Linux's Achilles Heel Apparently Revealed 1469
ahab_2001 writes "In Information Week's latest 'Langa Letter', Fred Langa points to something that he calls Linux's 'Achilles' heel': 'New Linux distros still fail a task that Windows 95 -- yes, 95! -- easily handles, namely working with mainstream sound cards.' After lamenting his difficulties in getting a particular sound card to work with nine Linux distros, he concludes that his experience 'empirically shows that, despite its many good points, Linux still has some huge, gaping holes--holes that Windows plugged almost a decade ago.' (Oddball note: Information Week prefaced the e-mail alert pointing to this article by saying 'Occasionally, we have news or analysis of such importance that it warrants a special alert to you.' Hmm...)"
WARNING! (Score:4, Insightful)
What's with all the Troll articles lately?
Shouldn't AC'97, and now azalia work? (Score:2, Insightful)
FUD (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a driver issue, isn't it? (Score:2, Insightful)
An Overstatement At Best (Score:4, Insightful)
Please... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm willing to bet that M$95 would fail to detect many others, but we're not going to bring that up?
Windows plugged almost a decade ago?? (Score:5, Insightful)
ALSA (Score:4, Insightful)
Notice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Appearently... (Score:5, Insightful)
We all remember the Win98 Scanner incident, don't we? That was televised...
Give this guy enough blue screens and he'll be begging for penguin.
This is a Joke, Right? (Score:0, Insightful)
Well I gotta agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh, I can relate with this guy, I've tried and tried but my DLINK DWL-520 rev e PCI wireless card still doesn't work under Linux.
some valid points, but ridiculous conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if we assume for the moment that this guy's sound card problems were, in fact Linux's fault and not the fault of the sound card vendor or himself, this is still a completely false statement.
Linux may indeed be behind Windows in supporting some of the latest and greatest hardware, particularly those where the vendor doesn't open the specs or provide linux binary drivers, but Windows only supports one architecture.
That fact alone means Linux supports a much broader hardware base than Windows.
Also, I notice that he doesn't mention what sound card he's using, I have to wonder why.
Re:Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
Luckily, sound cards really aren't that difficult to setup in Linux, though there are some hitches to overcome.
Re:Win95 sucks at sound (Score:3, Insightful)
uhh...no, they don't.
so why doesn't he tell us (Score:2, Insightful)
hardly an achilles heel (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WARNING! (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux's driver history doesn't go back that far... so some hardware that works with Windows just will never work with Linux.
This is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
This is stupid. I can show you a lot of hardware that works on Linux and not on Windows 95 (ex. USB devices).
If your sound card is not supported by Linux, then is not a problem of Linux (properly speaking), but of the soundcard manufacturer, that provides only Windows drivers.
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up guys. You need freeze the work geared up towards developers. You need to support these distro's that really make linux child's play. They need the support of as many developers as possible, because unless Linux can really break into the home deskop market it will never suceed truely as a competitor to Microsoft other than in server and techy environments.
People talk about this being the year of linux. Well, i've been reading slashdot for the last 5 years, and every year in Jan - April it's been Linux's year; if only it were true.
Re:Win95 sucks at sound (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking as somebody who uses both XP and 2000 daily, no, you are full of shit. How do you think millions of us Windows users listen to MP3s all day?
Generic hardware descriptions for $200, Alex. (Score:1, Insightful)
He's got this bass-ackwards (Score:2, Insightful)
For most consumer level PC hardware, it's suicidal not to release a driver that supports Windows, so of course Windows "supports" most hardware. Linux, for most of these guys, is an afterthought.
What Langa doesn't get is that the millions of people - consumers, institutions, corporations - that use Linux know about the problems with hardware support, and they use Linux anyhow.
Pierre
Re:Oh my god! (Score:2, Insightful)
No, normal people DON'T. That's the point!! Joe Blow does not want to look things up. He wants the card to just work with the OS.
This is crap (Score:5, Insightful)
And your sound card that worked fine with Windows 95 may not work at all with Windows XP either. Such are the breaks - if it's not made or supported anymore, that's not Linux's fault. Usually Linux is substantially better about supporting several generations back hardware out of the box than Windows is.
There's a third choice.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the community will write drivers for it and support it.
-molo
preach on! (Score:1, Insightful)
Talked to a LUG for a bit, got the dmix plugin working to get two programs playing at once -- but now whichever program started first will freeze after playing audio for a few minutes. That's really just super there, guys.
And, of course, what little documentation existed was out-of-date and unreadable by mere mortals, even technically skilled ones.
Which sound card was he having problems with? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:some valid points, but ridiculous conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Linux has a broader potential hardware base than Windows because it runs on multiple platforms. However, Windows has much broader actual driver support on its platform.
Don't compare what is supportable with what's supported as if they were the same thing. They're not.
Does Linux have drivers for things that Windows doesn't? Of course! Are there more devices supported under Linux than Windows? Depends on what you mean by supported. Are there more drivers availble for Windows than Linux? Sadly so!
What should have been pointed out was that he's using brand new OEM integrated hardware. In a Windows architecture, that means they need Windows drivers before they can ship, and creating the drivers is the manufacturer's responsibility. With Linux, they likely don't plan on releasing drivers, and certainly wouldn't hold up the release because they'd see it as someone else's responsiblity anyway.
If he were to use Microsoft's standard arguments, he should be blaming the vendor for releasing unsupported hardware, rather than Linux for not supporting everything under the sun. Until the major hardware manufacturers support Linux at the same development level as Windows, this will continue to be a problem.
I'll bet OS/2 didn't have a driver for his sound card, either.
Re:Huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Get a clue, dude.
Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Only so much can be done without the needed info.
(But yes, things like this are quite annoying to Joe Computer User)
Re:Huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Win95 sucks at sound (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate, I've hardly ever had a linux machine with a soundcard in it. I hardly ever have the GUI enabled. If I want to play games, I use my windoze box...that's what it's there for, to be a toy.
That's what Windows is for. Not to do anything real, or useful. Can't check your email on it, or browse the internet without worrying that its executing code from every damn website, or that its autorunning attachments. Doesn't come with any useful compilers or development tools. The included webserver sucks. Windows is a toy, and it has always been a toy, and the fact that people are looking at a kick-ass powertool and complaining that it's not a toy is absurd.
