USB 2.0 for Linux Coming Soon 258
itwerx writes "There's an article on MSNBC about USB 2.0 support in Linux. Interesting to see that the open source community is less than a year behind the most powerful software company in the world in supporting it. Does that make us the second most powerful now? :)"
NetBSD (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:do you guys think (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Linux being mentioned on MSNBC (Score:1, Interesting)
How's this for a conspiracy theory - Bill Gates, being a geek at heart, is secretly a supporter of Linux. Unfortunately, a public endorsement would de-value the stock value of Microsoft, leaving him liable to lawsuits from Microsoft's shareholders.
Hey, stranger things have happened!
What was a new USB architecture even needed? (Score:2, Interesting)
If USB (the interface that hardware presents to core driver software) had been designed well in the first place, then speed would not matter, except for content of data elements that describe speeds (e.g. a value that says this is running at 12mbps or this is running at 480mbps, or the argument to a command that says force this to run at such and such a speed). Maybe they needed to add speed information and speed control, but that wouldn't be a whole change that needs a whole new software architecture (that's something that could have been added in an overnight coding session). What you'd get is data being transferred 40 times faster with 480 mbps.
Without looking at the specs to see, it's rather obvious that the hardware people just redesigned the interface all over again. Can't someone teach those people some things about reusability and refactoring? And USB isn't the only place this happens. Of course you do need to occaisionally add something to an interface, so a tweaked driver will be needed to fully take advantage of new hardware ideas. But a whole redesign isn't called for ... unless the old design was a POS. But was it the hardware or the software that was a POS? Looks to me like it was the hardware. We'll see when the next speed step occurs. Surely, the Firewire people won't stay 80Mbps down for long. They'll probably aim for somewhere in the 800 to 1600 range next, I bet (if not already). Will the next generation be compatible while still running at the higher speed?
Re:You mean Linux DOESN'T support USB 2.0? (Score:3, Interesting)
OSS typically lags commercial software support, unless the hardware standards designers and hardware manufacturers work with Linux and/or Linux people right from the start. All too often, the first sample a Linux developer has to go on is bought retail the day a new product is released, and often with no hardware specs to go on. I once contacted a hardware standards group by telephone to inquire about getting a copy of the standard for development purposes. If I wasn't a member of their organization, then I'd have to pay $10,000 and sign a non-disclosure agreement. I was told membership was "very exclusive and expensive". That standard was eventually released when products came out. That was the I2O standard.
works fine for me, too (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux being mentioned on MSNBC (Score:3, Interesting)
Gates' own operating system design was to be UNIX-based. However, he has long since stopped coding and started managing.
You should look less at MSNBC's article as a support of open-source, or a secret desire to support Linux, then as a desire to become a serious news source.
Microsoft has been trying for years to show that they are serious about the things they decide to pursue.
Messengers, game consoles, ISP. All these things are places Microsoft didn't have to go and people didn't expect from a software company. Microsoft is just trying to get away from people thinking "Windows" when they think of Microsoft, and nothing else.
USB was designed not to be expandable (Score:1, Interesting)
Firewire isn't actually slower anyway, due to inefficiencies in the USB 2.0 design, the throughput of USB 2.0 is approximately the same as Firewire and is usually significantly slower in practice.
Finally, the new Firewire is protocol compatible with the old Firewire, they can exist on the same wire. In this way it is better than USB 2.0's compatibility. On the otherhand, Firewire 800/1600 require a whole new connector and so in my book actually has less real-world compatibility with previous standards than USB 2.0, or the same at best.
Re:USB 2.0 is 99% hardware interface changes (Score:1, Interesting)
Regarding "Linux has had USB2.0 support for well over a year now", the article wasn't that misleading. It just uses Linux distributions as a (sensible) approximation of the Windows release vehicles -- and USB2.0 is not available in the distributions yet. Your comparison would be fair if we knew since when USB 2.0 support was in the development releases of Windows.
Yes, but does MS support USB1.1? :-) (Score:2, Interesting)
He plugs it in, XP crashes. Every time the camera goes in XP goes out the Windows...
Friend remembers me saying that I think Linux can handles this easily and gives me a phone call. I'm away from my desk so friend decides to try on his own: He boots Linux, camera gets detected automatically, friend grabs photos easily and send newspaper.
When I called him there was nothing for me to do but say: "So, Linux saved the day once again
Gilad.