On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 12:43:37 +0700, Brian Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >That's true. I'm sure free software will get there; it'll just take some
> >time :)
>
> Apps may get there, but drivers for video cards, sound cards, etc. is a
> friggin nightmare without end! Here you have some very nice and
> technically skilled programmers that are trying to play catch up with
> commercial products. On sites like <http://dri.sourceforge.net/>, they
> openly state not to ask about when there will be driver support for x or
> xx card! This unfortunately will not change in the foreseeable future, as
> far as I am concerned, unless the business model for Linux changes
> drastically. Difficulty in finding a videocard on the local market that
> has Linux drivers is close to what we in the old days on the Mac OS
> called "SCSI Voodoo". I am so fed up with this "Linux Driver Voodoo" that
> I am regretting having started on my Linux box project at all! As I
> haven't purchased any hardware yet, maybe I will just buy one of those
> new "Luxor" iMacs and be done with it!
You trivialise the issue. Drivers are supposed to be written by hardware
manufacturers (who actually know what the hardware is about), not by software/OS
designers (who must reverse engineer the hardware to know how it works).
Manufacturers are reluctant to write Linux drivers, forcing the community to
come up with their own. Why is this the case? First and foremost, there is no
commercial incentive to support an OS that only has a few percentage points of
the desktop market. This problem applies to all but one x86 OS. Secondly, many
manufacturers misunderstand how GNU/Linux works, believing it is somehow 'viral'
(to use MS terminology). To them, releasing drivers means letting their
intellectual property secrets out into the open, which elimiates any competitive
edge that company may have had. The reality is somewhat different: Linux (i.e.
the kernel) is licensed under a modified GPL which allows proprietary
binary-only modules. Companies like Nvidia have taken advantage of this, and
have released very capable drivers. 3dfx and Matrox went one step further by
openly co-operating with open source hackers to produce open drivers.
Why does Windows seemingly have such great hardware support? Because it has over
90% of the desktop OS market, it cannot be ignored by hardware manufacturers. Do
you really think that MS write their own hardware drivers? Apple are in a
similar situation. They have their own little hardware market, of which they
would have about 99% share (with Darwin and GNU/Linux making up much of the
remainder). They make their own boxes, giving them ultimate control over the
entire platform. Consequently, hardware designed for Macs works exceptionally
well (often better than how they work in Windows).
--
Sridhar Dhanapalan
"I'm a stupid git. I even remember thinking about the syncing issues at some
point, and then obviously just forgetting about it completely."
-- Linus Torvalds
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