Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS 272
Linux Blog recommends an interview up on the O'Reilly site with Greg Kroah-Hartman, long-time Linux kernel hacker and the current Linux kernel maintainer for the USB driver core. He updates the free Linux driver program announced almost two years ago, which has really caught traction now with more than 300 developers volunteering. The interviewer begins by asking about Kroah-Hartman's claim that the Linux kernel now supports more devices than any other operating system ever has. "[One factor is] the ease of writing drivers; Linux drivers are at normally one-third smaller than Windows drivers or other operating system drivers. We have all the examples there, so it's trivial to write a new one if you have new hardware, usually because you can copy the code and go. We maintain them... forever, so the old ones don't disappear and we run on every single processor out there. I mean Linux is 80% of the world's top 500 super computers right now and we're also the number one embedded operating system today. We've got both sides of the market because it's — yeah it's pretty amazing. I don't know why, but we're doing something right."
No surprise here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No surprise here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No surprise here... (Score:1, Insightful)
No Shit that is because windows supports third party software and drivers.
Proper Linking Please (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to link to Slashdot, then do it this way: "He updates the free Linux driver program announced almost two years ago [slashdot.org]"
Re:Which OS is Any Other OS ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Proper Linking Please (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet another example of the irritating blog phenomenon of "reporting" on something without bothering to link back to the source.
A couple of weeks ago I found a project to control a remote control car with an iPhone. Last week someone was interested in doing something similar, so I did a quick Google search for it. In the intervening week dozens of blogs had parroted a description of the project and NOT ONE OF THEM had a link back to it.
I finally found the original, buried a couple of pages down.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
This may be true, but which OS is handicapped by it?
The only advantage to Linux is the more frequent release schedule which allows it to stay current with drivers.
Every windows release has come with a fairly current and comprehensive driver list. Every device you can buy has a windows driver included with it.
Also of note is the influx of what you might call "Basic functionality" drivers for devices such as scanners and multifunction printers - often full feature drivers are not available for these devices even though they technically work on Linux.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a dumb user . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
A while ago I was helping somebody get some software running and printing under Windows, and . . . gawd! . . . they had to install a driver. It's been a couple of years since I had to do anything so primitive. Everything just works.
That's when it finally dawned on me that the times they are a'changin.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:3, Insightful)
So the moral of the story is:
Don't buy shitty hardware.
too much back patting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No surprise here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do I still have to recompile the kernel to get that 3rd party driver to work in linux, or is that one solved?
Re:Drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
"the MinTV Digital Tuner Card I bought yesterday which the salesman *assured* me ran Linux, but actually didn't."
First mistake, trusting a salesman!
I always buy online after searching for information and reviews. I don't trust salesman to know shit or tell the truth.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm... I've been using the b43 driver since Ubuntu 8.04 came out. It works here. Which flavour of kernel are you using? Sometimes alternate flavours bring out bugs in newer device drivers. For the record, i'm using the plain old boring -386 flavour.
I completely agree with the premise of the summary of the article. (No, of course I didn't read the article) A few years ago, i dug out my old Nikon Coolscan II LS-20 slide scanner. The last windows driver for this device was for Windows 95, so I had an old P233MMX machine dedicated to running it. After a year of storage, windows would no longer operate the scanner. It would report some error that didn't really get me anywhere on Google. I uninstalled and reinstalled the driver a few times. On a lark, I installed Debian 3.0 on a second partition on the machine. I figured it might be a bit of work, but Windows 95 was frustrating me. Much to my surprise, when i opened "The GIMP", and selected Acquire, my Nikon scanner was listed -- and it WORKED!
Re:He lies! (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because no (active) kernel developer has the hardware does not mean there are no users with that hardware. I've seen drivers removed from the kernel for lack of a maintainer while they were still fully functional -- "ugly code" doesn't matter if it works and people depend on it. Every time a driver is removed, there are end users who complain about it.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where windows flounders and linux shines, is with non-current drivers.
I pulled an old voodoo 3 out of an an ancient PC. It was pretty trivial to get debian to recognize it, but after hours of searching, I never found a functional windows XP driver.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every device you can buy has a windows driver included with it.
Wrong. Maybe every consumer-level device you can buy today, but I have a nice shiny network card around that needs tweaking to work in Linux, doesn't work at all in Windows (yes, I tried, for more than a day), and only works flawlessly in FreeBSD and Solaris. Dunno where it came from, probably a server somewhere. And don't even get me started on PPC, SPARC et al, where Windows dearest fails to run at all. Which is kinda unfortunate for my Powerbook, but alas, we do have Linux.
People sometimes forget that, despite their ~95% marketshare, not all devices in the world are Windows-compatible, or were ever meant to be.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just a dumb user . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Hehheh, yeah it's not easy to go back to the old ways. Fixing such issues on Windows, you immediately miss sudo, tail -f /var/log/messages, lsmod, et cetera.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:1, Insightful)
windows, if i buy a piece of new hardware, the windows drivers may suck badly, with linux, it might not work at all, but over some time, i'll get linux support, in windows, the same old crappy drivers will remain
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Odd. My install of Win 2k3 works in 2D with my old Voodoo 3 PCI.
Only 2D drivers available? Until it can provide 3D out of the box, this will not be the year od the Windows desktop.
FYI (Score:3, Insightful)
3DFX Zone [3dfxzone.it] host a couple of interesting drivers.
Including SFFFT's drivers.
These work with Windows XP and XP64 and provide support for Glide (3dfx did release the source for the Linux version) OpenGL (thanks to Mesa3D) and DirectX 9 (at least for the function that the hardware can provide).
But then again, back to the main argument, it's an entirely community effort based on opensource code and such. Stock Windows does not support it, and it's not trivial to find decent drivers for it. Whereas "tdfx" is just a standard module. Although support might get dropped at some time in the future for lack of maintainers (some distro don't ship Glide anymore and thus don't support Voodoo in 3D as Mesa needs it).
Re:No surprise here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No surprise here... (Score:3, Insightful)
How does that justify the lack of support? I mean, people above are gushing about how Linux is great because it supports ancient, obscure hardware, but now that a piece of hardware isn't supported it's suddenly crap?
Because as far as mechanical devices go, you get what you pay for. If you pay more for a printer, you expect it to last longer, and you also expect the cartridges to cost only a fraction of the original hardware purchase price.
The parent is saying you wouldn't expect a $100 mechanical printer to still work after five years (or be viable to buy ink for), so why should you expect the drivers to be supported? You didn't pay enough for that kind of support.
One example of the opposite: I purchased a Brother HL-1240 laser printer for $350 in 2001, and it's still running strong. The replacement toner carts are only $60, which makes continued support for the printer economical (although I've never had to purchase toner). The drivers support Win9x and 2000 out of the box, and now support XP, Vista and OS X (via CUPS).
I would not expect the above performance or support from a $99 laser printer, or a $75 inkjet.