On Thursday 01 June 2006 02:31, Per Jessen wrote:
James Knott wrote:
As to whether the GPL vs non-GPL drivers issue will prevent Linux from becoming mainstream, I'm not so sure. Very large European public administrations have already gone Linux - perhaps it's not mainstream, but very impressive nonetheless.
It's a problem if it makes it impossible to use commonly available hardware.
I agree it's a problem, but that's not the same as preventing Linux from mainstream - whatever that means.
Ok, I used the term 'mainstream'. Let's replace that usage with the phrase 'more popular or more used'. In otherwords, if hardware isn't supported then no one will want to or *can* use the software. Now, if the kernel developers come up with a common and well-defined interface for proprietary modules and make it well known to the hardware vendors, then overall that would be a Good Thang (tm). I guess that is their plan but it seems they jumped the gun a bit and have made the situation worse in the short-term.
I beg to differ. So far we use only SUSE Linux, and we've only hit one case where 10.1 did not provide the driver - Atheros wifi. We got it from madwifi instead. Our hardware is very varied - IBM Thinkpads, misc workstations, desktops, Compaq servers.
I have an IBM ThinkPad R31, which uses the slamr modem driver. Will it still work in 10.1? 10.2?
Isn't that what this thread started out discussing - that 10.1 does not have the slamr module.
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