABI is a damn good thing"

A stable ABI (more precisely, roughly three thousand and twenty three old, outdated APIs that Microsoft no longer update but can't get rid of) is the primary reason why Windows is such a fuckup. I'm very, very glad that Linux doesn't follow the same philosophy, because the old crap can be thrown out; and that works, because people can just fix the source code and recompile it.

That's not to say that you should throw out your whole driver model just to support DRM, as Vista did, but when there are good technical reasons to make major changes you should do so.

Re:Why bother?

[supernova_hq]

Funny you say that, my debian based N810 is currently sporting an LCARS theme...

Re:Why bother?

[QuantumG]

I've downloaded every driver I can find. Nothing works after Windows XP SP1. These are Logitech and Labtech web cams. As for Linux support, it's all done by one guy who sniffs the USB packets to figure out the protocol, so why would that imply availability of drivers for an unrelated platform?

Re:Why bother?

[ion.simon.c]

Must shit on a WHAT?!?

Re:Why bother?

[ion.simon.c]

I don't think that DLL Hell was commonly caused by device drivers. Moreover, what does driver signing have to do with DLL Hell?

TBH, It seems that most people who invoke the spectre of "DLL Hell" don't know what the hell they're talking about. You may not be one of those people. : D

MSFT does get some credit for resolving "DLL Hell" by following in libtool's footsteps with Side-by-Side Assemblies. ;)

Re:Why bother?

[XDirtypunkX]

Actually, Ubuntu 7.10 didn't run out of the box on 2 of my fairly average machines. We're not just talking about "didn't support" either, we're talking about "hard crashes on start up and or resets".

A few looks around the forums etc cleared it up... but it was still not really that different from having a similar problem on windows and looking for a KB article.

Re:Why bother?

[Q-Hack!]

Mostly we don't because of things like this:

Creative Goes After Driver Modder

Re:Why bother?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Because this way, we can provide Linux as an upgrade path for those users. It runs reasonably well on antiquated hardware, and there's that much more likelihood that everything they need either has an open source equivalent, or runs well under Wine.

Re:Why bother?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Erm, no, we just tell it to print our ASCII text.

Behind the scenes, our text editor turns it into postscript, which our printer driver probably turns back into ASCII. But that's all implementation detail.

Re:Why bother?

[SanityInAnarchy]

There is one difference: Ubuntu 8.10 is out.

Re:Why bother?

[SanityInAnarchy]

there are legal hurdles to making that work.

Since when are your legal hurdles our problems?

Next time, make sure you own your own stuff. Your competitors are doing it. I own a couple of network cards which have completely, 100% open source drivers, which do occasionally get folded into the Linux kernel.

Keep in mind, if you make it open source, you'll very likely have the community maintaining it for you. Which means you won't have to worry about ABI or API changes, it'll Just Work.

Re:Why bother?

[Eskarel]

Make a correction to that. The linux community will help you with your drivers, if you're willing to open source them or release detailed hardware specifications, eventually, if someone who cares owns that hardware, and for as long a driver developer still cares.

If you want to maintain your own driver because for any number of reasons you can't, or don't want to open source your drivers or release your specification, then they'll do their damndest to make your life as miserable as humanly possible.

There are a lot of good reasons why companies wouldn't be able to, or want to do this. This however means that they've got to pull the finger out and keep their drivers up to date. Keeping your drivers up to date on Windows is a heck of a lot easier(for the most part you've only got to do major modifications every couple of years or more when a new windows version is released) than trying to keep them up to date on the kernel(which can vary rather wildly from version to version and may change just to shaft you).

Generally speaking though, these hardware manufacturers(especially in today's climate where upgrading is substantially less necessary than a few years ago), don't want to upgrade their drivers, and wouldn't want to upgrade them on linux either. They want you to buy new hardware.

These same manufacturers saw Vista as a way to finally get someone buying new stuff again, and a lot of them just didn't update drivers simply to try and generate more sales. They'd have done exactly the same thing on Linux.

Your webcams don't work in Windows because the people who made them want you to buy a new one. They work in linux because someone managed to reverse engineer the spec and released drivers. Microsoft can't do that, just like Microsoft can't provide HD-DVD playback without DRM, not because they're not technically capable, but because they're too big a legal target.

Re:Why bother?

[SanityInAnarchy]

For these hardware devices, much of the development work is in the firmware running on the processors.

The kernel seems to allow binary firmware. It pisses off GNU, but it works.

The problem is when all the rest of your software -- which is running right there in ring 0, in that monolithic kernel with everything else -- is closed.

Re:Why bother?

[Z34107]

Yes... and try installing Windows XP on a RAID array without using a driver floppy disk. Even Houdini couldn't pull that one off! Linux on the other hand is a breeze. The array is automatically detected and the appropriate drivers are installed and initialized.

Vista automatically detects your RAID and installs drivers, too, though you'd probably want to use newer drivers than the ones on your Vista DVD. Vista will happily read the appropriate drivers off of a USB key. Or another CD.

Yes, it is unfortunate that XP is stuck on floppies. But, if you're running XP and are really that floppy adverse, slipstream them into the installer. It's not like Microsoft and other developers haven't written a bunch of programs for doing just that.

(Notice how my post performs better due to 64-bit Vista installed on a terabyte RAID 0! ^.^)

Re:Why bother?

[!eopard]

Why would hardware manufacturers bother to write drivers for a Windows Beta release?

Because this is the Windows OS that business will upgrade to from XP.

Related note: I installed this Winv7 beta last night and rate it much higher than Vista with only a couple hours playing around. Would need to spend considerable more time to evaluate against XP though.
RN2: All drivers bar audio were installed OOTB. Audio and updated video drivers were available via Windows Update (older PC, nForce 3 chipset).

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

How the hell do you deal with the naming convention on your own personal system? I'm the same way but I'm too lazy to actually rename the billion and three files to say something other than setup.exe or CrypticFileName_some_random_number.foo (where foo is .msi, .zip but self extracting, .dll, or some other random gibberish).

I have an old BASIC application (SkiDownHillFaster - my first game that I wrote) that is a million and three years old so I understand the keeping of EVERYTHING though I tend to work on a tertiary backup system personally with one being stored off-site at a friends house or the likes. As a trivial note, the game mentioned above was either on a Vic-20 or a TRS-80 but it has been a lot of years.

So, basically, I have a mysterious beyond that is full of files called setup.exe that I may just be able to find what I'm looking for in a slightly longer time than it would have taken me to go find it online somewhere. I'm sure that many GBs of it are entirely useless but, as mentioned, I'm too lazy to the point of even being too lazy to actually clean it out.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

Is that you Twitter? You really shouldn't post AC you know.

Re:Why bother?

[QuantumG]

If you want to maintain your own driver because for any number of reasons you can't, or don't want to open source your drivers or release your specification, then they'll do their damndest to make your life as miserable as humanly possible.

Wow, that's a bit harsh. Seeing as distributing binary-only kernel drivers is considered by just about everyone to be illegal (IBM's lawyers have publicly said as much, and I think IBM have some of the best copyright lawyers available), the kernel developers could be making your life a lot more miserable, but they're not. They prettimuch just ignore binary-only drivers.. if you want to try to keep up with the pace of kernel development, all on your own, then that's your decision, but if you do the small amount of work required to get your code accepted into mainline you're driver will work forever.. that's a pretty good deal!

Your webcams don't work in Windows because the people who made them want you to buy a new one. They work in linux because someone managed to reverse engineer the spec and released drivers. Microsoft can't do that, just like Microsoft can't provide HD-DVD playback without DRM, not because they're not technically capable, but because they're too big a legal target.

You're breaking my fuckin' heart.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

What I'm reading from what you said (I suppose this may get marked as trolling or an attempt to get you to flame me and that's okay with me) is that you're saying either, or all, of these things:

1) We can't be stuffed making drivers for Windows. It is work and we've a vested interest in Linux and the time taken to learn that properly.

2) We don't want to because we don't like Windows. It isn't about empowering people, it is about empowering people only if they agree with what we say is their freedom.

If I'm missing an additional view please feel free to inform me.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

Informative?

Err... Of course you can?

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/36/

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

While I could probably talk about your post for a while I'll just mention that drivers haven't, as far as I know, ever been required to be signed before being installed. You can always click to continue anyways even in Vista.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

Side note: No Linux distro has ever installed on a VERY mundane lappy that I have as a sort of beat the hell out of lappy. (The poor thing gets chucked on car seats, dragged under cars, and has even sat in my trunk for about three days now even in the freezing weather.) It's a VERY simple HP dv5000 and no wifi drivers exist, the special keys have never functioned, num lock has been turned on in some distros, and the graphics are always sub-par.

Mostly I'm a lazy user and live quite happily with Mandriva when I want a home-based *NIX OS. (CentOS at work but I really prefer Windows most of the time honestly, it just works.)

The option with Linux is, as you could say, "Well, just write it?" The reality is that I can't, am not going to invest the time to learn to do it properly and THEN maintain it for other people because after all that fucking time you can bet your ass I'm going to want to share it with someone, and that's a huge part of the problem with Linux from my observation.

We happily tell people that they can write it themselves. Err... They really can't. They're not going to learn either. I program and script and have a good time with that. I can't, don't, and won't do it at that level. I don't have that kind of time nor do I have that kind of interest. 2% means that 1:100 users is geeky, that's not enough for a revolution. I love Linux and pretty much make a living using Linux only and the parts that I touch I do try to help with. I'm not a FSF fanatic (or even fan really) and I don't care the licensing so long as I can use it. So, out of that 2% what have you left? .02% who actually work to maintain some sort of F/OSS OS segment? Far fewer?

Hell, if there was one laptop in my pile of junk that was going to run Linux THAT one would be it. The latest Ubuntu doesn't work on it either, at least not the live CD. No drivers in any format have yet to work for the wireless so I really have given up hope with it.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

Pop your drivers out (hopefully doesn't need anything like a clean install) and then install - I know this sounds odd - a program called XNView. You can then PROBABLY use it once with that and select it as the TWAIN source on the appropriate COM port. After that, if it is at all like my experience, you should be able to use it just fine with programs like Yahoo! Instant Messenger or the likes. It is odd and don't even begin to ask how it works. To make matters worse, sometimes I have actually screwed that up and let Windows attempt to install generic drivers or used drivers from the vendor's site that were *supposed* to work with XP SP2 which meant that the stack was somehow so twisted that I'd never get it to work.

It is easier if you have a clean install already saved to another media format so that you can point, click, restore to a bare metal point. It has worked in the past for me and I discovered it entirely by accident as XNView is one of the programs that I first install on any Windows installation.

If you want the URL it is http://www.xnview.com/ as I recall - click through to your language of choice.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

My guess would be that you don't own your own business. That is just a guess. If you do then I'm wrong but I suspect that it is so small that you're not beholden to share holders and probably view an ethical or moral standpoint (as YOU see fit) as more important than money.

Well... I don't know you really. I am not really sure what entitlement plan you read BUT the reality is that the world doesn't work like that. I'd even side with you in a debate saying that the world SHOULD work like that but it doesn't. People like ownership, profit, and power. They have this crazy little thing called ego which means they'll cling to something for as long as they can to ensure that they get to call the shots and, depending on their views, those are the shots they call even to the point of ruination.

Judging by your user ID number I'm inclined to guess that you're not that young. The people in power are also usually the people with money and the people with the products. The fair market THEORY is never going to work in the same way that communism (the real communism, not the shit they cite when they pander to idiots on television) won't ever work because humans will do what comes naturally to them and that is to protect their own in the immediate, short term, future.

TL;DR: They sold the hardware and now they want to maintain as much control as they can get away with and, ideally, coerce or force you into replacing that product as quickly as is legally viable at as great a profit as they can achieve. Reality sucks and people suck.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

I should post this AC but, well, I hope you'll trust I'm being good natured about this...

"more precisely, roughly..." --- Not so good actually. ;)

Yes, I got your point. The verbiage was rather odd though and in that context didn't make a whole lot of sense. It was sort of like saying, "I'll be exact but not exact." Ah well.

I got called on similar in English class back in college years ago and that's something that stuck with me so I figured I'd share in a hopefully non-confrontational way. Mine was, "It was approximately 3:27."

Re:Why bother?

[magpie]

And don't whine about driver signing, if a large OSS group came to MS with a large body of updated drivers for x64, they'd take them in a heartbeat, place them under a proprietary license giving the writes no control over or credit for them, sign them, and even stick them on the next Windows CD if we let them.

Fixed if for you

Re:Why bother?

[Richard_at_work]

I use a folder hierarchy - 'Manufacturer Name -> Product Name -> Driver Name -> Date Downloaded -> setup.exe'. Its worked so far for me, both at home and at whatever employers I have introduced it to.

Re:Why bother?

