On Sat, 2006-06-03 at 13:16 +0200, jdd sur free wrote:
It have probably already been said, but it's worth to repeat that Linux programmers don't even ask the hardware manufacturers to make themselve the driver, but only to release the specifications of they material, which is really a good deal...
The problem is that a lot of hardware is "software" these days, to cut down on the costs of the units. Ergo, back to my whole "superstore" discussion of supplies, consumers, etc... That "software" is almost always licensed by the 1,000s of vendors from maybe a handful of companies that focus solely on that have margin. They definitely protect that code because it's their entire source of income -- hence why vendors can't release the code. And without the code, the "hardware interfaces" are often nothing. Not only that, slight changes in the "hardware interfaces" often break everything -- and you need to code to accommodate them. The good is that Linux tends to have solid drivers for well designed hardware -- far better than Windows. The bad is that Linux tends to not have drivers for poorly/simple designed hardware which is a majority of the peripherals on the shelf at superstores. On occasion, there are _some_ GPL subsystems that get created to address a lot of issues. E.g., the current LVM2 Device Mapper 2 (DM2) work being done by Sistina (now Red Hat) can map most FRAID (fake RAID) RAID-0, 1 and 10 disk organization and use LVM2+DM2 routines, and not need a vendor's software RAID logic. It's still very much a work-in-progress though. The USB subsystem is much cleaner in Linux than Windows as well. USB was designed by Intel-Microsoft to be 0% brains in the controller, 100% in the end-device/device-driver (hence why it took 3+ years for USB devices to come out after the controller), unlike Apple FireWire (which quickly became a real standard, IEEE1394). As such, most USB device (short of a simple keyboard/mouse, which is all USB was designed for**) drivers "fight" in Windows if they are on the same bus -- because the driver from different vendors "stomp" on each other in how they use the controller. In Linux, the USB subsystem has a _single_ controller driver and the individual device drivers work with each other -- because they use that same, base logic. [ **NOTE: USB (character) and FireWire (block) were designed to complement each other, and there was even a "Device Bay" standard. Unfortunately, Intel didn't license FireWire from Apple for the PIIX southbridge, and then hacked "block" support into USB -- which it is had to admit does not work well compared to FireWire. Of course, FireWire still has disconnect issues that are worse than SCSI, and even Apple has had to admit issues there -- but it's still far better for block devices than USB. ] -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, technical annoyance mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ------------------------------------------------------- Illegal Immigration = "Representation Without Taxation" -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com