Linux lacks in hardware support

By C:\Smoke>
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Grand Master

Mouldy Punk

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Sure Linux can be frustrating sometimes but usually a quick Google search will turn up a solution.

Exactly, imagine how impossible it would be to learn linux without the internet - next to impossible. Hence why it's a long way away from stealing the desktop OS market from microsoft - it's just not user friendly. But on with the topic of this thread...

As people have mentioned numerous times, it's not linux's fault - it is the hardware vendors not fully supporting their products. Most drivers are made by the odd programmer at weekends or in his lunch break at work. So naturally, hardware isn't going to be as functional in linux as it is in windows. So until hardware vendors start opening their eyes to linux, linux's hardware support is going to continue being shakey and sketchy.

Proficient

xSaithx

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  megamanXplosion said:
I must thank you for predicting that everyone who has, or will have, hardware problems in Linux are "thankless slobs." What would we do without enlightening people, like yourself?

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Of course you'd be right if what you thought I said was what I actually said.

Unfortunately, you aren't, and it isn't. Please refer to my original post where I made it _abundantly_ clear that I was referring to people who spend their time griping in linux community forums about hardware support in linux, rather than taking a constructive approach and emailing the hardware vendors (aka-- the ones responsible for their problems.)

So to be infallably clear, if you have hardware problems and find a solution, great. If you don't find a solution and give up on linux, great too. If you feel like complaining to hardware vendors that their drivers don't work/exist for linux, double great. But if you feel like complaining on a community forum because you didn't take the time to learn an iota about the system you're using--and think linux should just work straight out of the box on any random hardware configuration (something Windows doesn't even do)--get a life.

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C:\Smoke>

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  LaNcom said:
Smoke,

well, either you tried the Gyration stuff on Linux 0.99, or on a b0rked distro, or even your professors were quite clueless - I know for fact that everything Gyration built works on Linux. Anyway, like I said, pretty much every piece of hardware you listed does work, I'm sorry if it didn't work for you. And the 9700 is explicitly listed as supported on the GATOS page, so I'm sure you didn't try everything...

BTW, do you expect OSX, SUN, or sgi hardware to work on Windows? I didn't think so... :-)

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a) i tried the gyration on:

Debian

Suse

Redhat

Fedora

College

Lindows (linspire)

and more... none worked, at the time gyrations website even stated that... so you really dont know for a fact... (one of my profs is a regular program contributor to a distro, definatly not clueless)

Also, at the time the 9700 AiW tv input was not supported... It may be now, but i no longer have either of those pieces of hardware, nor do i have the need to fight with an OS to make things work...

The best feature of linux is being able to emulate windows!

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C:\Smoke>

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why is it that when something doesnt work, it makes me a troll...

  xSaithx said:
And the 9700 is explicitly listed as supported on the GATOS page, so I'm sure you didn't try everything...
  http://gatos.sourceforge.net/supported_cards.php said:
All-in-Wonder Radeon 9700 (Radeon300)

We have received documentation for this card and sample hardware (thanks to ATI !), work is underway. At this moment we cannot promise a specific timeframe for availability of working drivers or list specific feature that will be supported.

You were saying?

...and I'm the troll here?

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nicedreams

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The only reason there are not more advanced driver support for some products is because the manufacture makes the drivers for Windows because they make money that way. They would have to pay their developers money to make on for Linux and that's why only a few do that.

It's just like with game support. They would have to pay people to have games work with Linux and they don't really make money through Linux since most regular comsumer people use Windows. I have seen game manufactures start to make more Linux versions now.

Nvidia is great with their Linux support for both video drivers and chipset drivers. I just hope all other companies develop for Linux more soon.

It's all about money. Windows makes these companes more money than Linux so they don't care too much to push Linux stuff unless they need to for money reasons.

Grand Master

Shadrack

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I haven't been able to get a wireless card and a few sound cards to work properly in Linux. I have a scanner that doesn't have driver support for Windows NT/2000/XP, just Windows 95/98/ME but works fine in Linux.

Meh, it really goes both ways. In any OS, if your hardware isn't supported then it can be really frustrating and can turn you off to the OS all together.