[MrMr]

YAAC complainig that an unspecified piece of hardware doesn't work with an unspecified piece of software?
Of course he has filed a detailed bug report.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

Do you name it by device specific or OEM name as well if need be?

For example, you could have a stack of Logitec mouse drivers and they're pretty specific sometimes as I recall.

Would that be:

Logitec > MouseMan > *****

Because that covers a whole lot of them. Do you then dig down? I'm really curious because this is a project I've been meaning to tackle for a good many years.

What if the date you downloaded it turned out to be more recent than a known good/better driver? Do you keep the old and dump the newest or do you...?

Re:Why bother?

[horza]

I don't know anybody that uses driver discs. People just automatically go to the manufacturer web site and download the latest drivers from there.

Also had the experience yesterday of plugging in a cheap bluetooth dongle into Ubuntu and it just worked immediately. I was most pleasantly surprised. We spent ages unsuccessfully trying to get it working under Windows.

Phillip.

Re:Why bother?

[TheThiefMaster]

(Notice how my post performs better due to 64-bit Vista installed on a terabyte RAID 0! ^.^)

And mine is XP x64 on a 600GB RAID 0. Is that better or worse?
I slipstreamed the raid driver and a few others into my XP x64 install cd, as I don't have a floppy drive, it would have been a bit hard to install otherwise. The new setup is one of the best bits about Vista from a system-builder's POV.

Re:Why bother?

[Lonewolf666]

Why would hardware manufacturers bother to write drivers for a Windows Beta release? Especially one that probably won't be released for several years, and the driver requirements and API and such are likely to change several times before then. So many people are happy with XP or Linux, they can wait until the first RC to come out (Microsoft calls it Gold).

It seems that this is more or less what happened with Vista:
Hardware vendors started late with driver development (maybe they believed there would be some more delay and changes like you wrote), and immediately after release the user experience sucked. Now Microsoft wants to avoid a repeat...

Re:Why bother?

[Goaway]

Considering the original post, wouldn't that be The Several Years Ago of Linux on the Desktop?

Re:Why bother?

[Goaway]

And what would that accomplish? To develop a driver, a developer would need to actually have the hardware. And if they have the hardware, they already know there's no driver for it.

Or do you expect open-source developers to run out and buy hardware because you file a bugreport? Or two?

Re:Why bother?

[CFBMoo1]

So then... Linux = LCARS?

From Riker: EMACS!

From Picard: VI!

From Riker: EMACS!

From Picard: VI!

*Sounds of a leaf blower firing up*

From Riker: ...

From Picard: ...

*Millions of punch cards cover them*

From Kirk: *Turning off the leaf blower* Hole puncher.

Re:Why bother?

[QuantumG]

Dude, I've tried installing drivers for these web cams on 5 different machines running 10 different versions of Windows. The only shit that works is XP SP1 and 2k.. and I'm not that desperate to have them working on Windows.. seeing as they work just fine on my 3 Linux machines.

Re:Why bother?

[QuantumG]

Actually, that's exactly what Greg Kroah-Hartman does.

Re:Why bother?

[smoker2]

Yeah right.
For years your neighbour has been clearing his drive with a snow blower and laughing at you with your shovel. Now his blower's broken and you are considering clearing his drive for him ?
More fool you !

Re:Why bother?

[Goaway]

Well, better file it to him, then.

Re:Why bother?

[Lonewolf666]

Unless the manufacturer web site contains only incomplete "driver updates" (hello Creative).

Partly because of such asshats, I've taken to the GP's principle of backing up my drivers. Albeit with the difference that I usually archive the latest version known to work, not the original driver CD.

On top of that, some drivers are necessary to access the internet in the first place (NIC) or make it way more convenient to navigate the manufacturer web site (graphics card driver that gives you full functionality, as opposed to 640x480 pixel VGA mode in Windows 2000).

This said, I have had better results with Ubuntu. Everything except the proprietary NVidia driver came with the distribution, and the latter was easily downloaded. Among other things, my old Soundblaster Live for which Creative does not even offer the complete Windows drivers for download was supported right away.

Re:Why bother?

[OneSmartFellow]

Now, if I could just understand this gibberish about manifests.

Re:Why bother?

[Doc Ri]

August 30, 1937 was a Monday. But I guess Houdini can even pull that one off!

Re:Why bother?

[MadMidnightBomber]

Every time you run binary firmware, God kills a GNU.

Re:Why bother?

[theaveng]

>>>What is with all these Slashdot users who "lost the driver disc"?

Good question. I keep all my CDs/DVDs inside those CaseLogic notebooks. That way I always know where they are located (on the bookshelf), and can always find them when needed. There's still the possibility I might lose the entire notebook, but that seems unlikely since it never leaves my room.

Re:Why bother?

[syousef]

What logitech camera? Let me see if I can find something appropriate. Some of the logitechs have been modded to oblivion by the astrophotography community.

Re:Why bother?

[Dunbal]

you're not beholden to share holders

      This argument is constantly used by corporations to get away with anything. "We did it for the shareholders". Funny you should mention that, especially today with share prices near their all time lows for the past few decades, across the board.

      You're right in that I don't have a business anymore. I am a day trader, so being a shareholder I can understand. However as a day trader I am not an investor. I don't care all that much about a company, I care about what its stock is doing over the next few MINUTES. And I can tell you that share price has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with a company's profit. It has to do with the market's EXPECTATIONS of the company's performance. I've seen solid, profit-making companies have their share prices cut to 1/3, and I've seen money-losing dogs resist declines and even show gains in share price against all reason.

      Therefore holding a board of directors accountable for the share-price of their company is ludicrous. It's not a valid argument. Richard Fuld was not responsible at all for the drop in share price at Lehman Brothers. Running his company in an unsafe manner, creative accounting and lack of liquidity, however, are entirely his fault. This did not happen in the few days their share price plummeted. It had been happening for months and years, and shareholders were oblivious. But when the drop in share prices (due to overzealous momentum trading) meant a credit rating cut and his bluff was called, and he couldn't get his hands on more borrowed cash, the lack of liquidity was exposed and the company immediately folded.

      Please try to understand yourself how your "but the shareholders" argument is rubbish. Yes some shareholders have successfully sued their boards, when gross negligence was exposed. However this is the exception, not the rule, otherwise today almost every single corporation's board would be sued successfully. The board doesn't give a damn about the shareholder. They care about the share PRICE (because that lets them borrow, or cash in their options for profit)- and up until now people thought that price was determined by posting good results - which is reasonable in a market full of long term investors (who will look for a history of "good results"). However it's time to wake up and see that price CAN move own under market forces regardless of how a company is handled. Otherwise please explain today's situation.

      Has corporate America really lost trillions and trillions of dollars this year? No. What is deflating is people's expectations for the future, causing them to sell shares which increases supply on the market, which drops the price as people seek to get out of their positions as soon as possible (regardless of price).

view an ethical or moral standpoint (as YOU see fit)

      Everyone views the world as they see fit. I wouldn't be much of a nerd if I viewed the world through another's perspective, would I? I would be a blind fanatic, then.

humans will do what comes naturally to them and that is to protect their own in the immediate, short term, future.

      Exactly. And in the interest of protecting MY short term convenience, I'd appreciate it if there were less obfuscation about how a piece of hardware actually works. Oh, it's not going to happen, and therefore we will continue to whine, and reverse engineer in a tedious manner, etc - as we have been doing all along. But raising my head a moment and wishing things were simpler for ME is, as you say, only human.

Re:Why bother?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

it comes with the distro. just add the universe and multiverse repos on apt, then apt-cache search nvidia.

heck, it's even available on vanila debian (wich i reintalled this week. bluetooth wasn't working on ubuntu intrepid) after you add non-free repo.

Re:Why bother?

[Hamsterdan]

It was slow because it used standard DOS mode for the disks. since WinXP (NT) can't use DOS, that's why you need the drivers.

Re:Why bother?

[Eskarel]

I'm don't make binary kernel drivers, I do however use hardware which uses binary kernel drivers and I've seen enough of the bullshit.

Binary kernel drivers are illegal because the kernel devs want them to be, it wouldn't take all that much to modify the license to allow it or to provide some sort of LGPL interface they were willing to support.

I defend Microsoft not because they're a particularly great company, but because I feel someone has to. The linux community does a lot of wonderful things, but they run around pissing off whoever they feel like, taking their code in any direction they feel like and ignore whatever laws(stupid though those laws may be) that they fell like.

Microsoft doesn't get to do that, they can't just stop being backwards compatible with all the shit software that people have written. They can't change their APIs every five minutes. They can't ignore US law no matter how stupid or idiotic they might believe it to be.

Linux does some wonderful things for the world, but there's just too much ideology to it. Why on earth do we have a kernel which you can't create drivers for without violating the GPL. Isn't it better to have companies which support Linux but don't open source their drivers than to not have support at all? I know RMS believes that wherever we don't have an open source solution we should go without or build one, but this just isn't practical for most IT people, not even counting everyone else.

Re:Why bother?

[Lisias]

Why stick with Centuries?
The Aquarius Era wil be the Era of the Linux on whatever computing device would be used at that time...

Re:Why bother?

[ion.simon.c]

What's the wireless card? :D

Re:Why bother?

[nabsltd]

For hardware, I use a folder structure of Type/Manufacturer/Model/OS/Version in my setup.

So, I have:
Video Cards/ATI/Radeon/WinXP/Catalyst 7.10
Video Cards/ATI/Radeon/WinXP/Catalyst 8.01
Video Cards/ATI/Radeon/WinXP/Catalyst 8.08

I also don't keep the original ZIP or self-extracting EXEs, but instead something that is ready-to-use. This is good if there isn't an install file, but instead you just use Device Manager to "Update Driver". Also, for slower machines or systems with low disk space, it sometimes allows an install to complete when it wouldn't otherwise.

I don't keep everything, but I use something like the kernel install system for most package managers...keep a few versions, so that you can regress to something that isn't broken if necessary.

Re:Why bother?

[penguinbrat]

The difference is the manufacturer abandoned the hardware a couple years ago for Windows, while they never bothered to support Linux at all in the first place. So the community stepped up for Linux, because that was the only way it was going to happen, while the manufacturers did a passable job long enough for the hardware to be non-mainstream enough that most people really don't care.

I'm no driver developer, although from what I understand from doing some research here and there to get devices working - Linux has the capability to practically ignore what the device actually calls it self, while instead focusing on the chip it self which is where the magic comes from anyhow - Microsoft on the other hand, for what ever reason needs to know what to do with what ever the device calls it self, and seemingly could care less about the functionality of the chip(s) them selves - which said device gets it's functionality from in the first place...

Which explains why Linux doesn't need explicit drivers for X and Y hardware, it already just works... The manufacturer of the hardware doesn't need to support Linux at all, if the specs/white paper of the chip it self is already documented and/or released - the driver for Linux probably already exists...

Note that I'm separating the chip with the hardware, it's like Microsoft needs to have the driver for the wrapper around the chip and Linux instead goes directly after the chip that controls the wrapper.

Re:Why bother?

[ion.simon.c]

[allcaps]
why, you don't have to!!!
with your purchase of sXs assembly maker you can be up and running in under ten minutes!!!
it's fast and easy and only $999999.99!!!

http://www.mazecomputer.com/sxs.htm
[/allcaps]

I <3 the "htm" extension.

(And no. I don't know who the hell these people are.)

Re:Why bother?

[vux984]

Why should the community "just step in" and write them?

Because there is a demand for all these devices to work under new versions of windows. The community has the know how, and gets the benefit.

We pay for that stuff, it should work under Windows because they're mostly dedicated to home users and about 90% of them run Windows.

That is ridiculous. It did work under the supported operating systems. Why should the OEM or Microsoft be responsible for it once its been discontinued and you move on to a new OS, whether its Windows x64 or Linux for that matter?

Sounds reasonable enough for me that the hardware manufacturers should "bother" to write proper Windows drivers.

Linux distros don't generally directly support old hardware either. Its thanks to volunteer efforts from the community that makes that happen. Such a community could exist for windows too. In any case its absurd to blame Microsoft. And if you are going to blame the OEM why do you accept that they don't 'bother' to write Linux drivers at all?

Re:Why bother?

[Sj0]

Microsoft doesn't get to do that, they can't just stop being backwards compatible with all the shit software that people have written. They can't change their APIs every five minutes. They can't ignore US law no matter how stupid or idiotic they might believe it to be.

Wait. Microsoft?

Are you sure?

Re:Why bother?

[vux984]

THIS shows the difference between Linux [open-source] developers and Microsoft developers- open-source people do it for fun and the good of the community, Microsoft developers do it for a buck and there won't be many bucks in writing drivers for crappy no-name blue-tooth dongles.

