On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, Rony Bill wrote:
I have a few suggestions for the developers and OS makers,
- Have some sort of unity within the Linux community where simple things
like driver support is available to everyone across Linux irrespective of freeware or paid versions. A free version that does not function properly
I have read great reviews about Suse. You seem to be very much familiar with RHL. Why not give Suse a try ? Maybe it will work out for you. BTW I use gentoo :)
- Is there any development going on in making a Linux utility that converts
windows drivers into Linux drivers as per the Linux flavour and kernel? If wine can run fullfledged Windows programs in Linux, this too should be a possibility.
Well, I don't think that porting drivers across Os'es without the underlying source code is possible. Otherwise scarcity of drivers would not have been an issue in the first place. Somewhere on the net I read that FreeBSD can theoretically support such binary drivers. I'll just check that out. Also it mentioned that the design decision by Linux community was deliberate so as to force the manufacturers to release their source code. I don't know if it's true but this comment came from a FreeBSD kernel developer I guess.
Maybe the design decision of Linux kernel is not appropriate as far as drivers are concerned. It makes little sense in recompiling the entire kernel just for supporting some new devices. Whereas in Windows you just insert the CD given by the manufacturer and whoa! the drivers are installed. And this is true since Windows 95. Hopefully in near future driver installation will be a breeze just as Linux installation is today.
- Please have some kernel intercompatibility in relation to device drivers
so that drivers written for older kernels work on new ones too. I read in the recent LFY mag that internal modem drivers written for older kernels cannot work on newer ones. Linus Tarvolds could do something about this?
Exactly as I mentioned above. This is a major and understandable concern for hardware vendors and System Administrators. Kernel compilation is *a long task* on an i586/i686 + 32/64 MB RAM. Take into account some 20-25 PC's in a SOHO setup having slight nuances of their own ( some are P1's some P3's .. some have sound cards .. etc..) and the driver installation for new devices will be a *major task*