Where to begin... (Score:3, Insightful)
none of the Linux distributions I've tried so far on this PC succeeded in getting the sound working. That includes majors, such as two versions of Slackware, two versions of SuSE, plus Debian, Xandros, and Lindows; as well as several specialty distros like Knoppix, Knotix, Morphix, and Gentoo.
I think the above empirically shows that, despite its many good points, Linux still has some huge, gaping holes--holes that Windows plugged almost a decade ago.
Bottom line: For broad hardware support, Windows is still much better than Linux. That's not bias--it's a demonstrable fact.
1.) We have no way of judging the competence of this user with respect to Linux. Just because he got it working in Windows - sometimes with "from CD" drivers, means only that he knows how to setup hardware in Windows. Does he know he'll need to manually enable kernel modules in Debian with modconf? Did he know what he should be searching for in usenet? Granted, these are things that average user will not know or want to know, but I strongly suspect this author has a much stronger grasp of the Windows way of doing things.
2.) If his hardware is "new" as he claims - it wouldn't really be fully supported in win9x. But because he (IIRC) never gave the card type, we won't know just how "well" it worked in Windows.
3.) Most Windows users do not install their own OS and do not add their own hardware - they call on skilled friends or shops to do it for them. A sound card is not a printer, scanner, or camera (though we can talk about the ease of using those in Linux at another time)
and the most important argument:
4.) One computer with one type of hardware and one user is a laughably small basis to claim that Windows has more broad hardware support than Linux. Absolutely absurd. It may be able to be argued on some levels. This article is better suited as an anecdote of how Linux should continue to try to improve its automatic hardware recognition and Xandros' customer support quality.
I'm sure this article can be criticized from many more perspectives, and that my four can be refuted in some respects. However, that this passed as some sort of journalism makes me lose what little faith I have in the tech-writing community. If you want a decent end-user perspective on technology, read Walter Mossberg (sp?) in The Wall Street Journal. He's not perfect, but he's certainly better than this guy.
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
And therein lies the problem - albeit in a very in-elloquent manner, you've highlighted perfectly how linux dev's and advocats simply don't appreciate the problem - and arguablly won't for a few more years to come.
Re:Notice... (Score:1, Insightful)
If it *was* a mainstream Intel board, Intel's forays into more-complete-motherboards-including-sound are a little more recent than Windows 95.
Which is to say, Windows 95 isn't likely to support anything like he describes. Strange.
not that overstated (Score:3, Insightful)
i switched to linux only, just because i got fed up with M$. i still dont have a fully functional sound card. granted, this card (turtle beach santa cruz) has many known problems with linux, and some people have been able to get it to work fully - but i have not talked or read a response from any of them. sure the card has hardware decoding, 4.1, many effects, and good recording, but does any of it work-- sometimes, and never all at once all things that worked without a hitch in M$. i love the santa cruz, not the best for linux, but a solid card, my favorite of its time, still [would] hold up against new cards (so little overhead)
even the cards that do have good alsa support still have problems. say you get a new audigy 2 or some other widespread commercial card, does the surround work in all applications? does the optical in and out work? does it transition well between applications, and can it do multi channel effects from different sources? can it record? are all of the knobs and jacks even usable? i could go on and on.
i will say that they have made many improvements over the years, but how is linux going to become a viable home multimedia platform (which i would say most of the home pcs sold today are used for) with such a slow curve on sound! crap i like fewer viruses and better stability, but i like my music, games, and instruments more. were not talking enterprise here, just my home pc, web, music, games, papers, schedule, ya know? big win still wins in the "ill play nice with your hardware".
mental note: next box, make sure all hardware works 100% in linux
Re:WARNING! (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't a reliable OS support all cards and options, regardless of who makes them and how good or bad they are? A former PHB of mine made this observation to me once when we were battling a video card he had bought by the crate from Vietnam ($20 for supposedly super high graphic rendering capabilities).
So after we encounter this junk SVGA card refusing to operate properly, the PHB (who didn't want to accept responsibility for having paid $10K for a big box of garbage) said "if that operating system was any good, it would anticipate unknown cards, you know, like probe it and figure it out, and make it work right. Your operating system is junk, not my cards."
Of course, he was talking about Windows NT Workstation. And no, they crashed in 98 and 95 as well... even though the box sidepanel clearly said all those operating systems were supported.
Course, there were at least a dozen misspelled words and typos - that should have been a clue too. And if that wasn't enough, the cards had wire jumpers snaked all over - apparently someone tried fixing a lot of known post-production problems (probably bought the boards from a legit manufacturer who was throwing them out as bad design, and tried to jumper around the problems). According to the PHB, the presence of these wires meant "they had great quality control because unlike the other cards, you can see they've fixed things." Oh, and when you called the international number listed for tech support, I would have sworn we reached a village phone someplace in rural Vietnam...
So per the article writer's problem with soundcards, my suggestion is to send him to PHB re-education camp. I think they have those in Vietnam too. Now if he could just get that soundcard to work in his Mac/Sparcstation/etc...
*scoove*
FUD anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that there's onboard sound, or a soundcard that isn't supported by Linux just isn't too surprising. Why this gets posted as "news", or as "Linux's achilles heal" is beyond me. Is 'ol Fred going to buy a soundcard for his Mac, and then pronounce that lack of support for every soundcard to be the bain of the Macintosh?
I'm actually surprised sound support for Linux is as good as it is. The sound on my laptop worked out of the box when I installed RH9 on it, a first for me! There's also sound support for my N-Force motherboard. Sound support is actually something that's matured quite a bit in the last few years.
I won't say Linux is perfect. There's plenty of things to complain about as far as Linux desktop usage is concerned. My personal complaint is the fact that copy/paste support is still kind of crappy. I can copy/paste between emacs sessions (as long as they remain open), but I can't copy/paste from emacs to somewhere else. That's just pathetic. Windows has supported universal copy/paste since 3.1
Re:I reckon he tried 9 version of Mandrake (Score:2, Insightful)
You laugh, but given the symptoms he described, I'd say it's a pretty good guess -- especially after the bit about how ALSA worked only until he rebooted. I know I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out why I couldn't get sound before I learned about alsamixer. (Actually, now that I've upgraded to the 2.6 kernel, I can't get the sound volume to restore itself after reboots. I have what I believe to be the correct entries in modprobe.conf to do this, but no luck.)
Mike
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
He said 'so what? I don't want it on the desktop'.
