Hardware Manufacturers that Actively Support Linux? 650
wirefarm asks: "I know there is are lot of well-supported pieces of hardware for Linux, but I was wondering, which vendors really go out of their way for the community?
While tracking down drivers for a wireless PCMCIA card today, I found that the vendor boasted of having Linux support, but it was seemed that they were actually touting drivers that were community-developed, rather than written with any help of the company. So my question is this: Which companies really stand out when it comes to providing specs and developing drivers?"
Some...but not many (Score:1, Insightful)
If the game developers start to support Linux then the Hardware will follow.
nividia and PCtel (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:nvidia, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I couldn't care less if nvidia's drivers are open sourced. After spending months trying to play Quake II on a Voodoo5 5500, I bought a GeForceII MX 400. I was playing within 5 minutes of installing the card.
I've owned an Intel Pocket Concert MP3 player for over a year...still can't use it on Linux...(yes, there is a project in ALPHA on freshmeat...and it's been in Aplha for the same ammount of time that I've owned the player.
My concern with Linux drivers for hardware begins with "If the fscking thing supported at all?" and ends with "Hmmm. WHich kernel am I going to have to use today?". If a vendor actuallly takes the time to give me drivers, then fantastic. I'm just not going to quibble about the open source thing.
I'll fight that battle when MOST vendors include drivers. Until then, I'm happy just to be able to use my shiny toys.
NVIDIA For One.... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the truth is it would be competivley BAD for Nvidia to release the specs, yes others have, they choose not to, thats fine with me, they do provide GOOD drivers, and the SRPMS, as well as tared gzipped kernel modules for you to compile on any Linux setup you wish, the actually libs are closed source but hell they DO provide drivers for an OS that accounts for a VERY small portion of their sales market.
There are other vendors that provide Linux support, to be honest If I was in charge of a HW company, I wouldnt, I would provide the specs under some kind of closed agreement to 3rd party developers.
NVIDIA Does provide nice linux drivers, I have, unlike other never had any problem, they release newer version and each generation (for the most part) they get better what more can you ask....(and please dont say provide the specs, if you are thinking or saying that Im betting you have no experince in engineering hardware for a commercial market where competition, especially in th 3d accel, is just downright evil)
Re:nvidia, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
The choice of what license to use must be made completely based on the project. I assume in nVidia's case they don't want to give up the specs because they feel that it would help enable people to reverse engeneer their product (that's only a guess), but they still want to support free software.
Version incompatibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ATI (Score:4, Insightful)
Or FreeBSD.
Or heaven forbid you want to run the latest development kernel.
And don't even think about trying to run two nVidia cards at the same time with their driver. In fact, I couldn't even get my nVidia card to play nice with a PCI Permedia 2 card.
Frankly, I'd rather not put up with crap like that
Dinivin
Re:Typical response (Score:1, Insightful)
Make that unqualified affirmative action minority "people of color" slacker drones.
Re:nvidia, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reality appears to be that they think by releasing sources or programming specs, they'll somehow make it easy for a competitor to clone their chips. But as any ASIC engineer knows, that's not true. If it were, everyone would be making Pentium IV clones, since the specs for that are published. The reality is that designing a chip with tens of millions of transistors is a very large amount of work, even with the programming (register) specs.
nVidia did release some source code at one point, but it had been run through the C preprocessor, so it was effectively obfuscated.
I used to buy nVidia-based cards, but now I prefer ATI or Matrox. They may not be as high performance, but to me the support is much more important. Anyhow, I have yet to find anything I do for which the performance of the ATI or Matrox cards is inadequate. I don't have any need for frame rates above 72 Hz.
Re:nvidia, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
* Digital Capture Device (w/USB)
* My USB scanner.
* Any of my inkjet printers.
* The freakin' southbridge on my mobo.
* Every webcam I've ever tried, with the exception of my Creative Labs cam
I'll concede that if nVidia drivers caused my system to crash, I'd be the first to chunk the card and drivers, and go looking for an alternative. But, I've run Mandrake, RedHat, and Suse (various versions) on the four cards I've owned, and I can tell you that MY only complaint is the splash screen. Which can be turned off.
But, back at the point, even if I went shopping for a new video card, my argument remains the same. I'm not going to quibble about the source code. If it's open and available, great. If not, and it somehow manages to work despite that, great.
From my perspective, as an end user, even if the source WAS available, I couldn't do a damn thing with it anyway. Nor do I know anyone who could. Sure, the "community" could probably pull a rabbit out of it's collective ass and build one. But how long do I have to wait? It's not my fault I'm not a device driver programmer.
Don't get me wrong. At the end of the day, I think open source is a great idea. I'd love for all drivers and software to come with clean, well documented code. But it doesn't. I'd also love to have a group of highly skilled developers on staff who did nothing but write device drivers for hardware that I own, or would like to own. But again, I don't.
So what's the alternative? Do I have to accept the fact that wanting to run linux precludes me from running the latest hardware?
Sadly, the answer is yes, in lots of cases.
For me, the answer is clear. I'm going to give as much business as possible to vendors who are kind enough to throw a bone our way occasionally, as opposed to beating them up for not coming all the way. More power to you if you choose to do it another way.
Re:NVidia's closed source drivers cause problems (Score:3, Insightful)
I called him a moron because he deserves it. He automatically accuses the original poster of havning hardware issues "that are agp related or something else".
Why is it that so many of you nVidia fan boys refuse to accept the fact that on some pretty common hardware, the nVidia drivers still have problems for some people?!?
Dinivin