Subject: RE: Linux laptops
From: Ferwerda Darren (app3dxf) (app3dxf@ups.com)
Date: Wed Mar 06 2002 - 12:54:41 MST
I understand your pain. It can be EXTREMELY frustrating. I stayed away
from USB for the longest time, until it really settled down in 2.4. I
actually was forced to pickup a USB mouse when I wanted an external
trackball for my IceBook and Pismo. Anyway, in regard to the "... External
beta ...", That is kind of the problem with Free Software if you are looking
for a completely working OS with support for all of the newest hardware out
there. In some respects, we are miles ahead of the game in any other area,
like stablility, architecture support, and other, more for lack of a better
term, Computer Science related areas. The business end, which includes, the
new sound cards, video cards, and USB devices, yes, we are all behind the
curve. People forget, in the Windows and Mac world, the companies are all
releasing closed source, proprietary drivers. They do not release the
source to the driver for all to see. I personally do not understand this,
because to use the darned driver, you have to buy the widget, which means a
physical sale, not a Photoshop copy or other warez, but I digress. The Free
Software movement has been busy doing their best to support as much as
humanly possible. Considering the amount of devices out there, and the
slight, and when I say slight, I mean ever so slight, differences between
similar devices, we are doing fairly well in the support department. No,
you cannot go out and just buy any old NIC card or Sound card from CompUSA
or Frys or Best Buys, but with a little research before hand, you will find
a device that is very well supported. Remember, the device companies have
months of lead time to develop their drivers. They are making the darn
thing for Pete's sake. They can move their driver development along with
the development of the device, hence saving them time. We need to get the
device in our grubby little hands, then take the time to reverse engineer
it, or try to hack an existing driver to work with the new variation.
Considering the Mammoth task, I personally think we are doing fairly well.
I know this is long, and wasting everyone's bandwith, but I try to give back
where I can, and am grateful for all of the work that gets me farther along
than I was before. Yeah, it may be a little harder than a commercial OS for
support, but TONS of work was done to make it a LOT less harder than it used
to be. If it were not for Terrasoft, I would never have bought a Mac.
Yeah, I had to recompile a kernel, which by the way is not that hard, to get
my IceBook to work. But without their help, I would have had to come up
with the installer, the packages, the time, and effort to make sure all of
the port of the kernel works, find some way to deal with Open Firmware, Get
the kernel loaded that I would not have known if it worked, and then debug
and repeat. There is a lot of work that was done, and I am grateful for it.
Darren
-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Christopher [mailto:jchristopher@takenote.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 2:49 PM
To: yellowdog-general@lists.yellowdoglinux.com
Subject: RE: Linux laptops
I find that is the case for most things regarding Linux. Eternal beta.
Advanced users claim "everything works on my TiBook", and when it doesn't on
your machine, it's: "oh yeah, I forgot to mention that... In order to get
xyz working, you need to apply patch abc, then modprobe blah-blah as root".
This continues for your sound, your video card, your new USB digital camera,
your printer, until you decide it's not worth it and format the drive with
an OS that's useful.
Then, 6 months later, you decide to see if the installers have improved any.
Sure enough it now has "Ext3 support, support for FireWire devices, yada
yada yada" but they never seem to get around to fixing the basics. Format.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Guba [mailto:paulguba@comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 11:22 AM
To: yellowdog-general@lists.yellowdoglinux.com
Subject: Re: Linux laptops
Out of the box Sound did not work on my Pismo 400 this machine is two
years old. I have posted to the list but no one seems to have a
solution. Frankly building a custom kernel is not very appealing. If
something as basic as the sound does not work call it beta.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Wed Mar 06 2002 - 13:10:00 MST