So from his perspective, there isn't a problem!
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to point out that it is better to have good, widely available hardware documentation than vendor-provided proprietary drivers.
Not mentioning any names...
Re:Win95 sucks at sound (Score:5, Insightful)
I, being an educated and l33t hacker, know that I would much rather get an extra 5kB/sec on my downloads than be able to listen to two streams of audio at once. You already have two ears, isn't that good enough? Software mixer, pshaw.
Linux still isn't ready for the desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows 95 succeeds in other areas where Linux fails, too. One minor one is that Windows 95 boots with a pretty graphic splash screen while Linux spews ugly status messages too quickly to even read; what's the point of that? (There's a bootsplash patch for the Linux kernel, but it hasn't been updated for 2.6.5 yet, and it requires the ability to patch and reconfigure a kernel.)
But I'd say the biggest place where Win95 beats Linux is this: I could run Win95 quite comfortably on a PC with 8MB RAM and it would give me a somewhat friendly UI and a consistent interface across applications, with buttons and menus that would all look and work similarly. On Linux today I have two choices: use a desktop environment like KDE which requires more than 128MB RAM to run comfortably, or else use a bare-bones window manager like fvwm2 or icewm and put up with the fact that every app's buttons and menus are going to look completely different (xterm still has that weird scrollbar that requires a three-button mouse!).
Linux has every other operating system beat in terms of stability and robustness. But even Windows 95 still beats its pants off in terms of friendliness and usability in a desktop environment.
Windows 95 has problems too (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows plugged almost a decade ago?? (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't care if the familiar OS that it actually works with is created by an evil, monopolistic company. Nor would they care that Linux is nice, open-source, and usually free, because 1) it's not familiar, and 2) their sound card doesn't work.
Sure, some hardcore
I can see your complaint, but Linux distro's aren't going to get "An A for Effort" just for trying to stand up to the big guy. They need to show results, rather then determination.
Re:WARNING! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huh... (Score:2, Insightful)
The hardware vendors won't use the resources to write linux drivers until linux is "mom and pop" ready.
mom and pop won't use linux until it works with EVERY single soundcard on the market... dang...
is it just me or is the detective work of trying to figure out what hardware to buy for the linux box one of the real problems?
I would love a database with information on what kernels supported what hardware... but yeah, yeah... i know: who would want to be responsible for doing something like that?
Re:Oh my god! (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally have never had any problems with sound, but at the same time I amused by all of these comments. Pick one: "He's either dumb" or "He should have checked into before installing linux".
Granted as somebody posted, he did not list his video card, but that does not mean he did not discover some previously unknown bug.
Re:Huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
What problem?
Do sports-car enthusiasts think it's a problem that I never learned to drive a standard transmission? Are the going to redesign their cars for me? Of course not.
"Sound Worked Briefly" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Notice... (Score:2, Insightful)
come on now if linux distros want to go for the desktop then this sort of thing should happen in the setup when he created his user id.
Re:Huh...; Biased distribution selection? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the forum he even quotes another reader as stating that that reader had the exact same problems. After that statement from Fred it gets a bit fuzzy however: when trying to install Red Hat 7 a year ago the reader ran into problems with the Promise ATA/66 disk controller [Could it be set up as a RAID controller...?] [sdb.suse.de]. Only later in the letter is it mentioned that on a certain SuSE install the user had the same problem.
It seems to me that the whole article is a lot of trumpet blowing on a minor detail: unspecified versions didn't work on unspecified hardware. Fred mentions the Windows versions he used, I guess it was too much trouble to find out if he used Slackware 5 or Slackware 10...
Re:Huh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not necessarily... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where Linux tends to have problems is with the latest bleeding edge cards that require some sort of funky drivers. Legacy cards are rarely a problem for it.
The clincher.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a lot people here on /. plug Linux as the best thing short of the Second Coming...
But... The real issue is that most people don't install their own operating systems. They take what comes on their PC from the factory, and that's it.
That said, the only way in which Linux is going to gain significant ground on the desktop is if:
Linux's big hurdle for the desktop is that for most people, Windows is Good Enough(TM). Any difficulties installing Windows are simply irrelevant because the average user never installs their own OS - when it crashes, they take it back to the store.
For Linux to succeed on the desktop, hardware detection and driver installation is going to have to be completely automatic. A distro which can't autodetect the video card or sound card would do better to inform the user that their hardware is unsupported than ask them to select their hardware from a seemingly endless list of meaningless names.
Linux developers are going to have to stop following Microsoft's lead and start really innovating.
* - yes, I know that many windows apps mangle the system. Let's just ignore this and pretend that they work as advertised for the sake of argument, shall we?
Those who read the article would know... (Score:5, Insightful)
He tried it with several distros: Xandros 2.0 Deluxe, two versions of Slackware, two versions of SuSE, Debian, Lindows, Knoppix, Knotix, Morphix, and Gentoo.
"one of the Linux distributions I tried specifically claimed compatibility with the sound system in question"
He didn't like the advice of "get rid of the brand-new, fully functional sound card and install a card from a few years ago, and Linux would work just fine".
The Achilles Heel is "For broad hardware support, Windows is still much better than Linux." It's not "My sucky OEM sound card didn't work."
Yeah, it sucks that he didn't mention the card. It sucks that he didn't try distro X, and that Knoppix couldn't detect it. It sucks that the forums didn't help. It sucks that he didn't try a half-a-dozen things. But, the fact is, a good amount of hardware that works out of the box with Windows won't work with Linux. Every user that trys and gets a bad experience will hold the opinion "Linux Sucks" until they are proved otherwise, years later perhaps.
Re:Huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you have a wonderful opportunity to consult with them and educate them about how you could fix this problem for them.
If you care about the Mom&Pop market for Linux, and think there's a problem, you're 100% empowered to do something about it.
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Naah. Most of us will do whatever we feel like doing, especially if it scratches a personal itch. All improvements we give back into the community will help as they have been doing for the past decade. If a hardware manufacturer doesn't want to release specs then we don't care - we'll just buy from one who does.
They need the support of as many developers as possible, because unless Linux can really break into the home deskop market it will never suceed truely as a competitor to Microsoft other than in server and techy environments.
So what? Linux has always been written for its users, by its users. If someone needs something they write it or document it or help debug it or pay someone else to write it. Many FLOSS developers do not care if what they do competes with Microsoft or not.
