On Thursday 21 April 2005 08:09 pm, Fred A. Miller wrote:

I remember fighting a weird little puke at MickySoft named Rick Segal, who was using the handle on FidoNet and elsewhere of "Steve Barkto." For sometime, I thought that it was Steve Ballmer, as I KNOW he was involved in a LOT of the underhanded dealings at MickySoft. I'm sure there's a few here who remember all about "those OS/2 days."

Oh yeah, remember it well...... been to: http://www.barkto.com/ lately?

On Thursday 21 April 2005 20:14, Scott Leighton wrote:

On Thursday 21 April 2005 5:09 pm, Fred A. Miller wrote:

...

I've run nothing but SUSE for a LONG time. I expected Novell to do a better job on drivers with Linux......a reasonable expectation, and one I'm sure shared by quite a few. The rest is simply venting because of what MickySoft has done to the entire industry, and that I've only had 3 hours of sleep in over 24. :)

I don't understand. If you've run SuSE for such a long time, then you certainly must know that SuSE doesn't write the drivers, the hardware suppliers do. Blaming SuSE because a native Linux driver isn't available for a Broadcom wireless chip doesn't make sense.

Like others have told you, use ndiswrapper.

Here, Let me tell you too!!!!! Use NDiswrapper; Both 32 bit and the Ubuntu 64 bit works flawless under SUSE 9.1-9.2-9.3.... I've had my Compaq R3000 64 bit running the Ubuntu drivers for quite some time, along with my 32 bit counter part on another machine. Quit blaming SUSE when it's the hardware vendors trying to give us the middle finger................ JD

On Fri April 22 2005 3:34 am, Hartmut Meyer wrote:

Hi,

On Friday 22 April 2005 02:09, Fred A. Miller wrote:

...

I expected Novell to do a better job on drivers with Linux......a reasonable expectation

No. Not reasonable at all if you understand how driver support works.

...

and one I'm sure shared by quite a few.

That for sure.

I'm sure that there's more than one reason that drivers are forthcoming, as they should be from vendors. One is that MickySoft does EVERYTHING legal and illegal to not have them be made available. MAYBE this will be the year that IBM, HP and some others, along with Novell and RH put enough pressure on OEMS to get more drivers. Fred -- The only bug free software from MickySoft is still shrink-wrapped in their warehouse..."

On Fri April 22 2005 11:00 am, Mike McMullin wrote: [snip]

  It's easy to pick on M$, but the real problem is that hardware vendors do not provide drivers for Linux.  M$ has no control over what OS a

Well, I KNOW that in some cases, at least, M$ has put heavy presure on some OEMS to not provide Linux drivers......just like they did in the "OS/2 days."

particular piece of hardware is used on.  It's in the hardware manufacturers best interest to realize that having drivers out for the differing OS' is ultimately to their advantage, and open sourcing that information even more so.  By the time a competitor can get their clone to market, the manufacturer can have newer and better products out leaving the non-innovators in the dust, and not have to worry about the overhead of writing multiple drivers for multiple OS'.  Open source makes darn good (hardware) sense in this case IMO.

I agree with you, and have used that argument with a number of developers without success. Maybe there's not enough of us calling them. Fred -- The only bug free software from MickySoft is still shrink-wrapped in their warehouse..."

On Friday 22 April 2005 16:00, Mike McMullin wrote:

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 10:22, Fred A. Miller wrote:

...

On Fri April 22 2005 3:34 am, Hartmut Meyer wrote:

...

Hi,

On Friday 22 April 2005 02:09, Fred A. Miller wrote:

...

I expected Novell to do a better job on drivers with Linux......a reasonable expectation

No. Not reasonable at all if you understand how driver support works.

...

and one I'm sure shared by quite a few.

That for sure.

I'm sure that there's more than one reason that drivers are forthcoming, as they should be from vendors. One is that MickySoft does EVERYTHING legal and illegal to not have them be made available. MAYBE this will be the year that IBM, HP and some others, along with Novell and RH put enough pressure on OEMS to get more drivers.

It's easy to pick on M$, but the real problem is that hardware vendors do not provide drivers for Linux. M$ has no control over what OS a particular piece of hardware is used on. It's in the hardware manufacturers best interest to realize that having drivers out for the differing OS' is ultimately to their advantage, and open sourcing that information even more so. By the time a competitor can get their clone to market, the manufacturer can have newer and better products out leaving the non-innovators in the dust, and not have to worry about the overhead of writing multiple drivers for multiple OS'. Open source makes darn good (hardware) sense in this case IMO.

