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Linux To Be First OS To Support USB 3.0

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Neowin.net "Sarah Sharp, a self-styled 'geekess' and Linux developer at Intel's Open Source Technology Center who has recently been working on the Linux USB subsystem, announced on her blog that support of USB 3.0 will soon be integrated into the Linux kernel. This makes Linux the first operating system to support the standard. If you can't wait and have the expertise necessary, she includes instructions on how to get USB 3.0 support in Linux now." Here's Sharp's post.

24 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. yay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    And I'll adopt it after it's been out for a while and everyone else works the bugs out.

    I don't want first, I want stable.

  2. Re:Could someone post a link? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Looks good to me:
    http://sarah.thesharps.us/

  3. Re:About time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Drivers? What are they?

    USB 3.0 doesn't significantly change any of the class definitions. The standard USB drivers will need little, if any, changes to fully support USB 3.0 devices.

  4. Re:Another win for OSS community by Vanders · · Score: 5, Informative

    devices that make use of USB 3.0 will still not have drivers.

    That's simply not true. The USB 3.0 spec. is mostly concerned with the phy. & bus. The xHCI spec covers the HCD. The software-level device interfaces have not changed, or have changed very little.

  5. Re:Another win for OSS community by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm only making an educated guess, but it seems to me that the drivers for the actual device don't change much.

    For example: the same USB HID drivers work on 1 or 2. The very same network driver works on my internal ethernet port and my ExpressCard.

    Kind of like how WoW doesn't care if you're on wired or wireless, any decent driver should be high-level enough not to care if you're on USB 2 or 3.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  6. Re:Wasn't it also the first for USB too? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    USB 2.0. I'll guarantee you that USB 1.x was running on Windows long before linux. >.> .

  7. Re:It means almost nothing by gbarules2999 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tabbed browsing

    Cue the Opera fanboys.

  8. Re:Is this really a nice thing for USB3? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Informative

    There is nothing stopping MS from _never_ releasing drivers and such "Linux gets support first" gestures could either be a kick to them or could guarantee USB3 becoming a failure just because MS didn't include drivers.

    Not really. You're wrong because:

    1. USB3 drivers can be bundled with the controllers.
    2. If you mean a stack for USB3, Bluetooth was implemented on XP by WIDCOMM, I see no reason USB3 couldn't also be implemented by a third party.
    3. If everyone but Microsoft has USB3, they will look like bitches. They will add USB3 support just to have the line item. It will suck, just like their USB2 and Bluetooth support, but it will be there.
    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  9. Re:It means almost nothing by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Informative

    Neither Amiga (Virtual desktops in 1985) or NeWS (tabbed windows and browsing, 1988) were open source.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  10. Re:Another win for OSS community by Curtman · · Score: 3, Informative

    The software-level device interfaces have not changed, or have changed very little.

    According to this:

    USB 3.0, which will also be called SuperSpeed USB, will be backward compatible with current USB devices, and will support transfer speeds of up to 4.8Gb/sec (600MB/Sec)--which is ten times faster than Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0).

    There's some good info in that article.

  11. Re:Could someone post a link? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    She's even hotter in this pic:

    http://www.woolfsimmonds.co.uk/sarah-sharp.html

  12. Re:Another win for OSS community by LizardKing · · Score: 5, Informative

    Err, Mrs LizardKing once said that she'd attempted sex when she had the painters in, and that it was uncomfortable because the menstrual blood caused chafing. Apparently a ladies "red wee" is a bit like unstrained orange juice - it's got bits in it.

    And no, I can hardly believe we're discussing menstruation on Slashdot. In response to an article about a serial interface.

  13. Isn't this useless without USB 3.0 hardware? by brentonboy · · Score: 2, Informative

    I haven't seen any USB 3.0 devices for sale yet. I suspect that they won't appear until sometime after Windows and Mac support USB 3. So, as cool as this is, there is no need to rush off and implement it on your own now. You can wait until your next kernel update.