Now if lots of those users start wanting a child's play install, someone will fill that need. Recently large companies with vested interests in making Linux a good desktop OS have made huge investments in code and funding to improve the state of play. I just have to compare my Gnome 2.6 desktop with something like 1.4 to be amazed.
The article is a troll anyway - Fred obviously didn't read the ALSA documentation where it states that the sound card is muted by default
Re:WARNING! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
just an observation... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bottom line: For broad hardware support, it's a dmonstrable fact that OS X is much better than Windows. So, then we should all buy Macs? Probably not. His rhetoric is mind numbing.
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows plugged almost a decade ago?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux seems to be showing amazing results AND determination.
The people who "need to show results, rather then determination." are those we hired to reign in Microsoft in the anti-trust lawsuits but who prefer to settle the cases and sweep it under the rug.
Re:Well I gotta agree... (Score:2, Insightful)
/nova20
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
His "point" that Win95 could handle the sound out of the box prooves nothing except that the hardware manufacturer gave MS the full specs, and apparently hasn't given the Linux development folks diddily. If we got full specs from the hardware people there wouldn't be problems like this. *MY* sound card came with Linux drivers so it had no problems at all. Every OS has a supported hardware list (even Windows), and if you leave that list you are taking the risk that your hardware won't work with your OS, I checked the list and bought a card that I knew would work, thus no problem. Same went for my video card, I purchased based on performance, price, and compatibility.
Don't misunderstand, Linux needs work in the usability and ease of installation department, but hardware incompatibility is no longer a really significant problem. As other people pointed out, it does seem as if the author of the article was deliberately seeking out distros that didn't have easy setups, and have difficulties with obscure hardware. Both Mandrake and Redhat are rather astonishingly easy to set up, and will automatically detect and use well over 90% of hardware.
Re:Notice... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Flamebait? He's got a point. Technical superiority alone is not going to make Linux win. It's gotta appeal to people, and that's where marketing comes in.
I'd re-evaluate the modding of the previous post here. IBM's already started making Linux ads. Now if they'd just make them so ppl knew wtf they were talking about, you'd slowly start to see Linux becoming fashionable. Okay, previous post didn't say this, but he wasn't exactly bashing *nix either. In a perfect world, the technically superior solution would always win. But that never happens in real life. That's basically what he was saying.
Strange /. reactions (Score:3, Insightful)
But some of the reactions here on a Common Problem are funny as hell "is this guy qualified to do a Linux install?", "Is it Linux's fault that there are no drivers for his sound card?" etc.
I think a lot of linux advocates have stated that hardware compatibility and installer ease of use are weak points in Linux.
I'm now toying around with the native Pre-Alpha KDE for OS X. It comes wrapped up as an OS X-default mpkg, which means it uses Apple's standard Installer.app, and that's the only way I can enjoy OSS programs because all my other install attempts be it under X11 or on external disks have failed, because
1) installing indeed requires someone "qualified", at least on my OS and in my experience; and
2) my hardware isn't supported unless I want to wipe out my system disk and make the jump. The more I see first hand on Linux usability, the less likely that becomes.
Now I don't give a *** who's to blame. I don't blame anybody, for me it's a harmless hobby and you guys provide it to me for free, so what's to complain.
But there are only two conclusions - one is not helpful.
1) This Is A Problem
2) This Guy Is Too Stooopid To Use Linux And I'm L33T.
I don't care how you look at it, it's "your" platform, but if you like the idea of widespread adoption of Linux, you'll have to live with media attention. And that means that if there are Problems, they'll be mentioned.
Overall, I think there's an incredible amount of goodwill towards Linux at the moment. And there are a lot of people who - like me - are happy to keep looking at OSS despite some bad experiences.
Re:Huh... (Score:1, Insightful)
Let me get this straight, Linux sucks? (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux SUCKS on sound support and that is why Linux has problems?
Now, if the "journalist" ran a real test, say of a DOZEN differnt sound cards, across a DOZEN different distributions, and identified which distributions worked with which sound cards, then I'd believe him.
To me, this reads like someone who found ONE piece of hardware that Linux has problems with, but which works well with Windows, and then tried to find out how MUCH of a problem Linux has with that ONE piece of hardware.
I don't expect anyone to try 9 different distributions to get the sound working. Sound cards are $10. If you want sound, it would be easier to spend th $10 and get one that is well supported rather than waste your time and effort trying to see if that ONE PIECE OF HARDWARE is supported in any other distribution.
Or, you could, gasp!, do some RESEARCH and find out if there is a distribution that supports that ONE piece of hardware.
There will ALWAYS (until Linux hits 51% of the desktops) be hardware that does not play well with Linux. This is not a disaster nor will it prevent anyone from migrating to Linux.
Even if Linux supported 99%+ of the hardware out there, that article would still be as correct as it is now. But it would be worthless, just as it is now.
He's right (Score:4, Insightful)
As a server OS, Linux is great. But I'm flabbergasted (hey, this is
They are all wrong.
Sound under linux sucks. Big time. It always has.
If it's not drivers, it's sound daemons. Yes, it's possible to get everything working just fine providing you don't want to use more than one. Mandrake linux is the only distro that works sensibly with sound. And believe you me, I've pretty much tried them all.
So it's piss poor. But as linux is primarily a server OS, what more can we realistically expect? Sound is utterly unnecessary in this capacity, for the most part.
The best unix desktop by a country marathon is Mac OS X. By some considerable margin. Anyone denying this simple fact is kidding themselves. Really.
Re:Huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
a) Write it yourself
b) Wait for someelse to do it.
but for gods sakes man don't expect that we are out to serve your needs.
Re:Huh... (Score:1, Insightful)
QED.
Rich
Re:Holes that windows plugged a decade ago... (Score:3, Insightful)
Want to upgrade your sound card? Simple! No opening the case, screws, jumpers, none of that. Just throw the whole thing in the trash and go get a new one!
It's painfully easy to support sound cards when you only have to support one.
Re:Huh... (Score:2, Insightful)
And besides, getting a sound card to work is done by someone who knows what their doing. Most 'mom & pop' situations don't involve them buying a sound card, opening the case, installing it, and installing the drivers. It's more of "hey I bought a new sound card" or "Hey I need to play sound on my computer" then followed by "can you help?"