Care to explain everything from OpenOffice to the Gimp to Apache to PostgreSQL? Apparently there are PLENTY of "open source people" who do things for fun and the good of the community and are happy to take the non-trivial effort to get a lot of this stuff running on windows.

Re:Why bother?

[vux984]

For years your neighbour has been clearing his drive with a snow blower and laughing at you with your shovel. Now his blower's broken and you are considering clearing his drive for him ?

Most windows users I know haven't been laughing at linux users. Hell the majority of them still don't know what linux is.

Re:Why bother?

[masdog]

Why can't Microsoft just package the most popular drivers with their OSes anymore?

They do. Its just that Microsoft's release cycles are so long that the disk won't always include drivers for the latest and greatest hardware. For instance, my XP SP2 cd will require me to go out to the Web to get drivers for a Dell Optiplex GX260. A Server 2003 SP1 cd has more drivers, but not all of them. But if I throw in a Server 2008 cd, it has all the drivers I need to use it.

Re:Why bother?

[Casandro]

Can't they just make that "online install" work for drivers? I mean there's an option for that.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

Thanks. I have absolutely got to dig into this project soon.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

LOL No, that'd be being a kind human in your example. (I live in an area where we get a lot of snow. So your description is very apt for me. And yeah, I'd shovel it with them or even for them if they needed it.)

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

This is not an "answer type" of post but rather a post saying you present interesting views and I will think on them.

Re:Why bother?

[TrekkieTechie]

I can't wait to have Majel Barrett narrate my on-screen events.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

Kinda sorta figured that but figured I'd let you know just in case you did have some urge to either smash your fingers with a hammer or do something a little less painful like get the cameras to work. It is only slightly less painful.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

It's a really basic Broadcom 802.11b/g internal of course. I've tried every last one of the drivers out there that even hinted they'd work or had broadcom within 5 pages. It's a quite common piece of hardware.

Re:Why bother?

[bathmatt]

Maybe the community should just step up and write them? I mean they do it for Linux, why not Microsoft? Plus, for any device supported under Linux, the hardest part of the work is already done... figuring out how to communicate with the device.

I am sure that the community will write all the drivers once we have full source to the OS to know the right way to do so....

Re:Why bother?

[onefriedrice]

What is with all these Slashdot users who "lost the driver disc"?

The first thing I do with any driver disc (or any other software, for that matter) is copy it to my install respository that sits on a RAID array and is backed up regularly. I pretty much never clean that up, so I have drivers for hardware I don't own anymore.

Or if that sounds too big a hastle for the returned benefit, you could just... you know... keep the disc.

Re:Why bother?

[vux984]

Note that I'm separating the chip with the hardware, it's like Microsoft needs to have the driver for the wrapper around the chip and Linux instead goes directly after the chip that controls the wrapper.

This simply isn't true. Its simply how -vendors- configure the drivers. The INF file for a windows driver is typically limited to match a single 'vendor id', so multiple OEM products that are internally the same guts still identify individually, and only match their vendors OEM.

With linux, the community writes a driver for a chipset and includes all the vendor-id/device-id pairs that match in the one driver; so a LOT of devices from multiple vendors can work with a single driver.

This can be accomplished in Windows easily enough; you can manually edit the INF to match any hardware from any vendor you like; so if you have an HP camera and the Sony driver, but you know they are the same guts you can can query the camera for its ids and add them to the Sony INF and windows will happily (and even automatically) install the sony driver, and if it really is the same guts it will generally work just fine.

And there are several cases where you can download the 'reference' drivers from the chipset maker and use them even if you can't find the vendor specific drivers.

USB-COM port converters based on FTDI chipsets; and of course video card drivers for Nvidia and Ati cards are good examples that I've personally used. The "generic modem" drivers windows ships with would be another example. And many of the network card drivers are another, where you can use generic chipset drivers bundled with windows instead of the branded drivers on the disk.

Some times they are the same, sometimes the branded drivers offer more features, sometimes they are shit and the generic drivers work better, but the point is, that windows drivers really are as flexible as Linux ones. Its just that vendors provided drivers only support their hardware.

Conversely, if Sony were to release official linux drivers for something, you can bet your ass they would only work with the sony product, even if an HP had the same guts... at least until somone hacked them to add the ids for the HP unit. So its not that linux can 'ignore vendor branding and go right for the chipset' its just how the community has set up the matching.

Re:Why bother?

[Panoramix]

Well the way you put it sounds mean-spirited and controlling... but yeah, I'd say you're reading correctly. Except it's not about "empowering people" and never has been, where ever did you pick up that funny idea? The FSF? Yeah that must be it. Look they're very decent folks but sometimes a bit too idealistic IMO.

Anyway. Writing software for free is about having fun, not helping people. Sure, if you can help people while having fun, hey that's fantastic and probably what makes linux and open source in general so appealing. But coding for Windows is not fun. That's work indeed, all the way. I mean, they actually intend you to pay money for development tools! They don't let you look at the source code for the kernel and libraries! They want you to work with closed boxes and figure out their quirks by trial and error? What kind of joke is that?

Oh, and windows devs are all anonymous, you don't even know who wrote this bit or that.. there's no social status to earn, no cred, no one to blame for the buggy bits. That's boring man.

So no, I don't see a "community" helping microsoft out of this hole. But hey, they've got a lot of cash right? They can pay for that drudge.

Re:Why bother?

[vux984]

I am sure that the community will write all the drivers once we have full source to the OS to know the right way to do so....

Or you know, you could just read the documentation:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/Devtools/wdk/default.mspx

Complete with tutorials and samples.

I'm not saying it would be 'easy', but its not that hard, and just like in Linux, once you've got a working sound card driver, supporting other similiar sound cards is pretty simple.

Re:Why bother?

[QuantumG]

I'm don't make binary kernel drivers, I do however use hardware which uses binary kernel drivers and I've seen enough of the bullshit.

Wow, really? What's the hardware?

I've been trying to make the Linux community interested in maintaining a list of binary kernel drivers for years now.. but no-one seems interested. So, to be honest, I have no idea how common binary kernel drivers are these days.. I've never had to use one myself.

Re:Why bother?

[Stan Vassilev]

Why would hardware manufacturers bother to write drivers for a Windows Beta release? Especially one that probably won't be released for several years, and the driver requirements and API and such are likely to change several times before then. So many people are happy with XP or Linux, they can wait until the first RC to come out (Microsoft calls it Gold).

The process is completely different this time. The beta of Windows 7 is in fact Vista. Windows 7 retains largely the absolutely same driver architecture, but includes some new interface features (such as the display driver settings UI), and adds more device support for sensors, Device Stage and more.

If you do have a Vista driver for your hardware, chances are it'll work just fine as-is in Windows 7 already.

Re:Why bother?

[Eskarel]

Anti-trust laws are and always have been largely toothless.

Even then they didn't "get away with it" there was just no effective way of doing anything else.

Re:Why bother?

[Eskarel]

I've been fairly lucky lately, and it's really only nvidia anymore, and after a number of instances of random interface changes breaking drivers(on the kernel side of things) things have been fairly stable lately.

Linux has no concept of change control for the most part, you have to upgrade everything or nothing, stuff changes whenever it suits the developers to do so. I know I'm not the only person who has noticed this sort of thing. Xorg has changed the way it handles peripherals a half a dozen times in the last few years.

There are certainly benefits to doing this, it means cleaner, faster code, and fewer bugs.

It also means that you can never be absolutely sure that anything open source or otherwise will ever work on any particular version of linux(new open source stuff won't always work with older system libraries, old closed source stuff won't always work with new libraries) and makes getting a vendor to sign off on support for any particular distribution(other than redhat, and we're a novell/suse shop) is more than a little tedious.

Like I said, there are a lot of advantages to it, but I just get a little frustrated when I see people on slashdot constantly bashing Microsoft. They're not really all that evil anymore, even if Steve Balmer does look like some sort of alien. Vista had a lot of problems, most of them weren't Microsoft's fault and most of them were fixed. Vista has some tedious DRM, but it hasn't affected me in any way shape or form in 18 months. Admitedly I don't have a blu-ray drive and I don't watch any DRM'd HD content, but it hasn't stopped me from doing anything I did before DRM.

It's part of my personality to tell it like I see it, and I'm just getting so tired of the general Microsoft and in particular the Vista bashing. Vista really isn't all that bad, it's not particularly exciting, and a few features were implemented incorrectly(UAC for one), but I've most certainly used worse operating systems, and it's not deserving of even half the vitriole that it gets. Microsoft did some moderately dodgy things, twenty years ago. They've released some less than perfect software, and their less than perfect software is still beating Linux on the desktop. It's going to continue beating Linux on the desktop for the forseeable future too. They have a somewhat annoying obsession with crippling their own innovations to try and keep people using Windows, even when there isn't any viable alternative. A lot of this might just be that they don't know how to turn things like silverlight or .NET into cash in any way other than by selling OS licenses, and maybe they need a more creative management team. In the grand scheme of things, they're far from being even the most evil software company in the world, let alone the most evil company in the world.

There are places in this world for open source software, and there are places in this world for closed software. Sometimes we need to reward innovation with money, and sometimes it costs money to get programmers to do the uncool, unsexy, generally unpleasant things that are necessary for business to function. Some companies can find ways to do these things and still release their software open source(mostly companies whose prime market is the enterprise and so can get reliable support money), but some can't. Until and unless the linux community can find a way to work with the companies who can't there is never going to be a year of the linux desktop. There may be a "year of the proprietary internet appliance that happens to be running embedded linux", but there won't be linux on the desktop.

Ideology and the real world don't mix. RMS has had some brilliant ideas, and has likely forseen some problems that we haven't yet dealt with. He's contributed amazingly to the world of computing, but he's a zealot and an extremist. There seems to be no room for pragmatism and compromise in his world. The world of business, the one which pays all our salaries and which pays for all the bits of software which has to be made but is

Re:Why bother?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Did you get the appropriate firmware? Broadcom drivers won't work unless you rip the firmware out of the Windows driver and install it in the appropriate places.

apt-get install b43-fwcutter

If that fails, what about ndiswrapper?

For the record, Broadcom is about the only wireless I have problems with on Linux, if the above qualifies as "problems". Most other things work out of the box, better than they do on Windows.

Re:Why bother?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Pretty much both.

Keep in mind, we're doing this for free, and we're each doing what we're doing for our own reasons.

Personally, I have no desire to work with Windows any more than I have to, or to strive to improve the Windows platform. If I had the time and skills to do driver development, I would much rather do it on Linux.

If there was no more driver development work to be done on Linux, or I had a particular need for Windows to work with a particular piece of hardware, I'd consider it.

Think of it from that side -- it's not as though I would oppose the development of Windows drivers. I'm just not willing to put any time into it.

Re:Why bother?

[Allador]

And in addition to what vux984 said below, needing access to the source is bad software design.

Hardware drivers SHOULD be written to a spec or an API. NEVER to the internal implementation, which is what you get with source.

This is like software programming 101.

Re:Why bother?

[Allador]

Install Ubuntu 7.10 onto a modern laptop, and it'll run just out of the box.

Hardly. I've actually never seen that happen. There is ALWAYS a problem with the Nvidia video card, and often you get zero video at all out of the box, and you have to use the alternate installers and edit grub to suppress the splash screen, just to get to a freaking terminal.

And then of course the wireless never works. Ever.

Why can't Microsoft just package the most popular drivers with their OSes anymore?

Define popular. This is a bigger set of drivers than you seem to think it is.

I don't think the certification causes the quality of drivers to raise even the slightest bit.

For those that certify, it does. Many dont certify.

For example they could have published free testbenches which test the whole API of the driver.

There's tons of this stuff available on the website. The certification process is one end-result of this path.

Re:Why bother?

[mjwx]

let's just spin that a little, the 24th century will be the century of Linux on the desktop

There, fixed that for you.

No, by that time Linux should be ready for the Enterprise.

Re:Why bother?

[KGIII]

Thanks - I'll try it. I'll have to root for a Mandriva RPM or find the package source manually I suppose. 'Tis a lot like work and certainly not going to be easy for the average user. I'd definitely say that those would qualify as "problems" for the advancement of alternative OSes. Maybe someone needs to reach out to the company? I'll type up an email later today if I have a few minutes.

Should it be Microsoft problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should Microsoft insure that its software compatible with hardware? After all software is a wrapper that allows a comfortable use of hardware.

Re:Should it be Microsoft problem?

[Sj0]

One primary purpose of an operating system is to provide a functional layer between hardware and software applications.

If the operating system can't reliably provide a functional layer between hardware and software applications, then why exactly should people be paying for it?

Re:Should it be Microsoft problem?

[Allador]

Because sometimes, in the real world, when you've had products and architectures out that are 10+ years old, you sometimes have to make breaking changes to ensure you have a good architecture for the next 10 years.

Re:Should it be Microsoft problem?

[Sj0]

Irrelevant.