  14. Re:The word 'Geek' is gender neutral by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Although never productive,

    I love it when people who don't know what they're talking about correct me. The -ess morpheme was a productive morpheme for feminine nouns in English, round about the 16th century. There are a number of borrowings into English from French that use -ess(e) which are feminine forms, but was also used to form novel feminine words, such as authoress, giantess, Jewess, patroness, poetess, priestess, quakeress, tailoress, seamstress, and songstress - none of which are borrowings.

    the -ess morpheme is used incorrectly in English words like actress to indicate a female noun.

    Except that, of course, there's nothing incorrect about it - outmoded perhaps, but an obvious fact in the lexicon.

    Consider the cigar and the cigarette.
    Pirouette and pirouet.

    Not sure what your point is; why not also consider:
    leather and leatherette (a kind of fake leather), or
    usher and usherette (a female usher).

  15. Re:The word 'Geek' is gender neutral by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Actress" is also a correct word, specifically for female.

    No, it's a nonsense word. Like Doctoress or Plumberess. It is forced into the vocabulary by women who, for some reason, feel equal means making up new words. I blame Hollywood for being to afraid to correct it.

    Dictionary.com (based on Random House Dictionary) disagrees. Given the late 16th century origin of actress, any nefarious feminist plot seems awfully unlikely. And it seems to me that the entertainment industry is moving toward using the gender-neutral actor, which Dictionary.com confirms in its discussion of -ess. We're generally moving away from -ess, but many such usages are still considered correct. A few might never go away.

    - T

  16. Re:Any USB 3.0 hardware? by geekoid · · Score: 2, Informative

    Asus and Gigabyte both have USB 3.0 mobos.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  17. Re:Could someone post a link? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    You guys are fucking creepy.

  18. Re:Linux is full of fail by taucross · · Score: 2, Informative

    Slashdot suffers just as badly from the same moronic posts an ill informed individuals that think there poorly thought out opinions are facts,

    Yes, apparently it does.

    --
    "In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
  19. Re:Ask anyone on street what 666 stands for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    guess what, you're tender hypersensitivity is not representative of this so-called "real world" not everybody is barking up the antisemitism tree all day long. there are plenty of casses where the letters SS exist which have nothing to do with the Nazi era or racism or anything of the sort. as mentioned SS stands for Super Sport among car enthusiasts, old people generally know SS as Social Security in the US, if you're of a naval background SS stands for Sailing Ship or Steam Ship, and a quick google search reveals taht a number of companies and organizations are abbreviated SS.

    Stop Screaming
    you
    Silly Sod

  20. Re:CPU usage? by Abcd1234 · · Score: 5, Informative

    So does that mean CPU usage will be 100% when I copy files to a hard drive?

    USB 3.0 does away with polling (which is what causes the high CPU usage) with an asynchronous event model whereby the device controller sends service requests to the host (unfortunately, I can't find a great reference for this, although they mention it here).

    Or, to put it another way, it allows USB to enter the 20th century. :)

  21. Re:Could someone post a link? by iamhassi · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Looks good to me:"

    Bah, pictures mean nothing. Check out her youtube video

    --
    my karma will be here long after I'm gone
  22. Re:Could someone post a link? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Uhmm, there's more then one person with that name...
    http://sarah.thesharps.us/

  23. Re:Another win for OSS community by LizardKing · · Score: 2, Informative

    What was your hand doing with the painters?

    It's a British expression for menstruation. Alternatives include:

    • up on the blocks
    • on the blob
    • rag day
    • Arsenal playing at home
    • having Auntie round for tea

    I suggest you check out The Profanisaurus for the full list

  24. Re:Years ahead and years behind by LingNoi · · Score: 1, Informative

    or a single sound library (so it's not possible to run Skype, Flash and Rhythmbox at the same time, for example).

    Oh Mr Coward, how wrong you are. It's a simply matter of adding "padsp" to the beginning of the menu item. So "padsp skype" will make skype work in pulse audio.

    The same can be done with WINE. "padsp winecfg", click on the audio tab and select the OSS driver, then exit. Now when starting your wine app type "padsp wine appname.exe"