I put my mom on a linux box and she can barely get around in windows. When I put her on linux she had to ask me LESS questions than before. I think linux works well for 'mom & pop' as long as whoever sets up the box knows what they are doing.
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Next soundcard i'm going to buy will be by a company that actively supports linux or opens up the specifications: a product that can't work with both the OSs i use is a crippled one.
Linux is progressing in many directions, as the installed base gets bigger more companies will look at it, audio card makers included. The number of linux hackers trying to support exotic soundcards will increase too.
Look at Wintel machines: When the PC came out it won the desktop market by being an office machine first. Amigas had better graphics, apple
Only with the advent of 3D cards and the amiga crisis the pc became also the #1 gamers machine and ubiquitous.
Just installed Xandros... (Score:5, Insightful)
The install was incredibly easy, and it handled partitioning my HD and installing the MBR with minimal input on my part. That part blew me away, it was easier than installing Windows (any version).
Unfortunately, I had no sound and my printer wouldn't work. I have a Sound Blaster audigy2 card and a Canon I320 printer...both very common and both work flawlessly on XP. After messing around for a couple of hours I got them both to work.
I also use 2 monitors on this box and have a 128M Nvidia GeForce video card. The install handled my video card without any user input and set a decent default screen resolution. Unfortunately again, it would not support the dual monitors. After googling for awhile I discovered Xinerama and reconfigured my XF86Config-4 file to support the dual monitors...which now work as well.
I discussed this with a friend who also wants to see huge adoption of Linux on the desktop. I explained that as much as I was impressed with Xandros it still is IMO not ready for your average computer user. We agreed to disagree on this point, but until you can install a Linux distro without having to drop to the command line to get things working, it's going to be a hard sell to Joe Q Public.
Now I realize that my setup may be a little out of the ordinary compared to regular users and they may not experience any of the problems that I did but the point is this all works out of the box on Windows. I prefer the command line and didn't have that much trouble getting everything working that I wanted too, but you can't expect the average user to put up with it...not when it just works with Windows.
We've still got aways to go but we're definitely getting there.
-Pat
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing that will make the problem going away is if the manufacturer writes a driver. If they choose not to then that's that.
BTW: What are YOU doing about solving the problem?
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not. That's what Macs are for.
Linux is going to be for the corporate desktop where the techs will set up a locked down config that can be managed remotely and kept secure.
Re:WARNING! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the card is unspecified, the author also gives no means of allowing others to replicate or confirm his own testing. If it is specific to one model of hardware, there is no way to fix the problem in a broader sense.
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, a significant amount of hardware has been reverse engineered, and made to work. I don't, however, see how you can blame "Linux" when your el cheapo piece of crap doesn't work in Linux, because the manufacturer did not provide drivers nor specs.
By your logic, Microsoft should be responsible for writing all the drivers for all hardware that is supposed to interoperate with windows.
Re:Huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WARNING! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
Kernel modules (just like Windows Device Drivers) can be made kernel independent. Then all it would take is an auto-extract to the modules folder. But Linus has stated that he doesn't want to allow vendors to distribute binary only drivers. So, the ones who are willing to put up with it, distribute a binary library to be linked into the kernel with a little bit of "glue" source. Thus they have effectively circumvented Linus's intentions.
All that source-only modules accomplish is to piss off users and vendors alike.
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone Else Detect a Duck? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The system is a brand new, state of the art, Intel system. Windows 95 wouldn't recognize half of the components on the system. It wouldn't recognize the USB, it wouldn't recognize the chipsets, it wouldn't recognize the video, etc.
To get all of this to work, he would have to download drivers from Intel - assuming they're even available (unlikely). If he did download drivers, then that probably included the sound driver - game over.
2) It is inferred that the sound card is very recent technology. That being the case, Microsoft must have been exceedingly good to create drivers 9 years in advance!
It's also worth recognizing that Intel is notorious for making hardware that is dependent on specific Windows functions. We all owe Intel a big thanks for the wonderful WinModem.
LarryD
Re:It was written by a Windows Fan... (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, and where do they hide it? I've had to install drivers from the manufacturer for ALMOST EVERY piece of hardware I've put in an XP system.
The fact that these drivers from the manufacturer are included right on a disk with the hardware for windows and are not for linux is another matter entirely and has nothing to do with the OS itself.
When it comes to hardware detecting and installing (truely plug and play) linux is lightyears ahead of Microsoft.
Typical install example, linux.
Build box, install fedora, configure nic. Done with hardware setup.
Same box, shutdown and pull out nic, stick another one in, boot system, it prompts telling me old nic is missing and asks if I'd like to remove the nic from my hardware configuration, next it prompts telling me there is a new nic and asks if I'd like to move the settings from the old nic to it, I say yes, all done.
Typical install example, windows
Build box, install windows. Install ide drivers, and other board drivers for the chipset, usb drivers, etc. Install video drivers, install nic drivers, configure the nic, turn off the power management crap, turn off automatic updating, fix the page file.
Changing the nic.
Write down all the ip and other settings associated with the nic. Remove the nic from device manager, double check network control panel because it may or may not have removed it from here and if it didn't it will kill ip and I'll have to do an ip dump. Uninstall any software or other crap that installed to "manage" the nic. Shutdown, remove the nic, plug in the new nic, power back on, let it boot, hope it detects the nic (which it does fairly well on these days). Install the driver for the nic, configure the ip settings again. Check to make sure ip didn't take a crap when performing this mind boggling task (it does at least 20% of the time, more like 40% of the time if it's not XP, 2000, or 2003). If not great, if so dump ip and the nic driver and repeat.
Hmmm, the windows side of this somehow seems more involved to me when you get right down to it. You sure about that deep driver base thing?
computing professional? 0.o (Score:2, Insightful)
um, this man gets paid to work with computers?
it looks like he just hasn't get the ALSA daemon started, all he needs to do is go to "XYZ" distro's service/daemon control applet, and set it to start at boot.
it's not any more complicated than it would be in windows, and it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to get cheap nasty soundcards to work with windows, even the latest version. believe me, i've just been trying.
>>The support staff asked for some log files and diagnostic dumps. I sent them. They then had me manually set some software switches and edit other settings, but that made things worse--the system then lost all graphics modes. I could login only in text mode; otherwise, the system was unusable.
>>Things rapidly went downhill from there, but this column isn't about XYZ's weaknesses in tech support, but rather about a general Linux problem.