The question is, "Should Microsoft insure that its software compatible with hardware?"

If they want money for their product, their product had better do what it's supposed to do. For an OS, if it doesn't work with the hardware we've got, they won't get a penny from us.

Standards

[PhrostyMcByte]

Nearly 2009 and we still can't plug in a printer and have it just work. The idea that any printer - consumer or professional - needs proprietary drivers that might have problems with Windows 7 is really sad. We need more standard HID devices, and better HID support in OSes.

Re:Standards

[falcon5768]

Im more annoyed generic drivers are not more common. Even within one manufacturer, we get killed with our Print Server having to contain multiple drivers because the provided generic drivers from the manufactures dont cover a good amount of their printers or if they do are very buggy compared to the specific driver. Though since personally switching to the mac I can never go back to the windows print system in comparison to CUPS.

Re:Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

HID is a double edge sword. Take USB Mass Storage as an example, if there wasn't one, we might have file system tailor made for Flash memory now.
But now Mass Storage expose everything in simple linear blocks..., it's just not possible.

Well, I know the price might probably be much higher with much low adoption rate without Mass Storage HID...

Talking about Printer, there are actually PostScript standard which work reasonably well, except that you will lost some bells and whistles like Printer maintenance stuff. Microsoft also wants to push its XPS standard, which might be a good HID support candidates.

Re:Standards

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unfortunately, we have the curse of penny-pinching to blame for that one. Printers nice enough to have Postscript interpreters have been just working with nothing more than a ppd for longer than I've been alive. More recently, USB has a standardized printer class, and IPP for network printing is not exactly exotic.

I don't know exactly why the printers actually available(particularly the cheap ones) have resisted standardization so sharply; but the state of the market is terrible, as you note, despite their being good ways to do it. It isn't like the bad old days of USB webcams, where everybody rolled their own because no standards existed, people seem to be actively doing the wrong thing with printers.

Re:Standards

[setagllib]

All we need for the flash solution is a revised HID standard that does expose raw blocks. It can still be standard and uniform, just lower level.

Put it like this. If mass storage did not have the HID abstraction and wear levelling circuitry (primitive though it may be), Windows would have absolutely soiled every flash device out there with its uniquely bad IO layer. At least the raw device is slightly protected from Windows by the standard.

Re:Standards

[spandex_panda]

This is where Linux is good. If your printer is supported, chances are it will work out of the box. My printer is working fine (samsung clp300) although the ibook prints better in colour, Ubuntu drivers are easier to install.

Re:Standards

[FictionPimp]

Damn it, I posted in this article before I saw this post. I should of waited and modded you up.

Re:Standards

[GFree678]

If your printer is supported, chances are it will work out of the box.

I could say exactly the same thing about Vista. It detects my older Canon printer out of the box, like Ubuntu. But unlike Ubuntu, the drivers are fully featured (eg. they can show ink levels, initiate manual head cleaning, etc).

Seriously, this bullshit about underestimating Windows has got to fucking stop by the Linux crowd. Makes them look uneducated.

Re:Standards

[shentino]

Ever think that maybe the hardware makers and MS are in cahoots and they have some sort of deal that says

"We will only support your hardware if you shaft "

Re:Standards

[GFree678]

No, I don't think that.

Hardware makers make hardware with drivers that work in Windows because that's what "everyone" uses. Why wouldn't they? There's no need to make deals, it's friggin' obvious who you'd target your hardware for. As for Linux, support for it varies from hardware maker to hardware maker. They need to believe they'll see a return on their investment (cost, time, whatever) in developing drivers for Linux. If Linux had more market share in the desktop world, then sure, drivers would be more functional/available.

Re:Standards

[GFree678]

Well I have a better chance of getting fully-functional drivers in Windows than Linux. That's my point. Doesn't have to be out-of-the-box either (Linux has the advantage there), just in the end. Doesn't matter whether it SHOULD be the case or now, just what it currently IS.

Seriously, this bullshit about underestimating Linux has got to stop by the Windows crowd. Makes them look uneducated, ignorant and/or astroturfers.

Sorry for having a different opinion.

(Disclaimer - disillusioned former Linux user, having been promised the world and not seeing much as a result. Life is just harder in Linux, too many things to think about.)

Re:Standards

[RAMMS EIN]

I don't understand. We _do_ have filesystems (JFFS, JFFS2, YAFFS LogFS) that are tailor-made for Flash devices.

Did you mean we might have _Windows_ supporting filesystems tailor-made for Flash? Well...I think the reason we don't isn't so much that existing filesystems work "well enough", but more that it takes Microsoft a long time to catch up with the world. How many years of widespread 32-bit CPUs did it take them to produce a 32-bit OS? How many years of widespread Internet access to produce an OS that wouldn't be corrupted and taken over within an hour of being connected to it? And that's assuming they even want to do it at all. They can't cater to all markets, and neither should they want to. They are a for-profit company; if they don't see the business case, why would they do the work?

Re:Standards

[SanityInAnarchy]

At least the raw device is slightly protected from Windows by the standard.

That's one of the things that bothers me most about how this is done right now.

I'm using a solid state drive that seems to be SATA, which means I get simple linear blocks and hardware wear-leveling -- extra cost in the device, and I can't use JFFS2.

All so Windows doesn't have to adapt.

Re:Standards

[powerspike]

This is where is good. If your printer is supported, chances are it will work out of the box. My printer is working fine (samsung clp300) although the ibook prints better in colour, Ubuntu drivers are easier to install.

there fixed...

Re:Standards

[jimicus]

I don't know exactly why the printers actually available(particularly the cheap ones) have resisted standardization so sharply;

Software is cheaper than hardware, and the hardware required to process Postscript is still quite a lot more powerful (and therefore expensive) than most manufacturers are prepared to put into their cheaper hardware. You also have to license it from Adobe, which costs money.

Re:Standards

[setagllib]

It's even worse than just that.

http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/ubifs.html#L_raw_vs_ftl

"For example, it is known that some vendors optimize their FTL devices for FAT..."

Basically we won't really have full use of our hardware until Windows is forced to evolve.

The same problem led to the creation of WEP. Just because Windows' in-kernel encryption is as useful as piglatin, hardware and drivers have to pick up the slack. Don't say it's because of embedded devices - they've been powerful enough to run Blowfish since before Blowfish itself was specified.

Re:Standards

[KGIII]

I guess the question is, really, why should a hardware vendor support an OS with a tiny share of the market? Give them a REASON.

I know I read statistics that said that on your average Friday night after 10:00 some 5-6% of drivers are legally intoxicated. That number was higher for holidays but the numbers were cited on the news during the New Year's season.

Now the outcome from a drunken driver is not at all like the outcome from an alternative operating system. That isn't my view at all. The percentage is so small that they're not going to get, for the most part, consideration for their special needs.

We *could* make a law that says you're allowed to drive intoxicated at those times so long as your insurance is prepared to cover your damages and you drive a vehicle limited to x-amount of speed, and you have to paint it bright yellow and keep constantly flashing purple lights going to warn people that you're a drunk driver.

In the above law the risk is too great for people to give it any consideration. Pandering to an extreme minority is not generally considered good business. Before people say that Linux is the most popular server or the likes, keep in mind those servers don't NEED specialty print drivers normally, nor do they need the latest graphics ability, and they probably don't even need drivers for an input device.

Re:Standards

[MrMr]

How about this:
Switching printers when the ludicrously overpriced cartridge is empty would be way too easy if you didn't have to install new drivers and support software?

Re:Standards

[Goaway]

IF, in contrast, OEMs were to ignore the task of writing dirivers for Windows ... then you end up like Vista where the hardware doesn't work at all.

Wow, in a fantasy would, Linux is totally better than Windows!

Re:Standards

[TheRaven64]

Take USB Mass Storage as an example, if there wasn't one, we might have file system tailor made for Flash memory now.

Nonsense. The USB mass storage profile, like any other drive interface, sits below the filesystem. It gives you an interface which looks like an array of blocks. You read blocks and you write blocks. The filesystem is layered on top of this.

Talking about Printer, there are actually PostScript standard which work reasonably well, except that you will lost some bells and whistles like Printer maintenance stuff

Postscript is pretty horrible as a printer language. It's a stack-based, Turing-complete, programming language with lots of drawing primitives. It is incredibly CPU-intensive. My last laser printer ran a PS interpreter. It had a 50MHz MIPS CPU and could take over a minute to print complex pages. Worse, it's actually possible for a PS file to infinite loop - there are some nice PS fractals that do this, for example. Something like PDF makes more sense for printing.

Re:Standards

[TheRaven64]

Postscript just doesn't make sense. Back when laser printers were really expensive it did - you'd buy one fast CPU in the printer (or print server - I used to have a dual P3 box that was made by Xerox and originally just ran a PostScript interpreter and some drivers for an expensive printer). Now, however, you will have something like a 50MHz MIPS chip in the printer and even a slow handheld will have a 200MHz ARM chip - a desktop or laptop will probably have a 2GHz CPU. When you print a PS file, you have to render each page in to a buffer and then output that to the page. Doing this on a 2GHz CPU on the computer is a lot faster than doing it on the printer. My old laser printer printed significantly faster when I used PCL instead of PS, because PCL is much simpler.

Oh, and you don't need a license from Adobe for using PS. It's an open standard - you can implement it yourself, use GPL'd GhostScript, or buy a license from Alladin if you don't want to use the GPL'd version. Adobe also ship an implementation you can use, and you do need to pay them if you use this.

Re:Standards

[Abcd1234]

I don't understand. We _do_ have filesystems (JFFS [wikipedia.org], JFFS2 [wikipedia.org], YAFFS [wikipedia.org] LogFS [logfs.org]) that are tailor-made for Flash devices.

Yeah, but they're pointless on USB flash devices because the block device layer, and in particular the mandatory wear leveling, means that the hardware gets in the way of implementing a proper flash filesystem, as you can't control what gets written where.

Re:Standards

[Abcd1234]

Postscript just doesn't make sense.

Spoken like someone who doesn't understand the benefits of Postscript. PS gives you the ability to render, in a resolution-neutral format, precisely what should be written to the paper. You can then leave it to the printer to do this job correctly, and the computer need not even know about details such as DPI, etc.

At best, you might want to replace PS with some other, simpler (ie, not turing complete) vector-based format (eg, SVG)? But turning over rendering to the PC is precisely what you *don't* want to do.

Re:Standards

[JesseMcDonald]

I understand why native-PostScript printers are scarce, but how difficult could it be to include a simple ROM with self-contained, platform-agnostic (Java?) translator software? It'd be cheap to implement, with all the CPU-intensive work being done on the PC, and there would be no need to supply separate drivers for each OS.

Re:Standards

[gknoy]

Exactly. Also, if all printers were able to use a generic driver, you wouldn't need special software or drivers which would enforce wasteful use of ink, and the like.

Re:Standards

[Foolhardy]

If mass storage did not have the HID abstraction and wear levelling circuitry (primitive though it may be), Windows would have absolutely soiled every flash device out there with its uniquely bad IO layer.

Can you be more specific as to Windows' "uniquely bad IO layer"?

Block allocation is the responsibility of the filesystem. Windows doesn't have a flash optimized filesystem because it would 1. break backwards and cross compatibility because MS would have to implement a new filesystem, one that they wouldn't port to previous OSes and wouldn't be compatible with other OSes, either because of NIH syndrome or because other OSes don't have a raw flash optimized FS (i.e. OSX) and 2. as the parent said most consumer hardware does not expose the raw blocks to the interface, so the FS would be of limited value.

However, there is a lot more to Windows' IO layer than filesystems, and there's nothing in the rest of the IO system preventing a raw flash optimized stack. I think Microsoft considers this to be a hardware problem, best solved in hardware, where it has been solved in hardware.

Re:Standards

[shentino]

I'm almost certain that MS is cozier with OEMs that ignore linux.

Naturally, I can't prove it, but we are after all talking about a company that was indicted by the US Justice Department for anti-trust violations.

Why take support seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft doesn't, why should hardware makers?

Hardware support?

[Tibor the Hun]

Microsoft is concerned about hardware support?
OK, I can guess that they caught a lot of flak for the recent drivers situation with Vista, but shouldn't they be more upfront about software support?

Of all the computer problems, how many of us are impacted by hardware? Yes, the hard drives die, and occasionally something will hiccup, but for every one of those issues, there are 10 "my computer is running slower now than a week ago", or there is a crazy file that I can't delete, or "I'm getting notices to buy a spyware cleaner". For all those issues, who do people call? Not Microsoft... Pfft, they call Dell, HP, or whomever they bought their box from.
So then Dell and HP in turn end up doing Microsoft software support. (Unless they just forward you to Microsoft's call center in India.)

Re:Hardware support?

