Hardware Manufacturers that Actively Support Linux? 650
wirefarm asks: "I know there is are lot of well-supported pieces of hardware for Linux, but I was wondering, which vendors really go out of their way for the community?
While tracking down drivers for a wireless PCMCIA card today, I found that the vendor boasted of having Linux support, but it was seemed that they were actually touting drivers that were community-developed, rather than written with any help of the company. So my question is this: Which companies really stand out when it comes to providing specs and developing drivers?"
Re:Not yet! (Score:4, Interesting)
Zero marks for (Score:3, Interesting)
Linksys (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linksys (Score:2, Interesting)
Wacom (Score:1, Interesting)
Roey.
Re:Many do.. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is because the special ATI hardware optimizations integrate better with X than they do with Windows. Of course, this is only possible with > X4 since that's when all the XVideo stuff was introduced.
BTW: ATI does not provide specs to the community. They provide only a portion of their specifications to a very small number of developers who have signed an NDA. The aspects of their cards that they feel are important to their bussiness model (i.e. TV-Out, hardware iDCT) they have released nothing for.
Re:The general ruel (Score:5, Interesting)
I was very surprised recently, when I came across a Lexmark laser printer (the E210), that was quite a bit cheaper than any others (US $100.00 after a $50 rebate).
It included a Linux driver that works perfectly with CUPS.
It's not such a big deal to see a printer working well with Linux, but there was even a little penguin on the box -- I was thrilled
Here's a few taken from the kernel source: (Score:1, Interesting)
Driver for the IBM ServerRaid controllers, written by IBM.
drivers/block/cpqarray.c
Driver for the Compaq SMART2 controllers, written by Compaq.
drivers/audio/emu10k1/* -- Creative Labs..
I could go on and on, but try 'grep -r -i corporation
Re:Matrox? (Score:2, Interesting)
MGA TVO ("maven") : "Sorry, MACROVISION."
DVD Add-in: "Sorry, DVD" (we only asked what the nuts did to the address bus on the RRG card -- it's inverted (xor 7) -- and why it's invisable on a G400+)
MGA 64VCO(?) (RR-Studio): "What?" -- basically, they don't want to go look for (or write) a spec for the thing.
And, of course, they refuse to say anything about WARP. However, they did provide stuff to the opengl development ("here, send this to the chip and stand back.")
Re:I second this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is akin, in some cases, to saying "come on in and take the kitchen sink while you're at it" for hardware manufacturers.
The Linux community (and the OSS community at large) needs to get over this. Open Source is fine and grand, but it's not always viable. With that in mind, a company should either make the interface available, or make reliable, fast, and solid drivers available on a regular basis.
Those that choose neither may very well be reviled. Those that choose one or the other should be praised. And those that choose to reveal the interface AND help in writing the drivers should be revered.
But bitching about a company that chooses to keep trade secrets secret is really f'ing stupid.
Re:The general ruel (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm guessing that they are figuring that you want the most out of that product when they include linux CD's.
But when it comes to modems they are WinModems, soundcards... forget it! and other devices are the exception.
My cheap little USB Philips camera is supported - although I've never tried to use it for more than a microphone - so there is some devices which price is obvious.
Re:Typical response (Score:2, Interesting)
About a year and a half ago when my brother got his cable modem, I helped him setup a Linux server (Red Hat 6.2) + IP Masquerading for his home network. This was fairly straightforward, and required no tech support help, and has run fine ever since.
Well, this weekend he switched to Earthlink DSL. I wanted to make the switch as easy as possible for him, without having to re-install anything. Unfortunately, I could not get it to work as easily as the cable modem had, and so we called Earthlink tech support. After trying to ask for help without revealing which OS we were using, it was becoming quite obvious we couldn't. The person asked what OS we are using, and we told him Red Hat Linux 6.2 We were expecting to hear something like "We're sorry, that is not supported", but instead he told us we need a PPPoE in order to connect. He then told us about a program called Roaring Penguin, and where to go to download it. He then helped us configure it and get us connected. We were both quite impressed.
I also remember a time about 4 or 5 years ago when I had Earthlink dial-up, and I was using something like Red Hat 5.0 or maybe even 4.x Anyway, it was in the earlier days before establishing an Internet connection in Linux was easy (at least for me), and I was having trouble getting connected (editing ppp scripts and such, all from the CL), so just for fun I decided to give Earthlink tech support a call. To my surprise, the person walked me through the editing of the scripts, and they worked perfectly, and I was connected.
NVidia's closed source drivers cause problems (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, perhaps
So while the OpenGL implimentation may be very good, the closed source nature of the driver means I'm forced to wait for an officially unsupported, binary-only driver, to be fixed someday, or I have to find an alternative. This seriously decreases the value of the NVIDIA driver and hardware for use where I work and live.
ATI does not suffer from this handicap, and while its OpenGL support may not be as good as NVIDIAs, it does work well, and without the system stability issues incurred by using NVIDIA. In addition, the free and open nature of the ati drivers insures that my hardware will never be orphaned, even if ATI has a change of heart (or financial troubles) down the road. The closed source NVIDIA drivers give me none of those guarantees (though the fallback nv driver helps, as long as you don't need digital out or multi-head support).
There should be a "Linux Friendly" award... (Score:2, Interesting)
Keyspan usb/serial adapters (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Project UDI (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, probably, now... but actually it's not clear that this will be the case forever. Yes, I will point out that Java gets quite a bit faster with each release, but more importantly the hardware gets more diverse year on year. CPUs with big register files, vector operations, 64 bit operations... there's a fair slew of chips out there already, before Clawhammer & co appear, and I doubt if C compilers are going to optimize for all of them. In fact, that's impossible. So step forward the JIT, the guy that knows your hardware, and even your usage patterns and can optimize for both. It's the only practical solution longterm... convinced anyone?