It obviously is about "XYZ's weaknesses in tech support", no self-repecting linux techie would screw up the xfree config because of a sound problem.
if anyone is having problems of this sort, i recommend you check out Linux Questions [linuxquestions.org], the community is generally great, and you're likely to get your questions answered speedily and accurately.
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, nobody who actually cares about Linux wants it to be an 'OS for newbies'. This is left to the producers of well-supported products who want to target that market.
In Linux, people make money through services. If you want to have your hand held, you're going to have to buy a product from somebody where that kind of support is offered.
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh... - Typical post from slashdot, yea YOU (Score:3, Insightful)
Even more so then the "I like linux" posts.
Basically you're just repeating the same post, that's been posted in just about every thread, in every story, every day.
Look, the fact of the matter is that 90% of your hardware is going to work out of the box in Linux today. I install Mandrake, Fedora, whatever. They all pick up my hardware fine.
The problem lies when you have bleeding edge hardware with no Linux support. Or if you have some $5 sound card/video card/firewire card with no documentation and no linux drivers.
It's not necessarily the developers. It's the hardware vendors. And don't tell me you've never ever had a problem getting hardware to work in Windows.
I'm not saying there's no room for improvement. In many ways I like the canned driver packages you get for Windows systems. They *usually* work and require minimal effort to install. But it's often quite easy to get hardware working in the big linux distributions too.
Re:Those who read the article would know... (Score:3, Insightful)
Autodetecting hardware won't ever be 100% perfect, but without people submitting clueful bugreports, we won't be able to improve much on it. I guess that's the Windows mentality for ya: if it doesn't work, they suck and we shouldn't help them.
Oh, and it's Kanotix, not Knotix. Poor Kano, writing his name wrong while he's been doing quite a good job lately...
Good thing we can hide behind the "It's pre-1.0, stupid!"-argument. Surprised he threw Gentoo with the livecds, then again I would be surprised if he actually completed the install at all
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows 95 saw a Celeron was a Pentium Pro (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think going to 9 different distros hoping one would have the driver is ridiculous.
If there's a driver for it, chances are that either all, or none, of the distros will have it.
Wow, one piece of hardware isn't supported.. It's a shame, but shit happens.. Check it's supported before you buy. Yes all hardware supports Windows, but that's hardly an achievement by Windows, it just shows off the power of monopoly.
Re:WARNING! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that really doesn't describe me.
"I have yet to encounter a sound card that I couldn't configure. and if I did encounter such a beast, I wouldn't blame the kernel developers, I'd blame the sound card manufacturer for not supporting the Linux community."
I don't really want to blame anybody. I just want it to work. I don't want to fiddle endlessly with my OS to make something as basic as sound work. You were right in a previous statement that Linux isn't for me. It isn't. Sad thing is, I'm the type of person who'd make good use of it if it so interested me. But it doesn't. It's needlessly hard at times. The only time I've seen Linux work right was when I burned a Knoppix disc and booted with it. Now that was a nice little slice of heaven. Sadly, though, it wasan't enough to keep me. Maybe in a couple of more years.
"If it worked at all for any length of time and his 'phone support' tech wasn't able to keep it working, that becomes the fault of the phone support person or is due to his inability to follow instructions (commonly referred to as 'PEBCAK')"
I got news for ya: The customer is not always stupid. The customer can follow the instructions to the letter, and the product can still fail. Is it really his fault, or is Linux not providing him with the right intuitive tools to really know what's going on?
Frankly, it shouldn't be an issue at all. Video and sound on computers are just expected to work. One shouldn't have to fiddle with them at all.
A grassroots solution. (Score:3, Insightful)
If such resources had not existed when I began my ALSA-kernel adventures, I would have surely been lost. Let's return the favor to the community at large; even the beginning user can contribute to Linux in this fashion...instead of passively waiting for godlike C hackers and bearded demidevelopers to fix the problem for them. That kind of dependent thinking will not be good for Linux in the long-term.
====---====
Re:RH and MDK testing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
GEEEAAAARRGGGHH! How many of these asshats are there? The fact that a sound card works under Windows has nothing to do with Windows. The fact that a sound card does not work under a Linux distribution has nothing to do with Linux. The relevant software is the driver, which under Windows is supplied by the hardware manufacturer (who usually gives Linux the middle finger). Try this: plug a brand-new sound card into a Windows box and when Windows asks for drivers, don't supply them. Does the sound card work? No? Wow, Windows must suck!
Re:Huh... (Score:2, Insightful)
If the techs are in charge of rolling out a linux solution, they will make sure they have hardware that works in every way they need it to. Many in the corporate world probably wouldn't really care if their users didn't have sound. That's why before sound was integrated on most dell, compaq, etc motherboards, corporate systems were usually ordered without sound. They simply didn't need it, didn't want it, didn't care if their users didn't have it. If a coroporation really wants/needs a user to have sound and the onboard crap doesn't work, they can go out and buy any of a couple dozen cards ranging from $10 (or less) up, and have them work flawlessly out of the box, autodetected by any recent version of linux running hotplug.
I have occasionally had problems with sound cards in linux. These usually persisted months or years, until I came across something worth listening to and actually cared enough to get it working. In those cases, I usually had it working within a few minutes time and never had to touch the settings on that box again. In a couple cases where I was getting crappy onboard (and fairly new) chipsets working, I had to download a beta version of a driver. Big deal. Sound != desktop useability.
Re:Huh... (Score:2, Insightful)
In some ways linux driver support is better in my opnion though. other than my graphics card, all my drivers are in the linux kernel, compared to windows xp where i have to install the driver for my ethernet and tehn download 4 other drivers.
Its not linux's fault that companies dont release drivers for it.
Re:RH and MDK testing..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Creative released drivers. Open source drivers. Linux took the ball and dropped it. Thanks for playing, though. Asshat.
From the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds as if he's running it on hardware, not some virtualized system. Also....
Maybe it's me, but that oft-cited suggestion has always seemed a little odd. I can see where a new operating system might require new hardware, but why should a new operating system require old hardware? And if the hardware was to blame, how could XP handle it out of the box, with no special drivers or setup?
Again, the reference is towards hardware, not some virtualized box.
But I try to keep an open mind, so I entertained the thought: Maybe there was something truly strange about the hardware.
Again, hardware.
THEN he switches to virtualized hardware.