[Nightspirit]

The biggest problem when Vista was released was shitty Nvidia and Creative drivers. Nvidia drivers were responsible for 50% of vista crashes when it first came out, hence people thought vista was unstable and crap. MS doesn't want a repeat of this for win7.

Re:Hardware support?

[MeNeXT]

Yeah I like the one where you right/drag a file in XP SP3 and a new window comes up first asking if you wish to copy or move the file and then you need to once again select if you wish to move or copy the file.

That's a fun one to explain. User friendly my A**.

Re:Hardware support?

[Koiu Lpoi]

"my computer is running slower now than a week ago", or there is a crazy file that I can't delete, or "I'm getting notices to buy a spyware cleaner"

People need to know there's alternatives. I've been running Mac OS lately, and I'm not wanting to go back. All the power of a full Unix shell with an interface that's miles better than either Windows or Gnome+Compiz. Of course, Ubuntu is definitely getting there for your average person, and it's free.

Re:Hardware support?

[Shados]

The very definition of an OEM implies that you're packaging the product and providing support... If I make an application that uses PostgreSQL, sell it, and the user has an issue with the database, they'll call me. Thats just...normal. Dell and HP do the same, just with hardware and software together. Thats also why if you buy an OEM version of Windows (or virtually any software), and you have issues, you can't call Microsoft, because YOU are support. If you buy a boxed copy at Bestbuy though, then you have support.

Re:Hardware support?

[Nightspirit]

Except ATI and "generic" sound card manufacturers (REALTEC, etc) managed to develop drivers that were mostly stable and functional. My motherboard 5.1 soundcard worked flawlessly when vista was first released, while my creative card barely even worked.

Re:Hardware support?

[philipgar]

and if OSX or ubuntu had the 90+% market share windows had you'd have the same problem with spyware on them. Much of the spyware is installed by people who don't know what they're doing. This is NOT microsoft's fault. They've actually tried addressing the problem with Window's Defender. As much of the spyware doesn't need root privileges, once it's installed, it's there. If it requires a root kit, than it's the same on most any OS. There will be security holes, and they will need to be patched. This is a fact of life. Plus, there will be users who will enter their root password for an application they've never heard of just because the box pops up. Blaming MS for the spyware problem on windows just doesn't make sense (and for the record, I'm writing this on my Mac laptop, and run many linux machines on my network).

Phil

Re:Hardware support?

[powerspike]

That's a fun one to explain. User friendly my A**. try explaining to your mother how to download source code and recompile a kernel because she brought a new webcam because the old one didn't look nice... i'll take a double click anyday..

Re:Hardware support?

[KGIII]

I am both a sort of fan for Microsoft and also a Microsoft MVP Award winner for a lot of years. I'd like a citation if you'd care to provide one. 50%? Hogwash. NVidia causing 50% of the Vista crashes? Hogwash still.

I'll do ten pushups if you can show me one reliable stat showing that NVidia caused 50% of Vista's crashes at any time. I'll give you 20 (but I have to do them in sets of two as I'm a slashdotter) if you can show me that 50% of Vista installs crashed for reasons due to drivers alone from ANY vendor at any point of time.

Vista, pre SP1, sucked. It is actually not that bad now.

Re:Hardware support?

[KGIII]

That's because he is talking out of his ass or has installed something that resulted in this behavior. There is the copy/move power toy and such from a few vendors but no... It doesn't do that by design. They might be getting some strange messages when they attempt to move stuff from protected or system folders or files but to use that as an example of typical behavior is moronic and attempting to karma whore with a group of people that probably doesn't bother actually using XP often enough to know better.

Re:Hardware support?

[KGIII]

Rootkits, albeit manually installed, were something I first learned about (firsthand) in a Unix environment, long before they became known on Windows. In my youth I was stupid as all hell and my user name (after this one) eventually was "GotRoot?" People seem to want to forget that.

Re:Hardware support?

[MeNeXT]

How when we do not know we talk. Typical of Windows users.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303650

When you have a few it gets old. Hey ASS it's me talking.

Re:Hardware support?

[CrazedSanity]

In my experience, the only time a support line is used is when the person having the problem doesn't know of somebody in their family/friends that could fix it. Your typical "Gramma Jane" doesn't feel comfortable talking to some 16-year-old tech support rep that doesn't know the first thing about communicating with people that have a different level of knowledge than they do.

DISCLAIMER: Anybody that knows me comes to me almost immediately to fix their computers. And I have a feeling the "No, I won't fix your computer" shirt would only make it worse.

Re:Hardware support?

[Sj0]

Microsoft changed the driver architecture. It's their problem getting buy-in so companies do a good job on drivers.

Sounds like they're now changing it again for Windows 7, so I don't see Microsoft doing very well at all over the next few years. A company developing brand new drivers is added expense with no payback. If you can't promise some stability, drivers will be slapped together with the idea being "We're going to have to replace them in a year anyway".

Re:Hardware support?

[KGIII]

Because that KB article is in any way related to what you described?

Re:Hardware support?

[BoChen456]

For all those issues, who do people call? Not Microsoft... Pfft, they call Dell, HP, or whomever they bought their box from.

Thats because they paid very little for that copy of the OS, if you buy a copy of windows off the shelf (instead of the OEM copies that come with PCs), you get Microsoft support.

Re:Hardware support?

[Nightspirit]

It was actually 29%, so I won't require your $20.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/03/28/29-of-windows-vista-crashes-caused-by-nvidia-drivers/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/28/nvidia_vista_drivers/

Re:Hardware support?

[Allador]

Sounds like they're now changing it again for Windows 7, so I don't see Microsoft doing very well at all over the next few years.

You didnt RTFA.

The whole point of these missives from MS is that the driver architecture is NOT changing between Vista and W7. Drivers that work on Vista will work on W7.

They have added some new, optional features in the driver space, but no breaking changes.

Re:Hardware support?

[Allador]

It's not 50%, but its not a very good picture either.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

Re:Microsoft Begs Everyone To Take Them Seriously

[bigstrat2003]

Hardly. Everyone with half a brain in the PC market takes Microsoft seriously as it is, they don't need to beg. It's foolish not to take the vendor of the standard OS seriously, after all.

It's funny, though, the position Microsoft is in. Being the industry standard, they have the luxury of letting vendors write drivers for them (unlike the Linux folks). But as they're finding out, this also puts them at the mercy of the vendors. Delicious irony, I'd say. I wonder if this will lead to Microsoft writing drivers themselves in the future?

I can't believe Vista drivers don't work...

[Joce640k]

After all the runaround with drivers for Vista, they completely changed the driver model again?

What kind of idiots are they employing?

Re:I can't believe Vista drivers don't work...

[andy_t_roo]

"What kind of idiots are they employing?"
Very well paid ones probably.
The question is "are they getting what they paid for?"

Re:I can't believe Vista drivers don't work...

[the_banjomatic]

Except they didn't... Vista drivers work fine in the alpha, and that isn't expected to change

Re:I can't believe Vista drivers don't work...

[Loiosh-de-Taltos]

Sometimes you people are monstrously uninformed. I have trouble imagining how you can assume that when the exact opposite was clearly stated, repeatedly, from Microsoft. All of the driver breaking that went on during Vista's development was done to create a framework for future efforts. Examples below:

The audio driver model was changed to create low-latency drivers and offer features like application-specific audio channels. Seven enhances this by offering separate modes (communication and regular). They also offer ducking (temporary volume reduction / playback stop) for communication devices. Ex: You get a skype call, your Windows Media Player lowers the volume during the call.

The video driver model was changed to lower the DirectX overhead and simplify drivers (by removing hardware CAPS). Seven enhances this by offering Direct2d to handle all 2d rendering (with some incredible enhancements including glyphing-support). As always for Microsoft, GDI and GDI+ are still supported along with Direct2D. For 3D there are a few new features:
1. DirectX10 Level9: Direct9 hardware wrapping that will allow DirectX 10 and 10.1 programs to use whatever features are available.
2. DirectX10 WARP: Software (optimized) renderer so that DirectX 10 is supported on systems with no 3d cards.
3. Coming in DirectX11 (which is a superset of DirectX 10.1): Compute Shaders which allows easier access to using GPUs for non-graphics computations.
DirectX11 will be supported in Vista along with Direct2d.

Vista drivers are compatible with Seven, but the newer features (like communication mode) will require updates. The hardware will still work, just not as fast or with as many features as it could.

This is the problem with MS

[fermion]

The white box manufacturer know nothing of the OS. They didn't write it, they don't have the code, they don't even likely have all the documentation. They know how it supposed to run on the machine, but they have no ability to fix errors or look through code to ferret out unexpected and emergent behavior. Furthermore, the average white box manufacturer has a profit margin that is less than 20% of what MS enjoys.

Yet all the support is farmed out to the manufacture, which farms it out to the call center, which farms out to independent contractors reading from a computer script. How many levels does a problem have to move through before someone who can actually fix the problem sees it. I know that 99% of the complaints come from people who just can't seem to remember where the 'any key' is located, but every once in a while a real problem comes up, and it would be nice to talk to someone who knows the underlying architecture. I mean, MS can spend huge amounts of money to provide the anti-piracy annoy ware in MS WIndows XP, but not support the product?

I know when I was doing this sort of thing, it was nice to be in position directly connected to support to fix problems as they occurred. If there is a problem with the business environment right now, it is that everyone wants to be in fancy management positions, but no one wants to be on the front lines helping those annoying customer maximize the use of the product, the exact people who pay good money that makes us all rich in the first place.

(And I know that much of the time the end user is not the customer, only a means to a greater goal, and sometimes when the end user pays no money, the amount of deserved support might be minimal, but the priciple still applies.)

Re:Anonymous Coward

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

No, no. You Get to pay MS and Verisign(every year!) for that driver MS want so much.

Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[zerofoo]

Microsoft needs to be worried about it's own quality control issues first.

Network copies were REALLY broken when Vista was released. Copying files to and from a network was excruciatingly slow - how did that get past Microsoft's QA?

Explorer still occasionally shits the bed for no apparent reason. Why is explorer still the shell of the operating system? Someone should tell Microsoft that Netscape is no longer a threat to them.

There are a ton of BONE-HEADED design decisions in Vista (try selecting a wireless network with less than 5 or 6 clicks).

The ugly truth is that hardware manufacturers are not the cause of Vista's "perception problem". Vista is the cause of Vista's perception problems.

-ted

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[Shados]

If by Explorer you mean Internet Explorer... its really NOT the shell of the system anymore.

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[Shados]

It actually doesn't. Its an application like any other that can be killed, move, restarted, or even removed. Some versions of Windows Server can even run without it installed at all. And I thought you meant IE since you brought Netscape up in your post.

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[GFree678]

There are a ton of BONE-HEADED design decisions in Vista (try selecting a wireless network with less than 5 or 6 clicks).

Indeed, Vista certainly doesn't have the easier way to select a wireless network.

Having said that, Microsoft is (sometimes) capable of learning from their mistakes. Windows 7 has a modern wireless selector now: http://windows7news.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/win7_m3_ms_17.jpg

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[nabsltd]

Its an application like any other that can be killed, move, restarted, or even removed.

Except, of course, for the fact that killing the "root" explorer.exe ends up causing you pretty ugly problems.

For example, when you kill off the explorer.exe process controlling your taskbar and system tray, starting Explorer again usually leaves you with a mess, since the running tasks don't go back into the tray. Then, too, everything that was in the various "autorun" places gets run again because Explorer is too dumb to figure out this isn't the first time it is being run.

Basically, because Explorer is the display shell and hooks into so damn much, but it isn't really the root process for your login, the whole setup is so fragile that the only way to make sure everything ends up right is to log out and log back in.

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[isBandGeek()]

Copying files to and from a network was excruciatingly slow - how did that get past Microsoft's QA?

What QA?

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[erikina]

Feel free to mod me down, I was being retarded. Sorry.

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[bofh29a]

This QA, Q: Can we ship it now? It's still broken A: Hell yeah...we'll fix it in SP1 (throws chair)

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[marcosdumay]

There is a software on Windows, called Explorer, that is the one you interface with. It is not exactly a shell, since it desn't fork all your processes, it just seems to manage the interface.

Explorer uses the same rendering engine as Internet Explorer. Microsoft made it so that they could argue in court that the rendering engine of Internet Explorer was an essential part of the OS. Now, 10 years aready passed, Netscape is no more, and the GP is saying that there is no reason to use the IE problematic rendering engine to present the entire user interface anymore.

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[quacking duck]

Its an application like any other that can be killed, move, restarted, or even removed.

Except, of course, for the fact that killing the "root" explorer.exe ends up causing you pretty ugly problems.

For example, when you kill off the explorer.exe process controlling your taskbar and system tray, starting Explorer again usually leaves you with a mess, since the running tasks don't go back into the tray. Then, too, everything that was in the various "autorun" places gets run again because Explorer is too dumb to figure out this isn't the first time it is being run.

