Your complaints about driver stabilization over time are valid IMHO. I think it would be smart if they agreed to not change the ABI for say 2 years at a time. Or rather, keep the legacy interface around for that long.
Linux has "something like 10% market share" if you include servers. Yet even support there is seemingly marginal from the vendors.
I understand that not all hardware is supported, and I understand the problem of buying something that looks like it will work but it doesn't for whatever reason (like your reason). What I don't get is why this is linux's problem.
When someone buys a computer preinstalled with windows, they don't expect it to work with OSX, linux, and OS/2. If they do, they are naive. however, there needs to be a simply way to find out. What would be nice is an official linux kernel sticker that means "all major hardware on this computer works in linux." I would want to shop at a store that had any-sort-of accreditation process.
Of course, the chicken and egg problem still applies. Linux will have a hard time approaching the necessary %marketshare without this convenience to the users; and hardware manufactures will continue to dismiss linux until a certain %marketshare is reached.
How do you propose to fix the driver problem? The only way that gets fixed is when every hardware manufacturer writes their own drivers. That would only happen if Linux attained something like 10% market share.
In recent history (the last year or two) the majority (50.1-60%) of all commits to the kernel are drivers/driver update.
Also you forget that there isn't some company that dictates what work gets done on the kernel. There are many developers who work on areas they are want to work in. Are you telling me that linux should reject the FS brtfs because there is a non-name piece of hardware that isn't working yet?
Most kernel features will not directly effect us like driver issues.
Wrong again, My new hardware which I bought off newegg last week works fine in linux (yes I do a quick google search to make sure anyone isn't bitching about something major not working, but anyone who uses linux knows to do that). Because it works, any feature such as a file-system, scheduler improvement, or desktop memory management in low memory situations will improve my experience much more than adding a driver that I won't ever need or use.
I'm with you, and I love fantasy and sci-fi books (I've read the entire Wheel of Time, Swort of Truth, Hitchhiker, Foundation, Interview w/ the Vampire...but after reading LOTR, I couldn't find the motivation to pick up another one.
PS. "The Name of the Wind" is a good book I just finished.
I understand your argument, and from a technical sense your argument seems sound, but I feel like it misses the bigger pictures.
Google's main page is their signature product in a way and its usefulness of design is self contained. If someone duplicates that one page, there are probably attempting to capitalize off of google (IANAL, but I'm assuming all the 2nd party would have to do is say, 'not uh, we didn't copy you' and google would have to prove so in court).
Scanning in every other page of the book is not like scanning the first 1/2 of the book. It is not complete enough to rip off the books author, but it is complete enough to see what is there and figure out if you could benefit from buying the book or acquiring it through other means (library).
You are wrong IMO. To violate their patent you would have to basically copy their page exactly (perhaps recolor it) and then be sued by them. books.google.com doesn't provide every page of a book. It is broken up so that you can get a good feel for the book before ordering one from amazon.
It only has pages 1,2, 5,6,7,8,9, 12...enough for me to see how the author writes, and read the table of contents so see what he covers, but not enough that I wouldn't have to buy the book if I really wanted to read it. This is helpful to me, and I can't imagine it really takes away from an authors revenue stream.
What about chilling effects? You're telling me that you're happily invest your life savings into a business venture that includes something covered by a patent, merely on the hope that they won't care?
The true check will be if someone licenses it then for, let's say, 1/10 the cost of the patent.
Interesting, but as a previous poster said- the Y chromosome is only 1/300 of the total gene pool I posses. So.333% is slower to evolve, not everything that I am.
You can cleverly implement a finite state machine as a matrix. Use the first index into the matrix as the current_state, and the remaining indices as the input. The value that maps to is the next state. If you need output, make it a struct with next state and output.
I learned that from a FSM teacher, and it seemed like he'd used it before.