Right..............
At which point, you can't tell whether the problem is with the Linux drivers or the virtualization software. So he has no case.
The problem could very well have been in how the virtualization software presents the virtual system to Linux.
I can crash my VMWare sessions with DMA calls to a CD burner even when I'm running Win2K guest on Win2K host.
I don't blame Win2K for that.
I don't blame the CD burner for that (AOpen).
I believe the "blame" is with VMWare, but so what? It isn't important to me and I can still use the burner fine with either Win2K or Linux as the host.
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
c) ask your manufacturer to do it.
If they refuse or have no interest, make sure you get compatible hardware/software combination next time. There are many manufacturers that happily support Linux without any pain or needing installation configuration whatsoever. I mean you don't go to a store, purchase a Mac-OS-X-only hardware and software, then complain that it doesn't work on your XP, and form an opinion that XP therefore sucks. Not for that reason at least.
Yes, well, if you had read the entire FA (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that Linux cannot handle this hardware that is obviously able to be handled by windows created well before it was made because it can't handle 'compatible hardware'. This soundcard is obviously made to be compatible with the soundblaster standard, and the old versions of windows just see it as such AND WORK! If Linux is unable to handle that, and can't handle things that aren't EXACTLY what it's expecting, then it's F&*ked before it even gets off the ground because it will always have the problem of being 'a little behind'.
That doesn't cut it.
If linux can't identify a new soundcard as a soundblaster compatible and run with that until optimised drivers are created for it it's screwed.
If linux can't identify a digital camera as a standard 'mass storage device' and run with that until specific drivers are made for it (if they even need to be), then it's screwed.
All I'm seeing here is excuses, and that's why Linux is screwed, because the zealots all say:
"It's not a problem if you know what you're doing"
OR
"It's not a problem at all... why would you want to do that?"
OR, my favourite
"So, write a driver yourself"
This WILL NOT be the year of linux as long as this head up your arse attitude continues.
looking for drivers in all the wrong places (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a lot more about linux than my mother and I think I know how and where to look for information. I'd have more difficulty figuring out the compatibility of hardware on linux than I would on windows. When I can't find a compatibility information for windows for some arcane webcam a friend owns, I fault the manufacturer for not supplying adequate information. But I would be able to say from their website that the webcam would work with what the manufacturer supplies with its product, because I've been able to before with many other products. All the relevant information I get is from a single, logical site. The MS site doesn't come into it, because the power of MS has pretty much ensured that manufacturers tell us whether and how they're compatible.
Check it's supported before you buy.
If the webcam was brand new, I would look at the box. If there's an XP logo I know it will work, without a doubt. No testing required. No searching required. Me not being the shopping type, I find the box info on the product page. I expect it there and it is in almost all cases.
Some manufacturers don't support their products well at all, then I'm down to OEM hunting or mailing them a complaint; again no MS involvement. Manufacturer's fault. I wouldn't expect my mother to know what OEM stands for, let alone know how to find it. I steer her away from habitually getting poorly supported products, because she's about 20,000km away from me. She's constantly on the lookout for a techie in her area to help her when she gets something unsupported... (but that's another story).
Lets take a look at a webcam driver for linux. First place I'd look: the manufacturer's site. beforehand I might sift through the CD that it came with in some vague hope. In most cases it will be no more than one drivers if anything. Often there won't be any support or information pages on compatibility (let alone useability). Where to now? I don't instinctively fault the manufacturer for not having it. Why? Because for I'm not really expecting a driver from them. Who's forcing them to? Why would they bother?
I now must go to google and from there to the webcam linux module site(s) and a myriad of messageboards, newsgroups and howto pages. I don't expect an answer from anywhere that doesn't include "you'll need to recompile your kernel" by someone in jest or otherwise or something along the lines of "we haven't been able to test this yet, but it works with XYZ, so it should work with your device".
There's no single way of dealing with peripheral support on linux. There is on windows. MS made sure of that. Who's making sure that people can expect without chance that a driver exists for linux when they get something out of the box?
Wow, one piece of hardware isn't supported.. It's a shame, but shit happens..
It's not simply one piece. You've got blinders on if you don't see the bigger picture. A printer here, a sound card there are just the tip of the iceberg. Take any random less-prevalent USB device. Can you say by only checking the manufacturer's site if it will work on linux?
Yes all hardware supports Windows, but that's hardly an achievement by Windows, it just shows off the power of monopoly.
Power brings with it the ability to have an impact and achieve something. I wish linux had the power to achieve half the of the things MS has in the peripherals market.
Re:Well I gotta agree... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Did you RTFA??? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are generic soundblaster drivers included with the kernel of just about every major distribution I know off. It's hard to say what the problem actually was, the article includes too few details.
Lack of drivers (Score:2, Insightful)
Replace the "put in a driver CD" step with "click the K menu, go in 'System Setting' sub-menu, click 'Printer Configuration' and answer a few simple questions"
Only to find that the answer to the "few simple questions" is that there exists no working driver for one or more of your printer and your scanner. This breaks switching a machine to GNU/Linux that had previously been 100 percent Windows with peripherals received as a gift before I had even thought of switching this machine.
Re:Huh...; Biased distribution selection? (Score:3, Insightful)
Jeebus. Isn't the whole point that they shouldn't have to try two additional distros just to get their bleeping sound card to work? Who the hell cares that they didn't try Manfred Linux or Dilrod Linux?
For those who may be too dense to get my subtle sub-point, the names Manfred and Dilrod will mean just as much to most people as Mandrake and Red Hat, so I won't be a bit "surprised" that someone who is just trying to evaluate Linux will fail to try them out.
The point is this person tried several distros, they all failed. Was it the fault of the distro? Not really. Was it the fault of Linux? Not really. But the end user could care less whose fault it is. All they know is this supposedly wonderful and desktop-ready operating system has failed them. Linux just ain't ready for everyone, despite what we would like to believe. This is not something that should just be sidestepped by telling people to try another distro. Unless you know of some new magical distro that will solve 100% of problems like this for every user.
To top it off, this person appears to have gone much farther than most people would ever go. Last time I had problems like that with Linux after trying only a couple of distros, I just said "eff this" and went back to BeOS. Not everyone has the time, money or patience to try out nine different distros.