All very good until you find out that M$ leans on the hardware producers to stop them releasing drivers/information to the OSS world . So ultimatley the blame actually DOES lie with M$ Corp and it's biggotry. -- If Bill Gates had gotten LAID at High School do YOU think there would be a Microsoft ? Of course NOT ! You gotta spend a lot of time at your school Locker stuffing underware up your ass to think , I am going to take on the worlds Computer Industry if someone does not like my comments then tought titty cretins. -------:heard on Cyber Radio.:-------

On 4/25/05, Mike McMullin wrote:

No the blame lies with the hardware manufacturers, bottom line, it's their product not M$'s. M$ is one operating system that runs on PC's not the only OS that runs on PC's.

But this is the world of business. Global business. The M$ corporation is very powerful. They can afford to think in terms of years down the line strategy wise. If a smaller company does not dance to the M$ boys tune they can make business very difficult for them. Yes, you are quite right when you state that M$ is not the only OS to run on PC's, but what is the percentage of PC's sold that don't have M$ operating software on them? It is also only a tiny percentage of users who ditch M$ and use something else - such as SuSE Linux. It's an unfortunate, sometimes unpalatable truth but money talks. However, that does not mean we give in. I personally have added to the weight of others before me and petitioned the likes of Canon into writing drivers for Linux for the hardware that they make. I currently have a LiDE 50 scanner that is not 'yet' supported by SANE (one day hopefully it will be according to the guy writing drivers in this are). If I had known at the time that I would be obtaining SuSE only a few months after getting the scanner I would purchased something else. I have told the sales team at Canon this. I have also told them that no matter how good a product is, if it is not supported by Linux then I don't bother with it and I am not the only one. I strongly believe that this is the way forward but we all need to write to the manufacturers stating our desires. It's no good maoning about on mailing lists or other forums, do something. -- Take care. Kevan Farmer 34 Hill Street Cheslyn Hay Staffordshire WS6 7HR

On Mon, 2005-04-25 at 12:53, Johannes Meixner wrote:

Hello,

On Apr 25 17:35 Kevanf1 wrote (shortened):

...

... we all need to write to the manufacturers stating our desires. It's no good maoning about on mailing lists or other forums, do something.

Absolutely right!

For example see at the bottom of http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2000/08/jsmeix_print-kompatibel.html "If your printer is not supported"

Is SuSE gong to do a page like this for scanners? I'd be more than happy to ask again for support from HP and point them to a similar page. Take Care, Mike

The Tuesday 2005-04-26 at 11:03 +0200, Johannes Meixner wrote:

------------------------------------------------------------------ Some scanners have bugs that need to be corrected in software (e.g. one device does not report it's max. scan area correctly ------------------------------------------------------------------ E.g. if the max. scan area is reported too wide, the driver (the backend) will try to move the scanning unit beyond the physical limits of the device which may damage the hardware.

In my book, hardware that can be damaged by software is bad hardware. There are simple things like end of movement switches that directly disconnect power from motors. Of course, the motors I handled could cause bodily damage. However... wasn't there an early virus that could damage CGA monitors years ago? -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The Tuesday 2005-04-26 at 23:48 -0400, Michael W Cocke wrote:

...

However... wasn't there an early virus that could damage CGA monitors years ago?

It wasn't a virus, IIRC. It was simply setting a configuration wrong.

I meant that there was a virus that exploited that misconfiguration possibility on purpose to damage monitors. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The Wednesday 2005-04-27 at 13:32 +0200, Johannes Meixner wrote:

On Apr 27 00:54 Carlos E. R. wrote (shortened):

...

... hardware that can be damaged by software is bad hardware ...

But many users love to buy the ceapest hardware and unfortunately later some of them complain at us about the consequences. I really hope that most users with ceap hardware complain about the consequences at the hardware manufacturer, but I am not really 100% sure ;-)

That's true. The hardware gets cheaper, but the software should be more expensive - ah, no, this is open software, it's free ;-)

...

... wasn't there an early virus that could damage CGA monitors years ago?

No. You can still damage any monitor without built-in protection against wrong timings by using wrong timings.

Mmmm, I don't remember exactly, long years have passed; but I know that one of the earliest MsDos virus (80s vintage) was said to destroy the monitor. Could be a false rumour, though: I never tried it to check! -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Allen, On Wednesday 27 April 2005 19:24, Allen wrote:

...

...

Mmmm, I don't remember exactly, long years have passed; but I know that one of the earliest MsDos virus (80s vintage) was said to destroy the monitor. Could be a false rumour, though: I never tried it to check!

I thought it was the video card that was damaged by out-of-bounds timing settings?

This was long before my time but I collect things like that on floppy. I have some that does in fact destroy hardware.

