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

From: T.G.Reaper (Reaper_at_127.0.0.1.Com)
Date: 08/11/04 

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 00:40:17 -0700

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 06:13:24 -0400, Rick wrote:

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

>>> 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.

They may be paid professional programmers, but they are not paid to
work on Linux. For most of them, the work they do on Linux is on their
own time as ....say it with me now...vooolluunnteeerrrss.

 
>> 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.

Notice that the driver from nVidia also has a very special install
procedure. If the kernel changes the driver must be re-installed.
Not exactly a practical solution for ever driver, especially disk devices
that are required for boot.

> Printer
> drivers do not have that problem. Scanner drivers do not have that
> problem.

>From HP:

http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/install.php
 
Step 1: Prepare your printer
Make sure your printer is powered on, and has paper and ink cartridges installed

Step 2: Install HPIJS
Follow the instructions below

The download includes the HPIJS source code and a platform-independent
automake/autoconf makefile. The makefile will compile and install the
hpijs driver. By default the makefile will also do a Foomatic and CUPS
install. After downloading to your directory use the following
instructions.

# tar xzvf hpijs-1.x.tar.gz
# cd hpijs-1.x
# ./configure
# make
Log in as root on your machine
# make install

2.
Verify HPIJS is present You can verify HPIJS was built and installed
correctly with the following command.
 
 # hpijs -h

If installed correctly, you will see the following displayed.

Hewlett-Packard Co. Inkjet Server 1.x
 Copyright (c) 2001-2002, Hewlett-Packard Co.

********************

Oh yeah, that sounds like a real efficient, user friendly way to
distribute a printer driver, just have everyone compile the driver on
their machine.

Again, just like nVidia the driver would need to be re-installed if the
kernel is upgraded. Otherwise, I'm betting the HP driver
produced by the above instructions would fail to load under a new kernel.

>> 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.

No, hardware vendors do. But there is one big difference , for Windows,
hardware vendors can produce one single binary that will load and be fully
functional under Windows 2000 pro and Server, Windows 2003 Server, Windows
XP Home and Pro, etc. It's literally impossible to produce a single binary
that will work across all distributions of Linux. nVidia and sorta HP,
have ways to support Linux in a somewhat generic sort of way. However that
method won't work for all types of drivers, and requires re-installing the
driver(s) every time the kernel name changes.

 
>> 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.

It's a hack, and a bit of an ugly one at that. It's not a solution, it
won't work for every type of driver, and would you really want to run a
significant number of re-install routines just because you bumped your
kernel up a couple of revisions? That would be the situation if
everybody followed nVidia's solution.

> 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.

Linux has been around for way more than enough years that if there were
any "light" for the hardware vendors to see, it would have been detected
by by now. 

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