My biggest problem with that use/abuse of the switch statement is that it is easy to miss the 'cleverness' of it. That is, I try to write code that someone else can understand (or comment it to explain), and people are not used to one case stacking burger-time style. So it will be confusing.
in a meta-/. way, I love the insightful mod to the AC. It is as if someone thought, "hmm that is a good point- Why read and discuss geek news when I could be jacking off."
...What, you mean in hardware? Yeah, it's a four entry table containing page table entries. From a hardware standpoint it's faster than 64-bit because reading the "fourth level" page table doesn't require a memory access.
I'm having hard time following that argument about computer architecture. How could it be faster? To my [limited] understanding, either the address map is in cache in the TLB/page table or it isn't-- no matter if it is a PAE page table or not, If it is there, the memory request proceeds quickly, if it is not, then the operation is interrupted while the page table is updated. And all that assums that some lookahead pipeline didn't preupdate the table.
Just kidding-
I don't know how I didn't follow that before. Whoops. I think I walked away from my computer, than came back and just read your comment as is.
No S.O, boss, news organization should trust an anonymous source without real evidence. If your S.O. would dump you or even give a seconds thought to an anonymous call that said you were cheating, then [s]he isn't worth the carbon the [s]he is made of and you should get out of that relationship ASAP.
AND slander isn't protected by free speech. I only want my opinion's and facts protected, not lies.
Slashdot Mirror
Opera prides itself on being a standards based browser. Do you really think they would go out of their way to make a single website (ebay) look good?
Your complaints about driver stabilization over time are valid IMHO. I think it would be smart if they agreed to not change the ABI for say 2 years at a time. Or rather, keep the legacy interface around for that long.
Linux has "something like 10% market share" if you include servers. Yet even support there is seemingly marginal from the vendors.
As far as market share is concerned. I'ld like to see a source. Everywhere I read puts linux ~2%.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9910263-16.html
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25361/1141/
I understand that not all hardware is supported, and I understand the problem of buying something that looks like it will work but it doesn't for whatever reason (like your reason). What I don't get is why this is linux's problem.
When someone buys a computer preinstalled with windows, they don't expect it to work with OSX, linux, and OS/2. If they do, they are naive. however, there needs to be a simply way to find out. What would be nice is an official linux kernel sticker that means "all major hardware on this computer works in linux." I would want to shop at a store that had any-sort-of accreditation process.
Of course, the chicken and egg problem still applies. Linux will have a hard time approaching the necessary %marketshare without this convenience to the users; and hardware manufactures will continue to dismiss linux until a certain %marketshare is reached.
Insightful?! You couldn't be more clueless.
How do you propose to fix the driver problem? The only way that gets fixed is when every hardware manufacturer writes their own drivers. That would only happen if Linux attained something like 10% market share.
In recent history (the last year or two) the majority (50.1-60%) of all commits to the kernel are drivers/driver update.
Also you forget that there isn't some company that dictates what work gets done on the kernel. There are many developers who work on areas they are want to work in. Are you telling me that linux should reject the FS brtfs because there is a non-name piece of hardware that isn't working yet?
Most kernel features will not directly effect us like driver issues.
Wrong again, My new hardware which I bought off newegg last week works fine in linux (yes I do a quick google search to make sure anyone isn't bitching about something major not working, but anyone who uses linux knows to do that). Because it works, any feature such as a file-system, scheduler improvement, or desktop memory management in low memory situations will improve my experience much more than adding a driver that I won't ever need or use.
Try to start reading w/ PitaBred's first sentence and not having amnesia by the time you get to the end.
I used to pull video from my cable box using a firewire port (I don't have cable anymore).
My first IPOD
My parent's DVCamera.
Except for those annoying intersections where the lights are horizontal...::grumbles::
I'm with you, and I love fantasy and sci-fi books (I've read the entire Wheel of Time, Swort of Truth, Hitchhiker, Foundation, Interview w/ the Vampire...but after reading LOTR, I couldn't find the motivation to pick up another one.
PS. "The Name of the Wind" is a good book I just finished.