Which version of Windows are you using? I'm the first to dump on Windows, but this hasn't been my experience with WinXP at work.

When I kill the explorer.exe process, then relaunch it from the task manager (File > run > explorer.exe), the only tasks that don't re-appear are any open windows I had--makes sense, since I killed their "parent."

I'm not sure what you mean by autorun stuff running again; I have login scripts that launch when I first login, these aren't run again when explorer.exe relaunches. Nor are things in the Startup folder, like Office autorun or the resident antivirus scanner. Believe me, I'd notice if all of these ran again--it takes almost 3 minutes after first login before my stupid machine is responsive enough to actually use.

I've done this kill-relaunch many times across several WinXP PCs, and they've all behaved the same way. Are you relaunching explorer the same way?

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[Shados]

It used to use the same rendering engine a long time ago. Now, it does not (thus why things like Active Desktop don't work).

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[Tatsh]

There are still some DLLs that are ie* in system32 and other places than %ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer. IE and Explorer in my opinion have not been completely separated. Progress has been made but it is almost like Microsoft thinks everyone is a fool because now when you type a URL into Windows Explorer all that happens is a IE browser will pop up if IE is your default.

These are from XP SP3 with IE 8 beta 2 and are still in the system32 directory.

ie4uinit.exe
ieakeng.dll
ieaksie.dll
ieakui.dll
ieapfltr.dat
ieapfltr.dll
iedkcs32.dll
ieencode.dll
ieframe.dll
iepeers.dll
iernonce.dll
iertutil.dll
iesetup.dll
ieudinit.exe
ieui.dll
ieuinit.inf

A few may not be IE, but iesetup.exe? Come on. I don't see ffsetup.exe (even though Firefox is installed). And that is because Firefox is truly separate from the OS, unlike IE. If IE was truly separated, Windows Explorer and other Windows apps would not need to reference these DLLs at all, rather %ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer. What sucks more is the apps (and many old apps) that can no longer run on XP and Vista due to linking to the IE6 rendering engine. This should have never happened in the first place! Even McAfee's interface used Internet Explorer. I remember many software packages back in the day forcing people to upgrade to IE5.5 or whatever the latest version was just because it was free. And that was even at a time when Netscape users were still just trying to use their preferred browser on a Windows that now just HAD to have IE installed.

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[heffrey]

Sorry, how are explorer.exe and Netscape related? Are you perhaps thinking of Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) which admittedly is confusingly similiarly named?

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[nabsltd]

Yes, exactly the same way.

But, I use "Launch folder windows in a separate process" since that leads to more stability, and that might be the difference.

Still, icons in the system tray don't put themselves back when you restart Explorer...they need to be restarted themselves to make it work.

I do know that at least some of the things that run at "logon" will run if you restart Explorer, but I need to spend some time checking which ones they are.

As for the 3 minute startup...unless you have 10-year-old machine, you need to ditch some of the startup tasks. You really don't need most of those things running automatically at login. Either that, or investigate some utilities that allow you to delay the startup of less important things.

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[dave420]

Now, if you kill winlogon.exe, you get some fireworks. And killing explorer and restarting it is perfectly fine. It works as you'd expect it - no double autorunning, all the tray icons back up, and all the running apps in the taskbar. I'll do it now to check... yup - took a second, and everything is exactly the same as it was before.

Re:Microsoft needs to take support seriously.

[mrdarreng]

What QA?

1/3 of the that company is a lethargic, inept test department. If you can actually do testing well they push you to be a dev. Test managers get no respect and find the ladder doesn't reach as high as a dev or pm's ladder. It frustrated me to no end to work with the testers there. Having to explain what my code does everytime I submit a patch, explaining something in a meeting and then two more times in person, the ridiculous amount of redundant emails that you have to forward to the same people over, and over...ugh. Until MS fixes it's test department (part of this will be getting devs and pms to respect test) your question will ring loudly to me and many other ex-employees, as well as those who remained.

Windows Video Capture drivers & a good distro

[mattytee]

Sounds like you have a better solution going, but I still wanted to turn others in your situation who *do* wanna run Windows on to btwincap -- the card is probably using a Brooktree chip.

This driver is usually much better than the included buggy/glitchy ones.

Dynebolic is a kick ass GNU/Linux distro for video capture and editing. It can also cluster just by running the liveCD on multiple systems.

Re:Microsoft Begs Everyone To Take Them Seriously

[FishWithAHammer]

How's Linux's 0.91% market share feeling?

Christ. You make the rest of us who use Linux look bad.

hrrr

[Vexorian]

Dear hardware makers:

We first take the chance to declare you the cultprits of the vista fiasco, bad hardware makers!.

Now please be a good boy and support Vista 7 right away, we know this is a sudden move with so few months left for the beginning of 2009 and you are still trying to support Vista. But now we decided to release another OS, so bitch please support that one already, thanks.

Linux Drivers are more important.

[KozmoKramer]

The manufacturers should spend more time collaborating with the Ubuntu and Mandriva communities. Windows 7 will suck no matter how much effort the manufacturers put into it. Why waste the extra time on a sinking ship?

Re:Linux Drivers are more important.

[im_thatoneguy]

Because even if the ship were sinking there is money to be made before grabbing a life raft.

Sell to the 98% of the passengers for as long as you can and then if the boat doesn't look like it's going to stay afloat grab a life raft along with your briefcase full of money.

Can I run photoshop in linux? Nope. Can I run 3dsmax in linux? Nope. So in other words my fancy workstation would be a fancy eepc for browsing the web. Yep. That really encourages me to buy Video Corp's fancy new video card. So that I can run Open Office and Firefox.

"What's that? Linux doesn't require as new of CPUs and as much RAM? Why then as a hardware manufacturer would I want to encourage the efficient OS?"

Seriously though I hear a lot of bitching about how someone needs to upgrade their Athlon 2100 XP processor and 128MB of RAM to run Vista. If the concern of the user is that they don't want to buy new hardware--why would hardware manufacturers want to work with you?

Re:Linux Drivers are more important.

[TheDugong]

Although I think your point is valid, but from the opposing end of it... I held off buying a new laptop for ages because I was worried about the hardware being supported under linux (wireless in particular). I did not want to run windows, but linux. I then ended up buying an eeepc 1000H (and installed ubuntu hardy with the kernel from array.org, sorry I could not find a linux version in Oz) because I knew that it had support for linux. IWO, I did not upgrade my hardware until I was certain it was supported what I want to use it for. Apple certainly missed a sale because linux support seems a bit hit and miss on their macbooks. But, hey, as one of the 0.x% of of computer users what do I matter.

Re:Linux Drivers are more important.

[c-reus]

"Can I run photoshop in linux? Nope. "

Uh, yes you can. See Wine AppDB. Photoshop CS3 support isn't that great but CS2 runs just fine.

"Can I run 3dsmax in linux? Nope."

Run Blender.

Re:Linux Drivers are more important.

[Locklin]

Because the sinking ship is a nuclear aircraft carrier that will take a decade to sink, while the frigate that's docked is still being built and doesn't have hot showers yet.

Re:Linux Drivers are more important.

[Lisias]

Because the ship may be sinking, but is not sunk yet. Everybody is trying to squish any left juice they can, and spending any money in any other thing, now, will lower the management's christmas bonus for this year. They're just managing as they always did: as there is no tomorrow.

Re:Linux Drivers are more important.

[im_thatoneguy]

CS2 isn't good enough. I need HDR editing. CS3 is about to be replaced this week sometime because CS4 has some extremely pursuasive features.

Can't run blender. Performance is no where near 3dsmax + Brazil. Quality is no where near 3dsmax + Brazil. We also have tens of thousands of dollars invested in proprietary 3dsmax extensions.

Believe it or not Blender sucks. I know it's hard to understand when you don't actually use the software but for those who actually need a top of the line app that's an important thing to consider. And that's not just me saying that. When the Big Buck Bunny team was asked what they thought of Blender they said the same thing. We don't pay $3500 a seat for Max because we're thinking "OMG it's teh 1337 to buy super awesome software!" It's because it's worth an extra $3500 dollars per seat.

Or...

[emptycorp]

They could just update Vista to actually be compatible with all devices and release the "upgrades" as an update as it should be, not be the money-grubbing whores they are.

Is there another one?

[Casandro]

Is there another desktop OS on the market?

Re:Is there another one?

[Tubal-Cain]

Of course! How could we forget:

Amiga OS
*BSD
Haiku
RISC OS
ReactOS

(all of which have their latest release in this year or are nightly builds)

Serious case of inept management syndrome

[Weaselmancer]

I think the biggest sign of Microsoft's impending fall is the fact that idiot business guys are in charge now.

It's interesting you'd point that out. I was thinking something similar. Mostly in the way the request was worded. I've spent some time around inept managers and you can see a lot of the same in the summary:

"urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release" - Translation: Get on the ball and do our work for us.

"to avoid the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista" - Translation: Our failures are not our fault. They are your fault. Get on the ball and fix it.

"'There is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released,' Microsoft has warned them." - Translation: We have you by the balls. Don't make us squeeze. We want you to do things for our benefit, and we're unwilling to wait, or even to ask nicely.

Now, in contrast what they should have done is this.

Windows 7 is being released, and soon. Yeah, we screwed the pooch with Vista. But we'd like to fix things, and we'd like your help. Towards that end we are making a pre-release version of Windows 7 beta available to developers so we can make something that has the promise of Vista, but actually delivers. And we'll be holding several WinHEC sessions, to help you, our valued partners make this next Windows the best product it can be.

Engage us as coder geeks, and we would be far more happy to comply. Speak to us - geek to geek. Let us know why Windows 7 is exciting. And admit your mistakes with Vista, so you have some credibility when you try to engage us.

Of course, inept power happy managers would never say such a thing. And it's the product that suffers. I've seen it before, just never quite on this scale before. Treat your developers like peons and they will abandon you. Programmers tend to be a little rogue in their perceptions. I can see a great many people reading that press release and thinking "well screw that crap".

I certainly would.

Re:Serious case of inept management syndrome

[Idiomatick]

The summary did that more than MS did for the most part so ya know.

Re:Serious case of inept management syndrome

[zavo]

It's an epidemic here that so many of us geeks just hates Microsoft - full stop. It's as if the 70,000 odd employees at Microsoft are all thick, incompetent nuts - c'mon people, get real! It's not easy to be hired by Microsoft - the bunch at Redmond and accross the globe are truly awesome at what they do.

There are "hundred's of thousands" of hardware components out there for Windows. One can't truly expect Microsoft to write drivers (millions of lines of code) for hardware they have no financial benefit from. This task would dwarf the entire development for Windows itself. Why should hardware vendors get free drivers?

I agree that MS should create a list of hardware with suspect drivers so users can be aware of which items would make their OS unstable, before they buy.

Two things hampered Vista's perception of what it truly could have been:

1) Driver instability (which is not Microsoft's fault) and 2) heavy resource requirements

If you carefully select the hardware to marry with Vista, and give it some oomph in the RAM and CPU department, it's a gem - gaming on it is just incomparable to anything else! These days "Windows Server 2008" (running the Vista kernel) is almost all I use on my Macbook Pro using VMWare's Fusion. I've never had more fun with an OS! It doesn't have the glorious transparency of Linux, but Server 2008 just works, all the time, and has the Vista look if you enable the desktop experience - Leopard pales in ability. Having Leopard sleep (it's way faster and more efficient at this than Server 2008) underneath Fusion, is a great combo!

My point is that we should give credit where it's due. Microsoft is no monkey. MS employs the best and brightest - Google "microsoft talent"!

Re:Serious case of inept management syndrome

[xenocide2]

"urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release" - Translation: Get on the ball and do our work for us.

Well, I think in an ideal world, manufacturers would work together with their OS vendor to ensure quality. After all, they're the people best able to write the drivers: they have the documentation, the IP and the designs. Microsoft's WHQL tries to twist manufacturer's arms to do adaquate testing already; this is more of a call for driver engineers to start earlier than they did on Vista.

This might be a key distinction between Linux and Windows. Linux has a lot of driver developers working on behalf of companies, either as contractors, consultants or employees, but are still subject to some peer review. They're expected to test their own hardware here too. And I think Greg K-H's assertion that once your code is in tree nobody will break it is bogus. Once your code is in tree, you get to do continual testing to make sure nobody broke it, because nobody else likely is.

From an economic standpoint, it's probably easier for a lot of firms to make a small investment in testing than it is a few firms to make a huge investment in hardware to test. Given all this, I don't think it's Microsoft's job to test motherboards etc.

Re:Serious case of inept management syndrome

[xolo]

Windows 7 is being released, and soon. Yeah, we screwed the pooch with Vista. But we'd like to fix things, and we'd like your help. Towards that end we are making a pre-release version of Windows 7 beta available to developers so we can make something that has the promise of Vista, but actually delivers. And we'll be holding several WinHEC sessions, to help you, our valued partners make this next Windows the best product it can be.

