Is Linux Irrelevant?

[ccperf721p]

The problem is linux only works for a small percentage, Windows will work for everyone. I wish I could use strictly linux, due to the advantages it has over Windows, but it is just not possible 75% of the time. The 25% of the time I am able to run linux I do enjoy it a little more though.

The true linux faithful that believe everything they run should be free and open will have to slack up a bit for linux to see any room for improvement. They don't have to run any closed source software, but they shouldn't be making it harder for me to do so.

They complained about nvidia's closed source blob and even went as far as saying they could improve or fix it if they had the source code. Then ATI gave an open source driver to the linux world. It still sucks and now they just complain ATI won't fix it. If you are in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation I couldn't see putting in the extra work..

[Daniel ~]

One recent (At lest to me) thing Mint 7 did I really like is the Drivers App. As soon as I boot the first time it offers to install Nvidia drivers, very slick!

[ccperf721p]

Most distro's (outside of debian, slack and fedora) make it pretty painless to install drivers. Debian and Slack are based on principal, I'm almost certain Fedora is a pronlem with not being able to ship them with redhat so they want to push the neaveu (spelling?) driver on people..

Gentoo is as simple as: emerge nvidia-drivers, Arch is: pacman -S nvidia.. Not to tough..

[ThunderRd]

They still have problem installing the NVIDIA driver on multiple kernels, though. I have noticed this especially of late while experimenting with kernels. It only seems to want to install on one, the others run in low-graphics mode. Then when you go through the installation:

sudo sh NVIDIA-*_*.run

it appears in the new kernel install, and disappears from the other kernel. Could be a problem on ly on 64-bit, though. Don't know.

[Gizmo]

The drivers are compiled to a particular kernel version.

I came across something the other day from one of the kernel devs explaining why this was the case.

Basically, the idea was that they wanted to encourage everyone to continue developing their drivers. The fear was that the proprietary vendors would build a driver for hardware x for say, the 2.4 kernel, and then if something changed in 2.5 or 2.6 that actually changed how the drivers talked to the kernel (as it did) that driver would not be updated by the vendor and would be lost forever. By making the driver compile to the specific kernel version, the vendor would be required to either maintain the driver and keep it up-to-date or release the source code into the community.

I don't think it's worked all that well for them. Near as I can tell, there are almost no proprietary drivers for Linux and the ones that do exist for the most part suck compared to their windows counterparts.

[dsio]

Originally Posted by ccperf721p

Most distro's (outside of debian, slack and fedora) make it pretty painless to install drivers. Debian and Slack are based on principal, I'm almost certain Fedora is a pronlem with not being able to ship them with redhat so they want to push the neaveu (spelling?) driver on people..

Gentoo is as simple as: emerge nvidia-drivers, Arch is: pacman -S nvidia.. Not to tough..

The whole providing driver installers is still grey area. Only a couple of years ago a guy named Chris Smart who made the Kororaa distro (gentoo derived) was threatened by kernel devs for over binary drivers to the point where he was shut down and it wasn't until Canonical flopped it out that others really joined in. With the number of patent trolls gunning for Linux companies (SCO included now that they're back in the game) its understandable that RedHat want to keep their legs crossed.

[ccperf721p]

They really need to allow a little more flexibility to companies to produce drivers. It's somewhat funny that I can get ahold of some of the best apps around for decoding/encoding any type of media but have to listen to them through a crappy sound driver..

[dsio]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

The drivers are compiled to a particular kernel version.

I came across something the other day from one of the kernel devs explaining why this was the case.

Basically, the idea was that they wanted to encourage everyone to continue developing their drivers. The fear was that the proprietary vendors would build a driver for hardware x for say, the 2.4 kernel, and then if something changed in 2.5 or 2.6 that actually changed how the drivers talked to the kernel (as it did) that driver would not be updated by the vendor and would be lost forever. By making the driver compile to the specific kernel version, the vendor would be required to either maintain the driver and keep it up-to-date or release the source code into the community.

I don't think it's worked all that well for them. Near as I can tell, there are almost no proprietary drivers for Linux and the ones that do exist for the most part suck compared to their windows counterparts.

Should also mention something interesting. I built a new computer for my boss the other day, ASUS P6T, Intel i7 920, 12GB DDR3, NVidia 9800, SATA hard disk and DVD-RW. His old computer was an ASUS P5K-E, Intel C2D Q6600, 8GB DDR2, 8400GS, PATA DVD-RW.

The upgrade process went like this.

