On Sunday 06 August 2006 01:24 pm, Devdas Bhagat wrote: > On 06/08/06 09:31 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: > <snip> > > > he *is* running a business - and I, for one, am a fan > > Not one for writing drivers. Just one for assembling PCs. I am sure > that JTD could provide better input on the driver writing side of > things.
1) Driver writing is the job of the chipset maker. Note M$ does not write drivers but charges a fat fee from mfgs for certifying their drivers as windows compatible. Which means we libre software developers are subsidising M$ hardware. 2) The quality of drivers written by mfgs is atrociuos in most cases. And in the few cases of mfg written closed drivers, the mfgs themselves cannot keep up with upstream fixes that keep happening in libre software. 3) NDAs which preclude disclosing any of the info they give u. Just go to the linuxbios list and look at the contortions that libre software develpopers have to go thru. It's a miracle that thay have come so far. In aprticular VGA bios for initilising video at boot time is patented and restricted from distribution, so they cannot package it for redistribution. Which makes for an incrdiblely complex process of extracting the bios from the board for reuse and has to be done by each individual. 4) Mfgs do not disclose info because that exposes serious flaws in the designs and libre software developers are likely to freak out - intel inside cannot divide (Ya u are essentially buying junk). Also late lateef who was about to loose will correct his design and win.This is particularly the case with graphics ( there are plenty of cases with smbus, sata and ide disks too). And the new improved mobo is nothing but bug riddance at your expense. Did u know that the 440bx and 82801 chip designs which are nearly 8 yrs old are in use in your "new" boards cause they have no bugs. But if u speak to chipset vendors they will have u believe that they are not disclosing info cause the competition will reverse engineer the product early in the product life cycle Moral of the story: U are paying for junk while financing the next round of more complex less reliable junk by buying anything that is not fully supported by libre software. The reason why most big bussinesses in the IT industry hate free softeware so much is because it's changing the ground rules and exposing the cosy con games between vendors. Had it not been for AMD opening up their 64bit specs u would be stuck with Intel itanic and M$ version of 16bit OS pretending to be 64bit while struggling to do 32 bit. Or wait for ever for Vista. Realising these problems free developers are designing libre cores. There is a whole bunch of them including cores for embeded processors at opencores.org. There is a project for a graphics card too. But the initial cost is likely to be very high. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