Re:Notice... (Score:3, Insightful)
False. "Sound Blaster" was never a standard, and though it was popular back in the days of DOS games, it is totally irrelevant today. AC97 is the current standard for generic PC soundcards. Regardless, the fact that this editor couldn't get some VM hack to work doesn't mean Linux has poor sound support.
Clarivoyance. You are supposed to guess. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, duh, he expects you to read his mind. After all, he expects free software developers to be able to just know how sound cards work despite NDAs and all the sounds of silence you get from the manufacturer.
Let's take a guess. Intel chipset that works with Windoze 95... is it a 386? I know that I can't run XP on a real 386, 486 or even a 586. That cinches it.
Really, it's hard to take this guy seriously. He claims to have done a web search but did not come across any of the sound card support pages in the time it took him to load 9 Linux distros and four versions of windoze? He must have been working on it for a week but did not find:
It's hard to believe.
Re:He's right (Score:3, Insightful)
And you're wrong.
Sound under Linux is solved since KDE and artsd. I can't speak for GNOME because I'm not as familiar, but my sense is that the level of functionality is the same.
I can and do have sound enabled on my desktop, at the same time as I use xmms to listen to mp3s, at the same time as the flash plugin is running. No problem. No problem at all. Sound support for my system (Thinkpad T22) is in the vanilla kernel tree, too. No problem at all.
I've also recently run Fedora installs on systems with Ensoniq AudioPCI cards and Via integrated sound. No problem at all.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand
I own a Beige Mac G3. You know, the ones that Apple assured users would be supported by the "new" MacOS... only it wasn't. It was dog-slow, SCSI didn't work, graphics were unaccelerated and it crashed all the time. After replacing the SCSI hard drive and CD-ROM with IDE models just to get Mac OS X to install and then fighting with video that was so slow it took tens of seconds just to resize a window, I gave up and installed Linux on it.
And away we went with Yellow Dog. And audio. No problem at all.
If this is true, why do I have all this hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Funnily enough, the only thing that I have hardware-wise that doesn't work with Linux is a Mustek gSmart 350 digital camera, and that has experimental support now with gphoto2, so I'm not too fussed. With any luck it'll be working soon.
Are you only buying Creative ? (Score:2, Insightful)
have you ever tried buying some shitty taiwanease crap ? You know, the kind of "4.0 sound card for under 20$".
If you're happy enough, the crappy Windows 9x drivers that are shipped will work actually. But by the time you switch to Windows XP, the company will be out of buisness, and their drivers will be only compatible with Windows 9x and NT 4.
Except for some very new chipset (that are still kept secret by their companies, but that are already getting some reverse engeneering by some young hacker) or very old and obscure, you can actually have more luck finding ALSA drivers, than Windows XP drivers for your outdated soundcard.
Drivers work, user doens't know how to use a mixer (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you missed every single post on every Mandrake mailing list covering the SB Live! driver?
Mandrake switched the SBLive! to ALSA in 9.0 or 9.1 IIRC, and by default, ALSA mutes the output on the card (to prevent doing something nasty), and until 9.2 it was not being unmuted by default.
However, if you simply used any supplied mixer and unmuted the card, you would have had working sound. (I think there might have been another issue, to do with the analog output jack or something, but google will tell you in under a minute).
Why did Mandrake switch the SBLive to ALSA? Because then it supports up to 32 simultaneous output streams and can load Midi sound fonts (again, you will need to google, since there isn't a GUI for setting this up yet).
So, I wonder if the review had similar issues.
IE, blaming the OS instead of at least doing some research into their hardware and how to utilise it. Yes, I agree this should not be necessary, but it's a lot better than not having working drivers at all.
So, other posters will note that Creative provided drivers for the outdated sound system and some utilities, and due to the information available, the ALSA people provided working drivers and ensured that all features worked. But, ALSA integration work isn't complete, so in some cases you may have to fiddle with the mixer.
Yes, I spend about one hour getting my SBLive! to work well under Mandrake 9.1. I don't have the box at present, so I can't tell you much about Mandrake 9.2 and 10.0 and the SBLive and whether things have gotten better, but judging from the fact that there were no bug reports for the SBLive for the 10.0 development, I would guess it hasn't gotten worse.
This guy claims he tried Gentoo?!?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I use and love Gentoo.
But . . .
Does the author of this article REALLY expect us to believe that he was intelligent, knowledgeable, or persistent enough to bootstrap a source-based OS from a partial image or LiveCD??
Either his Gentoo experience was limited to just using the LiveCD, or he is lying.
Either way, this speaks volumes about how much effort he honestly spent in trying to make things work, as opposed to finding something that he could plausibly claim didn't work.
Also: why, oh why, do people complain when devices aren't supported which no one ever claimed were supported in the first place???
Linux isn't for people like this. It never was and possibly never will be. That doesn't mean there aren't problems, or even that the specific problem he's complaining about isn't a valid one (although he ever so helpfully omitted details that would have helped confirm it or fix it).
But I don't think it's fair to blame Linux for the author's failure to use supported hardware, learn a little about the OS he is being paid to write about, or even demonstrate a plausible degree of intellectual honesty.
Re:Huh... (Score:2, Insightful)
dmub (Score:2, Insightful)
* The fact that he tried several different distros rather than trying one and just tinkering with it shows exactly how much credit his "research" has.
Someone should pickup an old soundcard made for Win 3.11 and try to get it working with Win XP. When it doesn't work or work correctly - as I expect plenty won't - write the same article for the Windows platform.
If you're going to attack Linux, do it correctly. Aim at Linux's learning curve; where the "researcher" fell short at.
Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, what you and the other poster are confirming is that Linux is, indeed, made by developers for developers, and that's it. I'm tired of elitist morons who think just because Linux dares support something like a mainstream soundcard (gasp!), somehow it loses its ability to be a powerful web server and development environment.
But hey, this is the same community that bashed Microsoft's interface, then subsequently ripped of the taskbar, start menu, integrated file/net browser, and so on. Sometimes I wonder if anybody has their heads on straight anymore.
The late 1999 golden child that Linux was in the media is over, people--now we're all wondering where the big jump in acceptance was supposed to have occurred. The hype is gone, and now it's all about RESULTS. It hasn't happened, and with the attitudes displayed here, it never will.
Achilles toe (Score:1, Insightful)
So lets say you have a choice between a ferrari and a volvo and the ferrari is cheaper for whatever reason. Are you going to whine because you have to buy some new tires?