Linked by Kroc Camen on Thu 5th Nov 2009 21:05 UTC
There's no right way to do it, only ideas that are better than others in certain situations. But if you had the opportunity to head up the design of a new OS, one to Put Things Right, one that could be radical enough to varnish out those UI/X bumps that have clung on for years, but practical enough to be used every day, what would you design? How would you handle application management? What about file types and compatibility? Where would you cherry pick the best bits from other OSes and where would you throw away tradition? I've tackled this challenge for myself and present (an unfinished idea): KrocOS (warning: HTML5 site, will display without CSS in IE/older browsers). OSnews Asks: What would make your perfect OS?
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Member since:
2007-09-06
Part of the issue claimed by some NIC providers was patent related and/or regulation related. For example, an open NIC driver allows the owner to modify it changing the broadcast strength of the NIC radio (wifi). You can push it's power output beyond what is allowed by regulations for that class of radio. Given the availability of signal extenders, this reason doesn't hold a lot of validity in my opinion.
Some device drivers include the firmware rather than it being loaded on a flash chip on the hardware. The claim here is that providing driver source is not possible because they can't allow access to the bundled firmware. For this one I ask; is it really that much harder for the driver update wizard to push firmware updates into a nand chip on the given board?
I've also yet to hear why these "secret sauce" built hardware components can't simply provide a generic driver interface and hide the state secret hooks in the chips behind it. (GPU is a good example)
The claim that competition can read the drivers and copy them carries a bad smell also. If your competition is waiting for your next hardware release before starting development of a competitive device; they are not competition. They're not likely to be in business very long either. On the other hand, would this not motivate faster advancements in technology? Older generations drop into consumer budget ranges faster while newer generation's profit supports development on the next board to come out. (yeah, I know, that would benefit tech and the consumer far more than the shareholder profit margins.)
Bit of a rant but my original point was that it's still very wide spread beyond GPU. Wifi NIC are probably second on the list for most people. (has broadcom gotten any better?)