Kernel Builders Appeal For Open Source Drivers 336
snydeq writes "The Linux kernel development community has released a statement emphasizing the need for open source drivers. The statement, signed by 135 developers, is aimed at preventing future vendors from following the closed source path. One holdout cited is Nvidia. The Linux Foundation has also released a statement in support: 'The Linux Foundation recommends that hardware manufacturers provide open source kernel modules. The open source nature of Linux is intrinsic to its success. We encourage manufacturers to work with the kernel community to provide open source kernel modules in order to enable their users and themselves to take advantage of the considerable benefits that Linux makes possible.'"
Tell that to Lexmark (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/sequentialem/home/0,6959,204816596_689444666_0_en,00.html [lexmark.com]
Write to the hardware vendors and let them know that we want to buy and use their products on Linux. Here are the addresses of some other hardware vendors. Copy the list and write to one every week:
Creative (Webcams) http://asia.creative.com/contactus/presales/ [creative.com]
Logitech (Webcams) http://logitech-en-amr.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/logitech_en_amr.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php [custhelp.com]
Nokia (PIM sync software with OpenSync) http://www.nokia.com/A4126575 [nokia.com]
Epson (Printers) http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/AboutContactUs.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes [epson.com]
Gigabyte (New motherboards should ship with Linux drivers) http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Company/ContactUs.aspx?CompanyWebPageID=6 [gigabyte.com.tw]
Linksys (Networking equipment) http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Content_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1114037291276&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper [linksys.com]
Dell printers (re-branded Lexmark hardware) (Score:5, Informative)
Scenario: Mom asks you to install Ubuntu on her Dell computer setup.
Problems:
1) Open Source libata driver for the SATA optical drive causes frequent timeouts and hangs. Looks like a problem with the Ubuntu kernel. Tell Mom it's just like Windows XP, there are problems which will be updated and fixed "eventually".
2) Dell printer not supported by CUPS and open source drivers. There is no support from Dell, but a 20 minute Google search effort turns up the model is a re-branded Lexmark. The Ubuntu community forums detail a process to install proprietary Lexmark drivers for Debian GNU/Linux. Tell mom it's just like Windows XP, some printers need a certain version of driver for the device.
3) Displayed video is incorrect on Dell LCD display. Search Google for about a solid hour to find an answer. Looks like an Ubuntu problem with an open source driver. Tell Mom that there's nothing wrong with her computer, even though the screen is completely black for the whole boot process.
My own conclusion:
Ubuntu is a hit-or-miss installation for Dell hardware owners. Mostly miss. The open source or closed source nature of a driver does not factor into user acceptance. The user is uncomfortable when their hardware is "broken" due to a missing or incompatible driver.
Mom's conclusion:
The Ubuntu Hardy "bird" logo is "pretty".
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wrong approach (Score:4, Informative)
If that was a troll it wasn't even a good one.
The Linux kernel (as in, what comes with the source) is bloated because a lot of the code that runs in kernelspace on a linux machine COMES with the kernel, this is not the case on other OS, such as OS X and its XNU kernel. If you grab the XNU source from Apple it contains probably less than 50% of what ends up actually running in the kernel space.
This isn't a bad thing, it just means a lot of the code running in kernel space is open source and is distributed together.
As for stability, Linux is one of the most stable systems I've used, especially for web services.
Re:I don't understand nVidia (Score:5, Informative)
The graphics card industry is cutthroat. The hardware is only part of the story - the drivers also do a lot of optimizing. They are probably worried competitors will use their own tricks against them.
Drivers compile shaders into something the video card can run - maybe they think their compiler optimizes better. On Windows at least, nVidia drivers will try to use SMP to prepare a few frames in advance for more efficient streaming.
Re:I don't understand nVidia (Score:4, Informative)
Drivers don't make the difference between the high- and low- end cards anymore. It used to be that the card would report a device ID, and then the driver would enable/disable features based on that device ID. This allowed both software mods and simple board mods to switch device ID in order to enable Quadro / FireGL features on GeForce / Radeon cards.
That's not the case anymore, which is why you can't find any mods for recent cards.
Re:OK! Look you linux geeks. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I don't understand nVidia (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, that's precisely how both nvidia and ati differentiate their "professional" cards from their "consumer" cards.
Ease of 'hacking' apparently isn't much of a concern because cards from both vendors have been 'upgradeable' in this manner for more than a decade.