I think an approach that would work better would be to phrase it in terms so that it will benefit the hardware vendors if they do this. Engaging them with the technical challenge is ok, but to really get the other company behind it they would have to make sure that it is something that would actually really benefit the other company. The hardware vendors need to answer to shareholders too.

Re:Serious case of inept management syndrome

[Sj0]

If you carefully select the hardware to marry with Vista, and give it some oomph in the RAM and CPU department, it's a gem

I bet XP is REALLY fast on that hardware.

Vista doesn't really have any new features that make the hassle of switching worth it for me. DX10 is a lock-in trick and I'm not biting, so we're left with a bunch of eye candy I really don't care about, fewer drivers, and very little in terms of reason to switch.

The problem isn't the engineers or programmers. The architecture works as advertised, it's just that the managers who decided what to focus on chose to solve problems that weren't problems, in the process creating much greater problems.

Re:Serious case of inept management syndrome

[Blakey Rat]

"urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release"
"to avoid the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista"
"'There is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released,' Microsoft has warned them."

You do realize that NONE of these statements are from Microsoft, right? (With the exception of the inner quote in the third one, but I severely doubt it was phrased as a "warning.")

You're actually getting your quotes from a publication that, as an accompanying image, chose a bad photoshop of Ballmer screaming at Godzilla. Or from Slashdot. Either way.

Here's an actual quote from a Microsoft representative:

"We're looking to make that super easy,"

Wow, look at that!

Re:Serious case of inept management syndrome

[Lonewolf666]

It's an epidemic here that so many of us geeks just hates Microsoft - full stop. It's as if the 70,000 odd employees at Microsoft are all thick, incompetent nuts - c'mon people, get real! It's not easy to be hired by Microsoft - the bunch at Redmond and accross the globe are truly awesome at what they do.

It's only partly about software quality. Personally, I've developed an aversion against Word and to some extent Outlook, but that alone would not make me hate the company. Their slimy FUD tactics are worse, and for that I'd consider it good if Microsoft was broken up somehow.

There are "hundred's of thousands" of hardware components out there for Windows. One can't truly expect Microsoft to write drivers (millions of lines of code) for hardware they have no financial benefit from. This task would dwarf the entire development for Windows itself. Why should hardware vendors get free drivers?

The Linux community does it, with a few exceptions (mostly where the hardware vendor does not release the specs). Microsoft could afford to do it as well, at least for the most common products. If some 15 year old Taiwanese NIC is unsupported, tough luck and not many will complain. But for widely used stuff there is not really an excuse if Windows lacks drivers (or the drivers suck). In that context, I think it is Microsoft's fault.

Re:Serious case of inept management syndrome

[Allador]

"urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release" - Translation: Get on the ball and do our work for us.

How is it MS' job to write drivers for 3rd party hardware?

"'There is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released,' Microsoft has warned them." - Translation: We have you by the balls. Don't make us squeeze. We want you to do things for our benefit, and we're unwilling to wait, or even to ask nicely.

This is just ignorant. Do you have any idea how much money and effort it takes to put on something like PDC or WinHEC?

Do you have any idea how much it drastically disrupts those same people that are building windows 7 to have these? The same people doing preso's workshops and support during winhec are the same ones building windows 7. The more winhec's you have, the slow the development happens.

Windows 7 is being released, and soon. Yeah, we screwed the pooch with Vista. But we'd like to fix things, and we'd like your help. Towards that end we are making a pre-release version of Windows 7 beta available to developers so we can make something that has the promise of Vista, but actually delivers. And we'll be holding several WinHEC sessions, to help you, our valued partners make this next Windows the best product it can be.

Yeah. Thats pretty much exactly what they said.

And wow, wouldnt it be nice if they made all the session from winhec available online for you.

Your comment shows a gross ignorance of actually running a business of this nature.

Microsoft begs hardware OEMs to write drivers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intro: "Microsoft has confirmed that there will be a widespread public beta of Windows 7 in early 2009, while urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release to avoid the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista."

Interesting.

Meanwhile, Linux driver developers are begging to write drivers (at no cost) for hardware OEMs.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6669895837.html

As a hardware OEM, you would have to be thinking that it is going to cost you way, way less to get a working driver for your new product written for Linux.

Re:Microsoft begs hardware OEMs to write drivers.

[RAMMS EIN]

``As a hardware OEM, you would have to be thinking that it is going to cost you way, way less to get a working driver for your new product written for Linux.''

Well, yes. But there's the benefit side of the equation to consider, too. What matters is not so much how much it costs as how much you will profit from it. Getting a Linux driver written costs you whatever costs you incur for getting the information out there and answering questions driver writers have. It will definitely get you sales. Say, 5 million.

Getting a Windows driver written will cost you about the same. Except it's unlikely that someone will do it for free. So you'll have to pay someone to do it. This is your extra cost. But then, you get more sales. Maybe 100 million.

I think the larger number of sales dwarfs any cost savings here.

On the other hand, here's something to consider:

  - Clearly, the worst case is writing the Linux driver yourself. You'll be paying for work that someone could (and probably would) have done for free (and, if results from the past are any indication, would probably have done better).

  - Since the work you need to do to get someone else to write a Linux driver for you is largely the same as the work you need to do to get someone to write a Windows driver for you (employed by you or not), developing a Windows driver and letting someone develop a Linux driver costs little extra than only developing a Windows driver. You can get extra sales almost for free!

24th Century

[PRMan]

Yeah, Buck Rogers said so. Or was it Duck Dodgers?

Re:24th Century

[CrazedSanity]

No, no. Duck Dodgers said "twenty-fourth-and-a-half century." Get it right.

You keep using that word "replaced"

[ClosedSource]

"Free software has replaced both Windows and M$'s business model."

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Business shouldn't be personal

[ClosedSource]

Actually, one of the smartest things MS does is to usually ignore what people think of them as long as the money keeps coming in. Sun and now Yahoo are reaping the result of being more concerned with hurting MS than making good business decisions.

7 = XP 64?

[NoxNoctis]

Take Windows 7 seriously? You mean, like they took XP 64 seriously? Yup, we'll have this fully supported in no time ;-)

stupid /. spin defeats me

[timmarhy]

that's it i can't take it. every single MS story on here has to have some stupid immature little snipe. why the hell would MS be "begging"???? they are a multi billion dollar company with more industry clout than anyone, and yet just because they attempt to work inside the industry to get better compatability with their OS they are beggers not choosers? if they are beggers what the hell level is linux? the lice on the beggers?

in the last few years /. has steadily slipped into a pathetic site posting the same agenda driven crap, with little to no value

time to find a better news site

Re:Work with me...

[timmarhy]

what excuse do linux supports use all the time?

Make it measurable

[jesterzog]

I know you're joking, but there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop until there's a clear definition of what it actually means. If it's not measurable, there's nothing to aim for and it'll forever just be a joke.

Re:Make it measurable

[johndmartiniii]

What do you mean "measurable?" It's just a catchy thing to say, rallying cry, something for a magazine title and so on.

Re:Make it measurable

[Ihmhi]

If it's not measurable, there's nothing to aim for and it'll forever just be a joke.

Crap, he's onto us guys! Everybody grab as many memes as you can carry and hop down to the bomb shelter!

Re:Make it measurable

[maestroX]

I would define the Year of the Linux Desktop obsolete since laptop sales outpace the desktop :-P

Re:Make it measurable

[mrjackson2000]

The Year of the Linux Desktop is the year that i switch completely to a Linux Desktop.

Re:Make it measurable

[jonaskoelker]

When Bug 1 is closed, that year is the year of Linux on the Desktop.

(https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1)

Re:Make it measurable

[petermgreen]

Unfortunately linux penatration is very difficult to measure, you can't use sales figures because linux is free (yeah there are companies like redhat that try and get users to pay and some suckers who do so but afaict they are a very small proportion of the desktop linux userbase)

Re:Make it measurable

[sgt scrub]

IMHO the definition of Linux Desktop is the ability to use whatever desktop I want because it is open to my choice and I'm capable using it. There seems to be the assumption that Windows users are computer users. They are not. They are Windows users. Linux, Solaris, and BSD users are computer users.

Re:Make it measurable

[torry_loon]

Which year was that?

Re:Make it measurable

[mrjackson2000]

It hasn't happened yet, and I don't see it happening for another couple years at the earliest.

Re:Make it measurable

[jesterzog]

Exactly, it's a pointless thing to talk about, unless it's a joke, because nobody really knows what it means or how we'll know for sure if any given year actually is the year of Linux on the desktop. It is just a catchy thing to say, but it seems to get a lot of attention all the same as if there's some kind of substance to it.

I don't personally care about it that much -- I use a linux-based OS for my desktop and my laptop. It works nicely for me and that's enough for me. Does that make it the "year of Linux on the desktop"? (Probably not.) What about if a million kids in a poor country with a corrupt government use some kind of linux-based distro on cheap laptops? Some people might say 'yes' especially if they live or work in one of those countries. Does it mean that 80% of hardware companies need to be shipping and supporting usable linux drivers with their hardware, and do the drivers have to be open source? Do 50% of OEMs need to be installing linux-based distros on their systems? If so, do the installed distros have to be 100% compatable with the hardware? Will it be the "year of Linux on the desktop" when everyone's using 100% open formats and open driver specs, making it much easier for people to switch their desktop OS even if they choose not to?

If and when people talk about it seriously (which seems to happen a lot on Slashdot and elsewhere), they should really be doing it with some specific definitions in mind, because otherwise it's just meaningless waffle. If there's an interest in being serious about it, then people should give it some clear metrics with a standardised citeable definition that can be measured so we'll actually know if it's been achieved. It might be that things get to that point and people still aren't happy, in which case there will be a new goal to chase after. The post I responded to earlier was funny because it is a joke, even though a lot of people still don't seem to see it that way.

If I was a hardware person...

[trawg]

...I'd be already over this after just having had to do it all on Vista. Now they're going to have to go through the same thing immediately, which I suspect most of them won't bother doing, thinking "oh, it's years away from release".

I don't know if Vista driver support has improved significantly since its release (surely it has; I'm still happily running XP), but I suspect there's still a lot of consumer demand for certain/older driver fixes for Vista that are still on the TODO list for many hardware developers.

Microsoft needs to write their own drivers

[xlotlu]

Microsoft should urge manufacturers to open up their specs so they could write proper drivers themselves.

Umm, wait, Microsoft can't afford to do that.. there's just too many devices out there. Maybe what they need is 300 developers eager to do their work for free.

Microsoft is contradicting themselves

[Jugalator]

Just FYI, they very recently claimed this:

Microsoft: Moving to Windows 7 Easy for Device Makers

Re:Microsoft is contradicting themselves

[abigsmurf]

Just because it's easy doesn't mean device manufacturers couldn't come across unforseen issues if they don't test.

Re:Microsoft is contradicting themselves

[Blakey Rat]

The summary and the article don't even come remotely close to accurately relaying Microsoft's statement.

In short, saying that moving to Windows 7 is easy doesn't contradict what Microsoft actually said at HEC. It just contradicts the bullshit Slashdot and the article linked made-up.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Serious measurement means it's arrived

[Mathinker]

Considering that actually measuring the real use of Linux on the desktop would be an expensive proposition requiring real data collection (as opposed to sales figures), I would guess that if someone has the commercial incentive to pay for such data collection, they already believe that the results will be useful to them commercially. In other words, Linux will already have made a serious penetration.

Kind of like relationships, sometimes: you already know it's over before you get the message explicitly...

Re:Serious measurement means it's arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

"if someone has the commercial incentive to pay for such data collection, they already believe that the results will be useful to them commercially."

What, you mean that people aren't going to collect this data for free, out of some vague sense of goodwill towards the universe? I personally think that this task should be job #1 for Obama's civilian security forces.

bashing for bashings sake

[abigsmurf]

I agree, this is stupid an inane.

It's MS going "use the beta to ensure compatibility otherwise you'll stuggle" and it's being spun here as the act of a greedy desperate company that doesn't have a clue.

I hate to tell /. this but everyone I know whose played with the beta has been incredibly impressed at how responsive and easy to use Windows 7 is. This is before they've even added in some of the big features (such as the task bar overhaul). As for the whole driver thing. With windows 7 you get the GUI straight from install without having to bother about drivers. With windows I also don't have to spend endless hours getting wireless to work either.

It's faster, smoother, more reliable, you have more control over the security (and nagging) there are few issues with vista drivers now. All the biggest faults of Vista have been addressed.

No doubt we can expect further articles like this saying how using the Ribbon in Paint is a sign that Microsoft are desperate and in trouble and other such nitpicks.