I understand your argument, and from a technical sense your argument seems sound, but I feel like it misses the bigger pictures.
Google's main page is their signature product in a way and its usefulness of design is self contained. If someone duplicates that one page, there are probably attempting to capitalize off of google (IANAL, but I'm assuming all the 2nd party would have to do is say, 'not uh, we didn't copy you' and google would have to prove so in court).
Scanning in every other page of the book is not like scanning the first 1/2 of the book. It is not complete enough to rip off the books author, but it is complete enough to see what is there and figure out if you could benefit from buying the book or acquiring it through other means (library).
You are wrong IMO. To violate their patent you would have to basically copy their page exactly (perhaps recolor it) and then be sued by them. books.google.com doesn't provide every page of a book. It is broken up so that you can get a good feel for the book before ordering one from amazon.
Take this book I just bought for a grad class: Digital Image Processing
It only has pages 1,2, 5,6,7,8,9, 12...enough for me to see how the author writes, and read the table of contents so see what he covers, but not enough that I wouldn't have to buy the book if I really wanted to read it. This is helpful to me, and I can't imagine it really takes away from an authors revenue stream.
What about chilling effects? You're telling me that you're happily invest your life savings into a business venture that includes something covered by a patent, merely on the hope that they won't care?
The true check will be if someone licenses it then for, let's say, 1/10 the cost of the patent.
Interesting, but as a previous poster said- the Y chromosome is only 1/300 of the total gene pool I posses. So .333% is slower to evolve, not everything that I am.
I'm betting it had a lot to do on something in a nearby location, and what that something is designed to lookat/listento
You can cleverly implement a finite state machine as a matrix. Use the first index into the matrix as the current_state, and the remaining indices as the input. The value that maps to is the next state. If you need output, make it a struct with next state and output.
I learned that from a FSM teacher, and it seemed like he'd used it before.
My biggest problem with that use/abuse of the switch statement is that it is easy to miss the 'cleverness' of it. That is, I try to write code that someone else can understand (or comment it to explain), and people are not used to one case stacking burger-time style. So it will be confusing.
Column width on a display never bothers me because of wide-screen, high resolution and scrolling.
Column width when printing using mono-spaced fonts on the other hand, can make or break readable code.
in a meta-/. way, I love the insightful mod to the AC.
It is as if someone thought, "hmm that is a good point- Why read and discuss geek news when I could be jacking off."
Don't search for new jobs at work. Aside from the ethics, it is a good way to get fired.
...What, you mean in hardware? Yeah, it's a four entry table containing page table entries. From a hardware standpoint it's faster than 64-bit because reading the "fourth level" page table doesn't require a memory access.
I'm having hard time following that argument about computer architecture. How could it be faster? To my [limited] understanding, either the address map is in cache in the TLB/page table or it isn't-- no matter if it is a PAE page table or not, If it is there, the memory request proceeds quickly, if it is not, then the operation is interrupted while the page table is updated. And all that assums that some lookahead pipeline didn't preupdate the table.
Congratulations, you have grasped my point
I WIN! I WIN!
Just kidding-
I don't know how I didn't follow that before. Whoops. I think I walked away from my computer, than came back and just read your comment as is.
No S.O, boss, news organization should trust an anonymous source without real evidence. If your S.O. would dump you or even give a seconds thought to an anonymous call that said you were cheating, then [s]he isn't worth the carbon the [s]he is made of and you should get out of that relationship ASAP.
AND slander isn't protected by free speech. I only want my opinion's and facts protected, not lies.
What does it say about me that I actually read "reading" instead of "ready"? Can't be too good.
Ditto that. I'm getting off /. immediately as apparently I'm just beginning to think in the /.-hive-mind.
Thats so fucked up; I'm feeling pretty dirty about laughing.
If you want a counter example to prove you are wrong. Look at the "inner city" demographics of Miami.
l-o-l funny, where are my mod points!