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Debian Software Intel Linux

Intel Begins Support for Debian 33

Posted by CowboyNeal from the coming-around dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An Intel Software Architect announced on the Debian mailing list yesterday that Intel has begun supporting Intel devices on Debian sarge for their extensive reseller channel. This covers the D845, D865 and D915 chipsets and was done to meet customer demand. They've posted drivers as well as the various distributions supported by the chip maker (Debian, Mandriva, Novell and Red Hat). Looks like the pure open source distributions are finally getting the attention of the big players!"
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Intel Begins Support for Debian More

Intel Begins Support for Debian

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  • ..and, umm, I wonder which flavor of vanilla will be supported..?

    astrosmash:~# apt-cache search kernel-image | grep kernel-image-2. | wc -l
    46
    • Your check is pretty outdated -- newer kernels are named linux-image-*, since 2.6.12 or so. This change was done to reduce confusion on k{free,open,net}bsd and hurd systems.

    • Re:No debs on the site yet.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by topside420 ( 530370 ) <topsideNO@SPAMtopside.org> on Friday November 18, 2005 @05:50AM (#14061336) Homepage
      Then how am I doing this?

      # dpkg -i sk98lin-8.13-1-deb3.1-2.6.8-2-386.i386.deb
      Select ing previously deselected package sk98lin.
      (Reading database ... 84296 files and directories currently installed.)
      Unpacking sk98lin (from sk98lin-8.13-1-deb3.1-2.6.8-2-386.i386.deb) ...
      Setting up sk98lin (8.13-1) ...
      running depmod

      The kernel this binary deb was installed against is 2.6.8/i386, Debian 3.1.

      The actual download is pretty silly. You download a tar.gz file. This unzips into a total of 1 file (so why the .tar?). The format? ISO. To mount this, just use `mount -o loop file.iso /mount/point`

      Here's a general feel for the unusual install.

      blaze:~/intel# ls
      INTEL(R)_QSK_VER_1_3_DEBIAN.TAR.GZ
      blaze:~/in tel# tar -zxvf INTEL\(R\)_QSK_VER_1_3_DEBIAN.TAR.GZ
      Intel_Quick_ Start_Kit_v1_3_Debian.ISO
      blaze:~/intel# mount -o loop Intel_Quick_Start_Kit_v1_3_Debian.ISO /cdrom
      blaze:~/intel# cd /cdrom
      blaze:/cdrom# ls
      autorun autorun.inf docs drivers install license.txt
      blaze:/cdrom# cd drivers/
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers# ls
      Debian sources
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers# cd Debian/
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian# ls
      DEB_3.1
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian# cd DEB_3.1/
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1# ls
      audio graphics network
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1# cd network/
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1/netw ork# ls
      e100 e1000 sk98lin
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1/netwo rk# cd e100
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1/network/ e100# ls
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1/network/e1 00# cd ..
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1/network# cd sk98lin/
      blaze:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1/netw ork/sk98lin# ls
      md5sum.txt sk98lin-8.13-1-deb3.1-2.6.8-2-386.i386.deb

      blaz e:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1/network/sk98lin# md5sum sk98lin-8.13-1-deb3.1-2.6.8-2-386.i386.deb; cat md5sum.txt
      2a0e928efb100ac903033b5904c57261 sk98lin-8.13-1-deb3.1-2.6.8-2-386.i386.deb
      2a0e92 8efb100ac903033b5904c57261 sk98lin-8.13-1-deb3.1-2.6.8-2-386.i386.deb

      blaz e:/cdrom/drivers/Debian/DEB_3.1/network/sk98lin# dpkg -i sk98lin-8.13-1-deb3
      • The actual download is pretty silly. You download a tar.gz file. This unzips into a total of 1 file (so why the .tar?).
        Um, did you compare file sizes? That is, the tar size vs the actual file size? That's the same reason some companies zip a driver that is only .exe or something. The main diff is that Linux doesn't really have a self executing compression. (and if it does exists, face it... tar is much more common).

        • The main diff is that Linux doesn't really have a self executing compression. (and if it does exists, face it... tar is much more common).

          Makeself [megastep.org]. It's used in the Loki installer, and thus in lots of commercial software.

          Besides that, grandparents point was that a .tar is a non-compressed archive, and the actual compression happens in .gz. Gzip can only compress one file, meaning that if you want to compress multiple files, you'll have to compress a tar archive of those files. But in this case, there

        • .tar only archives doesn't compress. Grandparent's point was that they could have just gzed the one file.
        • Couple of points:

          First, the compression is the .gz (gzip), not .tar. Tar just added stuff, and made it bigger.

          Second, bzip2 (bz2) whould have been preferred.

          In any case, tar could have been used to CREATE the download (GNU tar has support for gzip and bzip2, typically avoiding a second step. That was probably used.

          Thirdly, Unix has had self-compressing (.shar) archives since the beginning.

          Ratboy.
    • Half of those are package aliases for if you want to install a kernel series like 2.6 (and be automatically upgraded to the latest point release when you 'apt-get upgrade') instead of a specific version like 2.4.27-2. The rest are just images of the same two kernels compiled with different processor options (686, k7, smp, etc...). A single source package should be able to support a wide variety of those kernels.

  • "Customer Demand" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by samjam ( 256347 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @04:12AM (#14061059) Homepage Journal
    Excellent! This skews the reseller scene somewhat such that others will be required to follow to equalize. In following they will skew it even more against the laggards who will finally capitulate.

    Huzzah!