Re:bashing for bashings sake

[Sj0]

Talk is cheap and bullshit walks.

We'll see the final Windows 7 when it comes out, and that's when smart people will make their judgement.

Frankly, I'd love a replacement for XP. It's incredible that I've been running the same OS for 7 years, and a lot of new ideas have come about since then. Vista isn't the answer for me, however, and it's not the answer for a lot of people.

Re:bashing for bashings sake

[Allador]

If Vista isnt the answer for you, then W7 probably wont be either.

W7 is just a maturation, stabilization and speed-up of Vista. Plus a few years of hardware makers getting used to writing drivers.

So what is the question for which Vista isnt the answer, but you think W7 might be?

why do they keep changing APis, are they that dumb

[cheekyboy]

If they have to change designs/apis, it just shows you their previous designs are crap, which goes to show you the the rest of the designs are crap, so why then buy MS?

Or is this MSs way to keep 100000s of geeks employed coding drivers and fixing dead PCs?

why are manufacturers so poor they cant make a www

[cheekyboy]

Comon dude, these idiot hardware engineers cannot even place a tiny url inside the USB device description? and even keep a website up to 10 years?

If they are that POOR, open source your drivers and place them on sourceforge.... IDIOTS the lot of them.

Yes I keep my CDs too, but they can either be lost or cracked/stepped on. Maybe people should just email their gmail accounts drivers then. 100% BACKUP.

but ms hate nvidia after xbox

[cheekyboy]

MS killed the xbox because nvidia wouldnt drop the gfx chip price, and it was their chip which caused all those mod chips to work too, thus MS hated nvidia, and said, screw you, we're making a new xbox with ati.

Result, ATi chip too hot, dead xboxs.

They should place nice, then they wouldnt loose so much.

Now that ati is amd, MS cant be 100% intel can they.

Re:but ms hate nvidia after xbox

[TheThiefMaster]

Don't forget that they changed the CPU from Intel to IBM for the 360 too, Intel might not be too happy about that.
Perhaps they'll just stick with IBM + ATI/AMD on the next one.

Re:Microsoft Begs Everyone To Take Them Seriously

[KGIII]

I'm not sure but I think it is like 2% total if you count ALL the computers and, of course, servers are definitely included in that. Linux has its place and it serves its purpose very well. It is the zealots who ruin it as they preach it like it is some sort of religious belief. I suppose it is their opiate.

There are few days I go without actually touching a Linux system. Sometimes I'm more ashamed to admit that than I am to admit that I use a Windows OS on Apple hardware because of the attitudes presented by some folks.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[KGIII]

Could you elaborate please? I really haven't a clue what you're on about.

Re:Anyone that understands the underlying architec

[KGIII]

And ANYONE writing drivers on a professional level with Windows actually HAS the code under their shared licensing program. ANYONE can sign up for it and, probably, get access to the code as needed if they are willing to sign the NDA.

Re:Microsoft Begs Everyone To Take Them Seriously

[FishWithAHammer]

I was referring specifically to the desktop with that 0.91%, as that's where most of the driver problems are.

the new works on Windows 7 logo.

[jlebrech]

The logo is a little penguin and it usually on the bottom right of the hardware box or next to the spec.

beepbleepbeepbeepbleep

[ciderVisor]

My pc devoured my sig. It was a really good sig, then I had to write it again and now it isn't as good...

Offtopic, I know, but that's a great sig ! LOL.

Question from a business app guy

[R3d Jack]

Why are new drivers required for Windows 7? I realize M$ changed something, but what? I assume M$ publishes an API for each device class, and manufacturers write drivers to the API. Is that not the case? Is M$ changing the API's with each release? If so, why? Why can't they provide legacy support for at least one previous version API, even with somewhat reduced performance? Seriously, I can't understand why this is such an issue, especially when Windows 7 seems more like a service pack for Vista.

Apple

[EraserMouseMan]

Apple understands that it is 100% true that the hardware reliability affects the perception of the OS. That is why they only give a tiny set of hardware choices. These hardware options have been tested and re-tested to make sure problems will not arise with their OS.

MS does not sell anything but the OS. So no, they are not responsible for the hardware. Not even Apple can make an OS that works perfectly with defective hardware or drivers.

Hardware makers like a new Windows

[Britz]

When a new Windows gets released they will drop their support for all their older devices for the new Windows. So everyone that used those devices and upgrades their computer (which of cource comes with the new os) has to buy new devices as well. It also works the other way around. New computers will only have support for the new version of Windows. That way you can't even install the old Windows on the new computers. Either way, as soon as one of your hardware devices fails or you want to upgrade one of your hardware devices you need to upgrade everything.

This is why hardware device makers love a new version of Windows. They can sell more stuff.

Microsoft is pleasing the hardware device makers by releasing a new Windows version so soon.

Windows Drivers

[jkeelsnc]

This is silly. Microsoft SHOULD have another WinHEC before releasing windows. They are trying to put everything on the hardware manufacturers to write proper drivers when they aren't even willing to follow through on supporting it themselves. Lets see how many hardware support problems exist when Windows 7 ships. On the other hand the hardware manufacturers are dooming themselves if they ignore this issue. A lot of their revenue is derived from selling hardware for windows PC's. Microsoft needs to step up to the plate and so do the hardware manufacturers. It sounds like they are going to wind up pointing fingers at each other. And that never really accomplishes anything.

How long?

[ahow628]

How is it possible that they are going to forgo (once again) making 64-bit required? If someone needs 32-bit, let them use XP or Vista. The new version needs to be 64-bit only, so hardware manufacturers HAVE to support it.

And I beg hardware makers: just open your specs!

[mmu_man]

It's nothing but fair that Microsoft tastes a bit of the very issue they created in the first place. They were the one inducing makers in releasing only drivers for Windows by maintaining their monopoly, right? It's actually funny it comes back to bite them...
Releasing specs instead of wasting time on making Vista/Windows7 drivers will ensure fair support for every OS out there, and maybe even provide jobs for many devs to write those drivers.
I just wrote about this spec issue some days ago...

P.S. their site is plain stupid, allows writing comments seemingly anonymously, then asks to register anyway.

P.P.S. Is it me or /. JavaScript code is getting really slow ? It's painful.

More Profit

[bill_mcgonigle]

how did that get past Microsoft's QA?

Microsoft exists to make money, not ship great software. So, the answer to any of your questions is, "it was calculated that we'd make more money by doing this."

Certainly quality can help to improve the sales rate of software, but in Microsoft's position it's by far not the only mechanism. Compare with open source which few will use unless it rocks.

Do all the licenses let you do that?

[symbolset]

You pirate! I'll bet you have the drivers installed in more than one machine, too.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ummm S

[ion.simon.c]

Let's not fool ourselves here. The average home user *NEVER* installs Windows on hardware that he assembled himself. He probably *NEVER* installs Windows from a standard installation disk, either. ;)

So What is the Difference Here?

[Nom du Keyboard]

Windows 7 is supposed to be like Windows Vista 2.0. No major compatibility changes have been promised such that everything that runs under Vista is supposed to run under Windows 7. This begs the question of why if your hardware already runs Vista do you need to be testing so much with the Windows 7 beta? It's like saying that although your hardware runs Windows 2000 just fine, now you've got to start from the beginning to prepare for Windows XP.

Microsoft, what have you changed in Windows 7?

Mac captures important demographic

[Nerdposeur]

...Apple [is] making massive inroads into the student laptop market. That's the classic opinion-former group, and losing that market is usually regarded as a very bad thing.

Yep. Those college students have influence over younger students because they're "cool" and also over their parents because they're "so tech-savvy." Not to mention that in a few years, they'll be helping their employers decide what computers to buy.

My parents' Windows machine seems to get slower every day. If I were still living at home to help them make the transition, I'd tell them to switch to a Mac.

Re:All the biggest faults of Vista have been ...

[twmcneil]

You are saying they have removed the Tilt Bit?

Le Pot Noir

[Bemopolis]

This admonition might have held some truck with me two days ago, before I shipped my XBox 360 to the repair center after the RRoD.

Torrents

[markass530]

Win 7 has been popping up on BitTorrent sites, wondering if anyone here has played with it?

Re:Torrents

[SupremoMan]

Win 7 has been popping up on BitTorrent sites, wondering if anyone here has played with it?

That's just their new marketing gimmick to get people to adopt it early. They learned from fail of Vista.

No wonder MS has to beg

[HalAtWork]

Why should manufacturers spend extra money if people will just buy new Windows 7 compatible hardware, and then just blame MS for the incompatibilities between the OS versions?

Re:Here's a REASON

[KGIII]

You need to get them to open them in the first place and, for the most part, they're unwilling to do so for the above mentioned reasons. 10%, with the majority being on stable hardware and very few desktops that see more frequent update cycles, does not make a large chunk of the market.

Well, is it stable yet?

[miffo.swe]

If Windows 7 isnt stable and pretty much finalized its just wasted effort to start porting drivers. I suspect many hardware manufacturers was badly bittten when they had to rewrite their drivers mid development of Vista.

That said i doubt hardware manufacturers are jumping from joy anyway at the thought of supporting XP/Vista/2003 and Windows 7 at the same time. Since Windows 7 is (supposed to be) modular i suspect a fair bunch of drivers that uses a lot of things built into XP/Vista will have to be pretty much completely rewritten.

Re:why do they keep changing APis, are they that d

[Allador]

If they have to change designs/apis, it just shows you their previous designs are crap, which goes to show you the the rest of the designs are crap, so why then buy MS?

Wow. Just. Wow.

Thanks man, that was one of the most insane feats of (a)logic I've ever seen.

So let me get this straight. In your universe, if something isnt created to absolute, utter perfection in the first version, then its all crap since they didnt have the talent to get it right the first time.

Can you name anything. Ever. That meets your criteria?

Re:Windows 7 in mid-2009?

[Allador]

Like PDC, there isnt a WinHEC every year, just when there's a need.

The negative perception of Vista

[Alsee]

the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista.

Yeah, and the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Ebola.

-

But there's a problem with that...

[danaris]

So the Office monopoly is in immediate danger as soon as some other office suit builds enough market share that "send your stuff in .doc because the other guy sure can handle that" doesn't work anymore, and you have to think about document formats.

Except that, invariably, the only office suites that have a snowball's chance in somewhere very hot (Hell having frozen over too many times lately) of actually achieving any market share of consequence are the ones that can read and write .doc as well or nearly as well as (or, sometimes, better than) MS Office.

No; what's needed isn't stuff that's incompatible with Microsoft's stuff. It's stuff that is interchangeable as far as file sharing goes, but clearly better in some way or other in terms of usability, features, or other user-experience metrics. Being free-as-in-beer helps a lot, too.

Once there are enough such products out there—not necessarily all competing with Office; Firefox and Thunderbird help, too, as does the Mac in general—you'll end up with a critical mass of people aware of alternatives, and then you can start introducing other alternatives that aren't API-compatible with Microsoft and actually have a chance.

Dan Aris

Re:But there's a problem with that...

[Tom]

No; what's needed isn't stuff that's incompatible with Microsoft's stuff. It's stuff that is interchangeable as far as file sharing goes,

How much does M$ pay for spreading that lie?

OpenOffice has been on that road for many years, and is going nowhere. ODF was a much bigger step than the constant game of catch-up. You can not be interchangeable with a constantly changing, largely undocumented standard. Which is the game that M$ has been playing ever since: Change .doc just enough that some things break when you use something besides Word to work on it.

Re:But there's a problem with that...

[danaris]

How much does M$ pay for spreading that lie?

They don't have to, because it's not a lie, much as I would love it to be. It's an unfortunate truth in 95%* of all businesses, at least here in the USA.

Any replacement for the status quo must not only be able to open and modify all the documents they already had, it must be able to open all documents people send to them, and save documents that they can send to others...and those others are all using Office, too. I think you can see where this leads.

I hate Microsoft as much as you do, but I am in a position where I have the opportunity to push alternatives to MS Office, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that any product that was not fully compatible with the Office file formats at least up to the present (future file formats aren't quite as much of an issue) will never even be considered. And my company is pretty typical in this respect (actually, it's small enough that it can be unusually flexible; I would say that in larger companies, in the hundreds or thousands of employees, suggestions of alternatives wouldn't even be entertained, period).

Dan Aris

* All statistics are for illustrative purposes only, and are pulled directly from my nether regions.

Re:But there's a problem with that...

[Tom]

Ok, if you put it that way, the story changes.

Yes, and that's why I say the game will be over once the "it has to read/write .doc" requirement goes away. Which will happen once alternatives that don't have enough market share. Trying to be compatible is suicide if you're writing a competing product. I think Apple "got" it with their iWorks suit. While it can import/export MS Office formats, that's not its strength, and its barely good enough for someone who wants to switch so he can open his old documents.