John,
That was a very good start for sure from last week's call. I just want
to add my 2 cents based on all the OEM builds we have done here in the
past. Having the driver availability is obviously important but it
won't go too far at all unless the quality of the driver is there too
if it is with any serious OEMs producing lots of units every month.
Unfortunately, a lot of the drivers do miss the quality bit when it
comes to Linux or there are workarounds in Windows that cannot be
easily done in Linux. A lot of the OEM problems that we have seen have
to do suspend/resume operations. Some drivers just don't work at all
and require a lot of fixes or hacks. Some are flaky at best. Large
volume OEMs do expect things to work as smoothly as in Windows in all
aspects. Some per unit post-manufacturing tests involve suspending and
resuming the units at least 30 times in a roll. Sometimes they even try
much higher times. If it fails even once, it causes big problems and
costs with them on the manufacturing line.
We should look at it as a group on how to setup a QA aspect and not
just development aspect so the key drivers required for Desktop Linux
to succeed can achieve the same quality level as they have in Windows
which is not quite there yet today.
Thanks,
Ming
John Cherry wrote:
- All OEMs are dealing with sub-component vendors for Linux driver
support. In some cases, it would be great to have a "certified for
Linux" designation for components and sub-components. There is an
OEM and component vendor "chicken & egg" regarding demand for
Linux drivers and device specs.
Linux driver support for components and sub-components of pre-installed
Linux products has resonated with the OEMs and with the community since
the OEM call last week.
The kernel community continues to offer the Linux Driver Project
(linuxdriverproject.org) as a service to component vendors. Greg KH as
stated that all component vendors can be pointed at
linuxdriverproject.org for kernel developers who will write and get
their drivers for Linux into the kernel tree for FREE (a very good
price).
We know about the large video adapter vendors, but we would like to
direct the Linux Driver Project toward other boards, components, and
attached devices that are lacking Linux driver support. While
maintaining a list of unsupported components would be difficult (the
moving target syndrome), we should make a short list of the most
critical devices that lack Linux driver support that impact the Linux
desktop community. If you would like to use the desktop_architects list
to socialize what this list might be, please do it. I will commit to
collecting this list and forwarding it to the Linux Driver Project.
John Hull, manager of the Linux Engineering team at Dell, was recently
interviewed Scott Ruecker (Oct 12) and was asked about the first 4
months of delivering a pre-installed Linux consumer product. The
article is very good and shows Dell's commitment to the community and to
Linux-supported hardware. John states, "As Linux has gained popularity,
our hardware vendors have become increasingly interested in working with
the Linux community and Dell to provide Linux support." So the
landscape is changing with respect to hardware vendors and their support
for Linux.
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/91429/
John continues, "I also expect us to continue driving hardware vendors
to provide Linux support, and to get that support submitted and accepted
upstream as early as possible. Our (never ending) goal is to have every
Linux distribution "just work" on all of our systems, and that will
continue to be the primary focus of our Linux engineering teams here at
Dell."
John
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