    Sam

  • Shouldn't be so (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kawahee ( 901497 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @04:13AM (#14061060) Homepage Journal
    Open source distros shouldn't need to get the attention of the big players, the big players should make everything to a standard of sorts, so everybody can be 'certified' regardless.

    But it's not a perfect world, after all.

  • Yeah..... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ecko7889 ( 882690 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @04:16AM (#14061069)
    Yeah but...Debtel does have quite as good of a ring to it....

  • Uhh... source code? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I tried to follow the link given in the summary, but it wanted a login password. Do these drivers come with source, or are they binary only?
    • ... Do these drivers come with source, or are they binary only?
      The Debian lists message promises the following :
      All the drivers of course include source and have been released under the GPL

    • Re:Uhh... source code? (Score:3, Informative)

      by PDXNerd ( 654900 )
      The Marvell/Syskonnect yukon2 driver is crap, but it works. The source code is available for free - check out marvell.com. I *promise* you (as someone who works at Intel) that Intel get their drivers direct from Marvell and does not modify them in anyway. All bugs are sent to Marvell, who change and release a new driver.

      If the driver is open source, why is it not in the kernel? Because the kernel developers think it's crap too. So Intel made a binary .deb file. Even though the driver sucks, Marvell's instal
      • geez, wait a few hours and a journal entry disappears. what the heck is Paul doing surfing slashdot on Sundays? As if someone's going to confuse a little honesty with "officially sanctioned" views from Intel. Hope you didn't get your ass chewed off too badly.

  • Why support distributions? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @08:53AM (#14061935) Homepage

    Why support distributions when what is needed for that support is either actual drivers (open source), or technical information to allow kernel developers to write the drivers. Instead, this "support" should be specifically targeting "The Linux Kernel". Then supplementary support can be provided to retractively install those drivers in distributions containing older kernel versions that don't include the drivers. Genuine "Linux Support" would mean doing whatever is necessary so that a future kernel version will correctly function with the targeted hardware. Likewise, similar support should also be provided for all the BSDs (even if just supplying the info to let the developers create the necessary code).

  • Debian gets no respect on /. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gregorlowski ( 884938 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @03:32PM (#14065864)
    OK, maybe this is not exactly on topic, but why is it that Debian gets no respect on /. If there's an article on /. like "Ubuntu Dapper beta-1.0.652 now available for testing" or "Some guy in Australia evaluates ubuntu on his business desktop", it will get put into MAIN. If there is an article about the new graphic debian installer or Intel now supporting Debian with open source drivers, it only goes into the linux section.

    I am now working as a java developer. In the past I've done development , DBA work, and sysadmin work, and whenever I want to get a server working well (or work on some development), my first option is ALWAYS Debian. Sure, right now I'm stuck working on solaris because I have to work with some commercial, binary-apps that do not run on any linux distros. Maybe I will sometimes consider using centos or something like that if I need to work with software that is only supported for RHEL.

    But if I have an option, I use Debian. I have a small group of FOSS-enthusiast developer friends. We sort-of met each other arbitrarily, and we subsequently found that we all use Debian. When my cousin in Poland (I'm in the USA) was trying out different *nix distros, he eventually also settled on Debian (before he found out that I use it too).

    Commercial distros appeal to newbies with their graphical installers. Ubuntu appeals to newbies who are charmed by the latest gnome apps. Many developers and sysadmins, on the other hand, who have used various distros have discovered that Debian is incredible for getting work done. It has more packages than any distro (I mean, EVERY FOSS tool is in Debian and it just keeps getting better and better -- now parrot, several FOSS java vm's, mono, Postgresql 8.1, mysql 5... are in unstable). When you want to compile from source, building (and customizing) your own deb from a source deb is VERY easy. And when you don't have time to worry about building from source and want to get some software up and running in a hurry, apt and dpkg are AMAZING.

    Show me another distro right now that will let me install postgresql 8.1, parrot, mysql 5, mono, and several different FOSS java tools from binary packages in less than 5 minutes. It pisses me off when I read /. posts that say "Hey, if you want to run kernel 1.4 in 2005, try Debian." Hello, try debian unstable. Postgresql 8.1 was in debian unstable 1 day after it was released recently. If you're doing development, a bit of instability is fine (and IMHO, unstable is often more stable than ubuntu's official releases). If you want to run a production server, debian stable is hard to beat.

    OK, gentoo is another great community distro and warrants respect for the hard work and quality that the community puts into it. But for me and many other people who truly love to use FOSS tools on every continent in the world in dozens of countries, whenever we consider trying out another distro for a while, we find that we're better off just using Debian.

    Debian deserves more respect on /.!!!
    • Show me another distro right now that will let me install postgresql 8.1, parrot, mysql 5, mono, and several different FOSS java tools from binary packages in less than 5 minutes.

      I no longer use Linux and thus probably don't really care, but IMHO emphasis on binary packages is not something to brag about. I understand that a lot of Debian users consider apt to be one of the single greatest things about the distro, although in my opinion it sucks. For starters, I tried installing Debian on four different occ

  • It's shame, isn't it? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was very happy to note Intel released drivers for Linux. I use Linux desktop on Intel 865. I did not want to buy dual-core (Intel 945-based) because no drivers.

    BUT, I was very surprised and very much disappointed to see notes on Intel website.
    (http://developer.intel.com/design/motherbd/cz/cz_ drive.htm [intel.com])

    For Windows:
    Note: The Windows* OS device drivers listed have been evaluated on this Intel® Desktop board. ....

    For Linux:
    1. All BETA and Linux* information and software contained herein is provided "AS
  • I kind of thought we had that one pegged. I'm lost. Come back to me later.

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