That being said, reading some of the posts here from the Linux crowd is really bothering me. When Linux supports all your hardware right out of the box, then kudoes to you! For some people the support isn't given to them right out of the box, and then there is little direction as to how to find support for your hardware. I've thrown many many hours into trying to get something as simple as a sound card to work, and it was a very frusterating and painful battle that was just loss in the end.

I run Linux, but now I pick out hardware that I know will run Linux if I plan on using it for a purpose (mostly server stuff, that it is good at).

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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I was thinking that I should have closed this thread some time ago (at the peak of the implied name-calling). However, it seems to have returned to reasonable discussion.

While I think that hardware support in Linux is very broad (and in some cases better than in Windows), my view is really expressed as this:

Given a standard "consumer PC", purchased from a store, I would place my money on the hardware working in Windows. In Linux, it may work without any effort, or it may require effort (sometimes significant effort, especially for a newbie to Linux), and some may not work at all.

Proficient

LaNcom

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Smoke,

it's OK if you're done posting here (sad, but OK). And, like I said, I do not doubt that your hardware didn't work for you - I know that it's supposed to work, but read my other post in this very thread regarding the NForce2 USB2 controller that just won't work on Windows, no matter what you do. Stuff like that happens all the time, on any OS. I'm confident that there are ways to solve those kinds of problems, and that it's easier to solve those problems on Linux (because you have the source), but it usually means serious effort. When I bought my Intuos2 tablet a few years ago, the Linux driver didn't support that model (it was not supported by Wacom back then). But I had the source, and since similar Wacom tablets were supported, I figured that all that needed to be changed was to add the device ID to the driver - and that did it. Granted, messing with the driver source is not a solution for noobs, but stuff like that is usually not needed anymore, as hardware support got much better during the last two or three years. Back then, SuSE 7.3 was just released, my kernel wouldn't boot with bootsplash support due to my unsupported graphic card (Quadro2 Pro back then). I couldn't find a valid modeline for my monitor, a nice sgi 1600sw (but that was my very own stupidity, the modeline for that particular monitor was explicitely mentioned in the XFree86 docs, due to the rare resolution), and my soundcard didn't work (ice1712 chipset). All those problems were fixed with SuSE 8.0 not even half a year later (I had also fixed every single problem myself in the meantime, but, like I said, the solutions were not exactly easy or userfriendly). On the other hand, after using Linux for several years, I'm not afraid to use pre-release kernels or check out drivers from CVS if something is not officially supported - usually it works just fine, but a Windows user doesn't think of that, is afraid, or (most likely) doesn't want to mess with stuff like that. OTOH, if you look at Windows XP x64, that's an OS with really bad driver support, much worse than Linux - with Linux, at least I have the option to use drivers from CVS, or hack a build system to create working 64bit drivers. With Windows, all you can do is pray that the vendor cares for the few x64 users...

Now, with more generic drivers, much better support from vendors (Adaptec, Broadcom, Intel, AMD, Creative, Silicon Image, 3Com, VIA, Nvidia, ATI), and a more bleeding edge distro like gentoo, I've yet to find any mainstream hardware I couldn't get working. There is completely unsupported hardware, CW Audio DSP cards for example, but that's definitely not 'mainstream'.

Grand Master

theyarecomingforyou

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  Mengha said:
I don't know alot about Linux but I know a bit. Doesn't Linux run on alot of different hardware like PC's, Consoles, Routers etc. If it has crap hardware suport why can it run on so many different electronic devices?

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That is because some skilled people write drivers and support for those devices manually... it's a test for them, much like the people that got Win95 working on the PSP.

Community Regular

Danny Weed

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  CaKeY said:
What kind of wireless adaptor is it?? If you know what you're doing, why did you buy hardware that doesnt support Linux?

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It's down to the Hardware to support the OS now? :huh::

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XP - I need to install drivers for my sound card, video card, scanner, printer... not to mention the required service packs needed to run in a secure environment.

You proberbly have generic support for all of them by default too, i don't need to download anything for my printer / video card / sound card / digital camera / mp3 player to work in windows, they all work fine with the default drivers, but they perform better with the official ones, and slipstreamed installations are the best ;))

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Linux - the lot works straight out of the box... and I can surf the net safely.... even my antivirus... f-prot... is free for linux users

There are free anti-viruses and firewalls for windows too, ya know? :rolleyes::

And those drivers proberbly only provide generic support, my printer was detected in every linux distro i've used, but i couldn't get it to print without installing anything extra, my Webcam was detected as somthing else and all i got was a green image and sound was complete bollocks.