If you want to totally destroy a monitor that's easy. The DOS way probably worked similar because back then more monitors were not protected from high frequencys they didn't support. I imagine it worked this way, I can only guess though, considering I was like 2 years old.

In those days, there weren't any (well, not many, anyway) multi-sync monitors, so only a narrow range of drive frequencies would sync. It's not hard to imagine that grossly out-of-tolerance signals would drive some components to generate more heat then than they could dissipate. Randall Schulz

On Mon, 2005-04-25 at 12:35, Kevanf1 wrote:

On 4/25/05, Mike McMullin wrote:

...

No the blame lies with the hardware manufacturers, bottom line, it's their product not M$'s. M$ is one operating system that runs on PC's not the only OS that runs on PC's.

But this is the world of business. Global business. The M$ corporation is very powerful. They can afford to think in terms of years down the line strategy wise. If a smaller company does not dance to the M$ boys tune they can make business very difficult for them. Yes, you are quite right when you state that M$ is not the only OS to run on PC's, but what is the percentage of PC's sold that don't have M$ operating software on them? It is also only a tiny percentage of users who ditch M$ and use something else - such as SuSE Linux. It's an unfortunate, sometimes unpalatable truth but money talks.

I think that the server side of things is being overlooked. M$ doesn't have a stranglehold on the server side of the PC market. Some of the thinking is bordering on paranoia, IMO.

However, that does not mean we give in. I personally have added to the weight of others before me and petitioned the likes of Canon into writing drivers for Linux for the hardware that they make. I currently have a LiDE 50 scanner that is not 'yet' supported by SANE (one day hopefully it will be according to the guy writing drivers in this are). If I had known at the time that I would be obtaining SuSE only a few months after getting the scanner I would purchased something else. I have told the sales team at Canon this. I have also told them that no matter how good a product is, if it is not supported by Linux then I don't bother with it and I am not the only one. I strongly believe that this is the way forward but we all need to write to the manufacturers stating our desires. It's no good maoning about on mailing lists or other forums, do something.

I've got an HP Scanjet that I have attached to a dual boot box. My next scanner is either going to have Linux capability, or else I won't even look at it. Oddly enough HP has the OSLO group, which is supposed to make things more open standards friendly, but I guess that their big enough that some memos don't get passed around to all divisions. :)

On Mon, 2005-04-25 at 20:09, Bruce Marshall wrote:

On Monday 25 April 2005 08:00 pm, Mike McMullin wrote:

...

I've got an HP Scanjet that I have attached to a dual boot box. My next scanner is either going to have Linux capability, or else I won't even look at it. Oddly enough HP has the OSLO group, which is supposed to make things more open standards friendly, but I guess that their big enough that some memos don't get passed around to all divisions. :)

What model scanjet? and how do you have it connected?

HP 3670 USB

I have had scanjets for the last 10 years and have always had them work in Linux...

Some do, and others unfortunately don't.

At 08:28 PM 4/25/2005 -0400, Bruce Marshall wrote:

Content-Disposition: inline

On Monday 25 April 2005 08:16 pm, Mike McMullin wrote:

...

On Mon, 2005-04-25 at 20:09, Bruce Marshall wrote:

...

On Monday 25 April 2005 08:00 pm, Mike McMullin wrote:

...

I've got an HP Scanjet that I have attached to a dual boot box. My next scanner is either going to have Linux capability, or else I won't even look at it. Oddly enough HP has the OSLO group, which is supposed to make things more open standards friendly, but I guess that their big enough that some memos don't get passed around to all divisions. :)

What model scanjet? and how do you have it connected?

HP 3670 USB

...

I have had scanjets for the last 10 years and have always had them work in Linux...

Some do, and others unfortunately don't.

USB - that answers the question. All of mine are SCSI (and will be if I can help it)

The last SCSI scanner that I could find for much less than $1000US was a UMAX Astra 2200, which I believe worked under Linux 9.1. It was in the $100 plus range when I bought it, and I don't know if it's still made. That was at least 3 years ago, and I bought it specifically to work in Linux. It's a pretty good scanner, altho I don't remember if I actually did use it under Linux, since I don't use a scanner too often. I seem to remember testing it, tho. --doug -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.10.3 - Release Date: 4/25/2005

"Fred A. Miller" [22 Apr 2005 10:22:43 -0400]:

One is that MickySoft does EVERYTHING legal and illegal to not have them be made available.

Oh, get real and also rid of that paranoia! The main reason is much simpler! Driver development costs money, so you look at the (perceived) user numbers and decide whether it's worth the effort for you. For many it's not. There are also a number of other reasons and *none* of them is "Microsoft is to blame". Philipp