Re: Hardware devices supported
From: ERACC (junkmail_at_eracc.com)
Date: 09/18/05
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Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 14:19:11 -0500
On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 03:29:57 +0000, Edward Diener No Spam wrote:
> ERACC wrote:
[...]
>> So, it depends. If one is considering the commercial releases then
>> one should not be asking about them here. Ask the company for
>> pre-sales information. Or contact the manufacturer of the desired
>> hardware and ask them about Linux support.
>
> Take a user who is interested to find out whether a particular distro
> supports the hardware he/she has. Let us supposed he/she is able to boot
> a particular distro and log in. That does not meant that the distro
> necessarily supports all the hardware the user has, or even supports all
> of it correctly. In the first case a particular device may not be
> working at all, while in the second case a particular device may be
> working but giving errors ( my actual case with some Linux distros which
> triggered my OP ). What would be the reasonable steps under Linux, at
> this point, to determine if a particular hardware device is supported,
> and with what driver ?
Not supporting it correctly / not finding it at all: look in the bug
reporting database provided by the distribution. Is the problem not
listed? File a bug report with your distribution of choice. The main
distributions all have some sort of QA team (or person) that can talk
to the people doing kernel development. If the hardware manufacturer
of a specific piece of hardware refuses to release specs for the
hardware then it becomes more difficult, if not impossible, to
support on OSS. In that case there may or may not be a driver or
there may only be a closed source driver one has to get from the
manufacturer.
> Secondly, with no criticism intended, would it not be to the benefit of
> Linux, as an Operating system, to provide a uniform method, or
> interface, of answering this question ?
There is: CLI (Common Linux Interface aka Command Line Interface ;-)
Dude, there is no Overseer to force all distributions to dance to a
single tune and include "Awesome GUI Device Controller I Invented" in
all distributions like there is for Micro$oft. That is the *beauty*
of OSS, I can do it MY way even if no one else LIKES it MY way. There
*are* tools at the CLI one may almost assume will be in all Linux
distributions. Since the CLI tools (already mentioned in other
replies) are likely to be there, use them.
As for GUI device management choose a mainstream distribution (SuSE,
Hed Rat, Mandriva, etcetera) and use the tools that distribution
offers. If the GUI (which is actually just a front end to the CLI)
does not report your Foo Device then file a bug report with the
distribution maintainers.
Want a uniform GUI that is available on ALL the distributions? Write
one, then make a case with each distribution to include your "Awesome
GUI Device Controller I Invented". Oh, also decide if your "Awesome
GUI Device Controller I Invented" will use vanilla X controls or
GTK(1|2) or QT or (insert some GUI development environment here) and
if there will also be a text interface for the users that hate GUI.
Take into account there are those that will NEVER use anything that
requires them to load libraries for KDE or libraries for Gnome. Then
YOU get to maintain and keep up to date and handle the bug reports
for "Awesome GUI Device Controller I Invented". Or did you want *me*
to do this? If you want *me* to do it, well, you'll have to wait
because I have a lot of other things on my plate and ... get it?
> Finally, is this not a common question which users of Linux might ask
> and want to know about ? This last is a bit rhetorical. I am just making
> the point that my question, even if taken in general and not referring
> to some particular hardware device, appears to be about as mainstream as
> possible.
No one is suggesting your question was/is outre. However, in your OP
you did not state the specific hardware with which you had a problem.
Part of getting problems resolved with OSS is stating clearly the
device/software with which one has a problem and sometimes digging
through the abundance of logs for information. Then others can step
in and answer *if* there are any that know the answer(s). There is
no "generic" GUI device manager every distribution uses so if you
want one you are going to have to make it or convince someone to make
it and convince every distribution to include it. Frankly I don't see
that happening. ;-)
As difficult as this may be to imagine, if a driver for a piece of
hardware did not exist for Window$ how would you go about finding
that out? In this case the "Device Manager" will not show any device
other than perhaps that yellow question mark it uses for unknown
device. If the driver does exist but is buggy who do you tell?
Finally, develop a new way of thinking to use Linux. Do not try to
make Linux a Window$ replacement. It is not that and very few, if
any, in the OSS community want it to be that.
Gene (e-mail: gene \a\t eracc \d\o\t com)
-- Linux era4.eracc.UUCP 2.6.8.1-12mdk i686 13:17:21 up 123 days, 13:58, 8 users, load average: 0.30, 0.13, 0.09 ERA Computer Consulting - http://www.eracc.com/ eCS, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenServer & UnixWare resellers
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