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:3, Informative)
We need to improve what we have (Score:3, Informative)
One thing that I've started realizing lately is that we need to improve the open source drivers that we already have. This may give companies more incentive to open their own drivers.
For example, we are all happy about the free software drivers that Intel provides for the i950, etc graphics chipsets. However, there are still some significant 3D performance issues with this driver. I don't blame the team working on it because they have other important priorities. However, it is a fact that games run many times faster on Windows with this chipset than in X (and I'm not just talking about Wine games). Games like Vegastrike just don't run acceptably in X on a i945GM box -- and it should be able to handle this game easily.
If we could pick a few drivers that need help and make them indisputably good, this might provide incentive for companies to support our efforts.
I would be happy to start working on the the Intel graphics driver with an aim to improving its 3D performance. However, even though I have 20 years of application development, I'm a newbie at driver development. I don't know where to start. If anyone can point me in the right direction.... Even if it takes me a really long time to make any improvement, I'll at least be another pair of eyes.
Re:open source drivers and gaming 4 linux (Score:1, Informative)
And NVidia i a real burden this way. Their driver installers for Linux move aside your existing your OpenGL libraries, without notifying the package manager. This means that your next software update or rebuild will ruin your NVidia drivers, because the package manager does not know about these semi-manually installed files.
Huh? On Ubuntu all this 'just works'. I applied a Kernel upgrade a few weeks ago on Gutsy and the Nvidia drivers *were* dealt with totally invisibly by the package manager. Maybe other distros don't do this but it's obviously possible.
Re:open source drivers and gaming 4 linux (Score:1, Informative)
Portage includes nVidia drivers which are installed "automatically" when requested. It even provides a command line interface to switch between the binary nvidia drivers and the xorg-x11 default ones.
Can't speak for other distros, but installing the drivers was never a problem.
Is this a technical or religious issue? (Score:4, Informative)
Is it technically impossible to provide for closed-source drivers in Linux? Or is this just yet another religious issue from people who want to force their own views on anyone else?
Many people simply want Linux as an alternative to Windows, and a good alternative it is already. But insisting on open-source drivers will make the situation worse, not better in the long run: more and more special-purpose hardware is getting attached to the computer; mobile devices, chipcard readers, entertainment devices, GPS devices ... the list goes on and on.
It is simply naive to think that we will get open-source drivers for all of these. We can be happy if we get some sort of half-baked closed source driver.
At the current moment I have the following devices that do not work fully with Linux:
- A canon camera: PTP transfer works, but under Windows I can also remote control it, do timed picture grabs, remote view the sensor -- none of which works with Linux
- A Garming GPS device: nearly nothing works under Linux, the software for managing (proprietary of course) maps is only available under Windows, routes management only works with that software
- A Sony-Ericcson mobile phone: mounting as a removable device works, but there is no decent support for synchronizing as under Windows
- All-in-one printer/fax/copier most of these do not work or are limited under Linux in comparison to Windows. Nearly all ink printers still have severe limitations under Linux.
- Wireless: several cards I have tried to not work at all or do not supprot WPA
- A digital multimeter: only comes with software that runs under Windows
- A chip-card reader and the infrastructure to use it for secure payment and authentification - only usable under Windows and Mac.
I do not think that the make everything opensource issue is of such a high priority yet when all these things actually prevent the use of Linux: if somebody does have to use Windows or Mac to use any of the things they need, why should they use Linux in the first place?
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:open source drivers and gaming 4 linux (Score:3, Informative)
In Debian this is a package that is managed by apt.
Re:Dell printers (re-branded Lexmark hardware) (Score:3, Informative)
Yet another reason not to buy Lexmark - If you remember, they tried to use the DMCA to squelch the after market toner industry.
(I have had good luck with HP)
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:5, Informative)
When it comes to buying printers, i typically look towards HP...
They provide open source drivers for their printers and even the all in one printer/scanner combo devices.
Aside from HP i would consider postscript network printers, i recently had such a device from Samsung and it worked well.
I actively avoid Lexmark and Epson due to their lack of open drivers.
Incidentally, my old HP scanner/printer combo only works as a printer with OSX Leopard and Windows Vista due to the closed source drivers having not been ported. It works perfectly with an up to date Linux installation since it was possible to just recompile the drivers.
On the other hand, i'm having major trouble using saned (network scanner support) with my macbook as a client to the linux print/scan server, local scanning on the linux box is flawless.
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:3, Informative)
Does such a thing exist for less than, say, $250?