I know, spelling, grammer, everything i just wrote proberbly doesn't even make sense, i'm kinda tired> :sleep::

Proficient

LaNcom

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That is because some skilled people write drivers and support for those devices manually... it's a test for them, much like the people that got Win95 working on the PSP.

Sometimes that's the case, but more often it's quite different. The vendors or developers of many devices create or supervise an initial port (take Linksys routers for example, or the HP IPAQ). Then, once the initial port is done, it's easy to add support for similar devices (HP IPAQ -> Dell Axim). The superior support for low-level hardware also allows to support hardware that's only remotely similar, like the AMD Geode based reference PDA.

The initial PS2 port was done by xRhino on behalf of Sony for homebrew developers, but the CPU was already mostly supported, because it's a MIPS variant. Initial MIPS support was provided by MIPS (duh... :-) ) and Silicon Graphics. The Xbox is only a PC, using a modified PIII CPU connected to a Nvidia Geforce3 using an AMD Hypertransport link (a so-called 'legacy architecture', like the sgi Cobalt). All those parts were already supported on Linux, with Intel and AMD actively contributing to the kernel to improve the support of their respective technologies. That doesn't mean Xbox Linux was easy to do, but it would have been impossible without the generic drivers already in the kernel.

There are really only very few drivers based on rev-engineering these days (Nvidia NForce NIC for example), I'd say more than 90% of the drivers for recent hardware were created by their respective vendors, or at least written with their support (docs, some sourcecode, register information)...

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It's down to the Hardware to support the OS now?

Well, of course it is. That's the way it always was - try to use PC hardware on a Mac (it's more likely to work on Linux/ PPC ;-) )...

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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  Danny Weed said:
It's down to the Hardware to support the OS now?  :huh:

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That's how it is done for Microsoft. Why would it be expected to be different for Linux? The hardware manufacturers write the drivers, and some are included on the Windows CD, and many others are by an "extra" CD or floppy (or download) from the manufacturer with the equipment.

Surely, Microsoft doesn't write the drivers for every video card, and every sound card, and so forth. They make the card manufacturers do it (or else it won't have a "Works with Windows" sticker, and it won't sell). :p

Grand Master

seta-san

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well. time for my two cents. The reason most developers won't release drivers for linux is because you basically HAVE to release source code, much of which contains trade secrets that they don't want their competition to have. nVidia made a way to release a binary driver but they have to use a compilible "front end" type of a program that acts as kernel driver for the device and then that makes calls to the binary driver. This though is a very bad way to do make people install drivers. If you're grandmother wouldn't be bothered to type

./configure

make

make install

neither will any other normal user. Linux needs to move away from compiling kernel modules that have to be recompiled for EVERY new version of the kernel plain and simple. After that user friendliness should kinda fall in place and driver coders wouldn't have to worry about releasing source code. That should create greater driver support, less peeved off linux users, and a broader linux user base.

All that won't happen though. The linux eleet like the way things are done right now. They love the fact that the only thing you need to run a linux distro is the kernel itself without any type of shell or anything. These, btw, are the same people who mindlessly complain about "bloat" on perfectly good packages such as MS Windows, Norton software, and countless others. Just because you can run your OS on a 386 doesn't mean the rest of us care to. They are also the people who complain that you're too stupid to run linux and treat you like **** when you're having trouble and begging for help. Sure linux probably has way more webpages and users in help forums and irc channels but most of them are pretty useless.

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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  seta-san said:
well. time for my two cents. The reason most developers won't release drivers for linux is because you basically HAVE to release source code

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That lead-off statement is just plain wrong (nVidia drivers, for example - binary only). The rest wasn't much more accurate, either... :ermm:

I don't compile anything on my computer. I have never done anything to my kernel (compile or even change settings). It just works. Sure, there are those that probably enjoy doing that sort of stuff. And Linux certainly is the right OS for those who like to tinker that much under the hood. But it also meets the need of someone like me, who just wants to install the app and use it.

Yes, there are people who treat you like you don't know anything when you ask for help in Linux. But look around (this forum and others), there are people who help. Now, look in the Windows forums. I'll be darned. They have the same types of people there, too. Some rude, some helpful.

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