Re: Do Not Waste Your Money With Suse Linux 9.1. It stinks!

From: Rick (none_at_nomail.com)
Date: 08/10/04 

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 06:13:24 -0400

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 02:46:57 -0700, T.G.Reaper wrote:

> On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 09:13:52 -0400, Rick wrote:
>
>
>>> The previous poster mentioned his displeasure with SuSe 9.1 because of
>>> incompatibilities with some of his hardware. As a realist, and a
>>> pragmatist, Linux will never gain mass acceptance on the desktop until
>>> it offers a true Plug-N-Play operation with all available hardware.
>>
>> You misspelled until vendors support it with drivers in the same manner as
>> they support window$.
>
> That right there is the problem that will probably ultimately doom Linux
> to forever being a minor player in the area of general desktop OSs. Unless
> something changes drastically, the current system that provides most of
> the hardware drivers used in Linux can't possibly ever catch up with the
> fully optimized feature set provided by most Windows drivers.
>
> It's not practical, or optimal, for a loose knit group of volunteers of
> varying degrees of expertise and speciality, to maintain, update, and
> optimize, a collection of device drivers that is expanding by multiples
> year after year.

You are perpetuating a myth. You should look around and realize that a
large number (majority?) of Linux software developers are not garage
volunteers, but paid professional programmers.

> Factor in all the different architectures Linux claims to
> "fully support" then add in the porting required when a new major
> kernel version number changes, and the workload quickly becomes crushing
> for the human resources that are available. Never mind the work on new
> core kernel features and functionality.
>
> Hardware vendors don't want to release the source code that they've spent
> thousands of hours optimizing, tuning, and debugging, just so their
> competitors can benefit from their hard work. That's not going to happen,
> and it's naive in the extreme to believe that it could.
>
> That leaves releasing drivers in the form of binaries. This doesn't work
> well for Linux, because a driver build against a kernel named
> "linux-2.4.32-default" will not eve load under a kernel named
> "linux-2.4.32-install" even though they are both identical kernels
> with the exact same functionality, and the driver would in fact work
> perfectly under either of them. This makes it impossible for the hardware
> vendor to support all versions of Linux by releasing binary drivers.

IIRC, nVidia's driver does not suffer from the above problem. Printer
drivers do not have that problem. Scanner drivers do not have that problem.

>
> So, what we have is a situation where:
>
> 1. it's impractical and horribly inefficient for kernel developers to
> write drivers from raw specs and data sheets.

window$ kernel developers don't write hardware drivers.

>
> 2. Most hardware vendors are never going to release source code for their
> newest or most optimized drivers.

Probably not.

>
> 3. Linux makes it extremely difficult for hardware vendors to support
> multiple versions of Linux, even if the vendor was willing to devote some
> resources to supporting the platform.

nVidia doesn't seem to have that problem.

>
> Unless something changes, the future of Linux hardware support looks
> pretty gloomy. At this point the change needs to come from Linux.

Once Linux gains enough recognized marketshare, hardware vendors will see
the light. Or, only the vendors that do will increase their sales to Linux
users. 

-- 
Rick