I know that last time I looked, I had to give up Postscript to get a (network, laser) printer in my price range. I ended up with Brother HL-2070N, which is okay except that it still seems to require a driver on each client even when printing over the network, and it supports PCL instead of Postscript.
My Lexmark is extremely Linux compatible (Score:3, Informative)
I have a Lexmark color laser printer too. It's a C522N. It worked out of the box with Linux - no special drivers required. In fact it works with everything - it accepts PDF and Postscript and just prints them - no trouble, nice quality. It works with CUPS, and correctly tells my desktop when there's a problem like no paper.
It was cheap too, and is now a few years old - but it has newer successors in the same range.
As mine was so cheap, I don't understand why anybody would buy the versions which need special drivers.
I highly recommend this printer for Linux use.
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:4, Informative)
If it supports the current version of PostScript, then it does support PDF natively.
IP rights of drivers' content (Score:3, Informative)
The problems is also that there's a lot of "imaginary property" from very diverse source going into both the graphic card and the driver.
Companies can seldom "just release the source" of the drivers. They should either go the trouble of contacting all the 3rd party which were mandated to built parts and renegotiate a new agreement allowing the opening of the final product.
Or they should go the trouble of slowly re-writting a non NDA'ed documentation, that could be published freely on the net. But which would require systematic checks with legal department and such to be sure that nobody will suddenly sue because that publication was an infringement.
In both situation the work is non trivial, and lots of efforts are necessary. Several company simply decide not to go through all those hoops just to please what they see as a very small and marginal fraction of their market.
Nonetheless that didn't prevent Intel to pay teams to build drivers that where open source in the first place, ATI/AMD to decide to take the bull by the horn and *really go* through all the adventure of building legally releasable documentation (see also their promise that the next generations of GPU will have their video acceleration built more independently from the IP-protected DRM - currently their license of HDCP technology poses problem for opening the video unit) and VIA to finally release their code open because they don't have much 3rd party IP in there to begin with (see the whole "OEM will have to provide their own software solution for the H264 coding - we didn't buy one, we wanted the chip to be cheap" fiasco on Windows. It's a fiasco on windows, but makes it more easy to release on Linux).
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:4, Informative)
My favorite is the Brother MFCn series of printers. They include the document feeder tray for the scanner, excellent phone line recognition faxing (i.e. it knows when to pick up or when to let a human/answering machine pick up), and it has ethernet, all for around $150. When I bought this printer, I looked at all the others and some had the feeder tray, but not ethernet, some had ethernet but not the feeder tray. And the few I found that did have it all were easily $300+.
Well, I didn't mean for this to come out as an advert for Brother. Anyway, that's my opinion. Also, for what it's worth, I've not been a big fan of HP since the late 90's. (Their HP-48GX was a great calculator, though.)
Re:Dell printers (re-branded Lexmark hardware) (Score:2, Informative)
I used to favor HP, until Vista came along and they didn't bother releasing a driver for any of their older (but still fairly recent) models. Seems that they preferred to have everyone buy a new printer. Which I did, and none were HPs.
They may have more support for Linux than other manufacturers, but they're no friend of the consumer. Especially considering that debacle with the ink refills a while back.
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:3, Informative)
You must have gotten them right as they were being discontinued [xerox.com]. In terms of normal prices, Xerox wants $350 for a printer that's relatively shitty [xeroxdirect.com].
In other words, not only is it out of the price range to begin with, it doesn't even count.
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:3, Informative)
If you no longer use the printer, you have no more need for their ink.
Brother supports GPL (Score:3, Informative)
I think I read about that here a year or so ago.
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:4, Informative)
I bought a used laserjet a while back and I just use postscript. The only problem with the printer is that it's got a tiny amount of memory which will run out fairly quickly on weird jobs.
But in terms of reliability, I haven't really had any at all. It's just a solid printer. It's the Laserjet 5MP, IIRC.
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:3, Informative)
actually, most if not all scanner drivers are into sane (userspace application), most if not all printer drivers are into cups (userspace application).
the reasons... those probably are a mix of historical and technical ones. but i wouldn't say drivers are neadlessly crammed into the kernel.
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.sis.com/support/support_tech.htm [sis.com]
Which brand is your card? What type of card, by the way, NIC?
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Tell that to Lexmark (Score:2, Informative)
Samsung works good. They have Linux drivers but they are not needed, open source drivers works great.
http://openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=Samsung [openprinting.org]