1: Build system.
2: Take hard disk out of old machine.
3: Insert old hard disk into new machine.
4: Turn computer on.
5: Done.

Sound works, network card works, video card and driver works, sata DVD-RW works, everything motherboard related works, all out of the box with not a hint of configuration.

The second hard disk in that machine was Win Vista Ultimate. That wouldn't boot full stop. From a sysadmin perspective, I know which I enjoyed setting up more.

[ccperf721p]

Originally Posted by dsio

The whole providing driver installers is still grey area. Only a couple of years ago a guy named Chris Smart who made the Kororaa distro (gentoo derived) was threatened by kernel devs for over binary drivers to the point where he was shut down and it wasn't until Canonical flopped it out that others really joined in. With the number of patent trolls gunning for Linux companies (SCO included now that they're back in the game) its understandable that RedHat want to keep their legs crossed.

I remember that going on, and I don't have problem with anybody covering their butt, especially if it's how they make their living..

I think linux is coming up on that point where, just like in America, Freedom will be redefined...

[dsio]

Originally Posted by ccperf721p

I remember that going on, and I don't have problem with anybody covering their butt, especially if it's how they make their living..

I think linux is coming up on that point where, just like in America, Freedom will be redefined...

The key will be lining up the judges in that western district of texas, and shooting them one by one for the benefit of the human race.

(And no, FBI internet threat investigators, I'm an Australian and can't /actually/ do it, but it deserves to happen)

[ccperf721p]

Originally Posted by dsio

The key will be lining up the judges in that western district of texas, and shooting them one by one for the benefit of the human race.

(And no, FBI internet threat investigators, I'm an Australian and can't /actually/ do it, but it deserves to happen)

I agree. I'll probably be dragged into a texas district court for it though..

[ThunderRd]

@dsio
You'd be shooting the wrong judges if you went there (it's the Eastern District dudes you want)

Those judges have the kind of liberal thinking that, if it catches on, will change the course of patent law permanently. Hopefully that will never happen, but somebody has to slow down their docket.

[Daniel ~]

Your no doubt right about the districts...But how far wrong can a guy go shooting judges anywhere? ":O}

[Áedán]

Originally Posted by dsio

The upgrade process went like this.
1: Build system.
2: Take hard disk out of old machine.
3: Insert old hard disk into new machine.
4: Turn computer on.

Vs a laptop upgrade that went like:

1: Take old hard disk out of machine
2: Put hard disk in new machine
3: Turn computer on
4: Hang
5: Take hard disk out of new machine
6: Put hard disk back in old machine
7: Rebuild initrd to include AHCI drivers.
8: Take hard disk out of old machine
9: Put hard disk back in new machine
10: Turn computer on
11: Spend time fixing udev rules that puts new interfaces on stupid names...

[dsio]

Laptops are admittedly still a different story, but then if it wasn't challenging, there'd be no success celebration :P

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Áedán

Vs a laptop upgrade that went like:

1: Take old hard disk out of machine
2: Put hard disk in new machine
3: Turn computer on
4: Hang
5: Take hard disk out of new machine
6: Put hard disk back in old machine
7: Rebuild initrd to include AHCI drivers.
8: Take hard disk out of old machine
9: Put hard disk back in new machine
10: Turn computer on
11: Spend time fixing udev rules that puts new interfaces on stupid names...

What distro was that on?

[Gizmo]

A lot of the easy/hard upgrade stuff really comes down to the distribution and how the kernel was compiled. Most recent Redhat (CentOS)/Ubuntu versions that I've played with include almost every driver under the sun. This means they'll boot and run on almost anything, but the kernel and driver set is also rather large.

By way of comparison, AOA's kernel image is not quite 2 MiB. My Fedora kernel is just over 3 MiB, so almost twice the size.

In addition the kernel drivers dir contains about 47 MiB on my Fedora, where it's barely 400KiB on AOA.

The key difference here is that my Fedora kernel will boot just about anything and detect just about all the hardware. AOA's kernel will almost certainly fail to boot on any server other than the one it was built for, and even if it does boot, there will likely be some hardware that isn't detected.

[chrisbard]

How nice. So linucs is eating more to be able to keep up with stuff ahh then it means that in this area is behaving like Win well maybe with time will get better!

[Áedán]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

What distro was that on?

Fedora 10.

[Áedán]

Originally Posted by chrisbard

How nice. So linucs is eating more to be able to keep up with stuff ahh then it means that in this area is behaving like Win well maybe with time will get better!

How big is the Windows kernel and drivers these days then Chris? On my Win XP system, it's at the 350Mb mark just for the drivers...