Hi there.
> I dont see how you get from portable binary drivers to binary blobs. If you factor in my understanding of the word "blob" (which for me equals "binary (only) drivers", not "free drivers in their pre-compiled form"), then you just answered yourself. > With my suggestion you would be able to for example use the GPL drivers from Linux on FreeBSD or Solaris without recompiling them. If we also would be able to agree on standard for packages and repositories you would also be able to just install the drivers from a common repository. And that's what I agreed would be really cool about this universal driver interface (among other things). Anyway, I've been thinking about this a little more and here's the result: Got a flash drive, external hard drive, memory card reader, PostScript printer or a decent webcam embedded to your laptop (just a few examples from the top of my head)? They all work like a charm right out of the box (and they probably did long before you first decided to try some random free OS), right? That's because all these devices adhere to open standards defining how particular sort of hardware has to behave from the software perspective - both input and output is well defined. They must understand certain commands and be able to at least explain their output to the driver if it's mandatory format isn't already defined within the standard itself. That way every device in the same hardware class becomes just a different hardware implementation of the same concept with SIMPLE GENERIC DRIVERS (one driver to rule them all) and YOU GET A FLAWLESS OUT OF THE BOX SUPPORT FOR YOUR DEVICE. I think that what we really need is to put more pressure on hardware manufacturers to make them move in that direction which combined with your idea would blast all the hardware support M$ likes to brag about so much into oblivion. -- Microsoft has a majority market share https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is a direct subscriber. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
