Theo wrote a letter at large to the open source community urging us to take a stand. In the letter Theo provides information on how to contact Intel and helpful hints on how to explain benefits of open documentation to any vendor.
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Member since:2005-11-14
NO, my scanner was a color one, and was not 8 bit. It was 24 bit I think. Recently its power adaptor died so I bought another cheap USB scanner instead of buying another power adaptor.
The TV card is NOT a Zoltrix. It was a very well known brand that was bought back by one of the two big TV card vendors right now (so I thought it was bought by Hauppauge).
And I meant serial gamepad adapter for console gamepad (Playstation). And BTW on Linux, I have now a special USB gamepad adapter with a mat for pydance, and use it also to plug a gamepad to play ALL games, as, you see, I prefer using a gamepad instead of a joystick, they are also much more usable.
And none of these devices are ISA, it's one SCSI, one PCI and one serial. These were bought less than 7 years agon so you're even more incorrect. I even have an old 8 GB SCSI disk that surely trash your latest SATA one in normal use. You seem to be the elitist type that buy back all its hardware every year because : it's not supported anymore by your so called superior OS. FYI, my adaptec SCSI card was bought at the same time as the other hardware cited. It still works better in Linux than it was in Windows XP, where it caused a blue screen after installation (and the case is known to MS). The NForce4 on another PC mainboard works very well too. But I won't continue, as your other facts are just wrong (like Ge7600GT not working with 3D acceleration on Linux, or Audigy2), and you're obviously a troll. FYI, some people do professional music recording just like you on Linux.
Like I said, 5 years sure enough is not obsolete.
And what you simply miss, because you're lost in your constant reinstalling or changing of OS, is that I setup my main PC in 2001 and installed Linux on it : it works flawlessly till now, I never changed the OS, and do not feel the urge to replace anything in it, except when sth dies. It still works as fast (no, even faster, with KDE and Gnome being faster) as before.
And all my hardware (which is surely not a decade old) is still fully supported under Linux. Starting 2006, I made a PVR with my very same OS and MythTV, with a lot of hardware which is less than 5 or 3 years old (like SATA disks), for example.
When I made my own custom Linux in 2001, Windows (yes, even XP) was still unable to burn a CD when doing tons of other thing, without a risk of losing the CD. They invented burnproof specifically for that !! This is just one of the thing that was vastly superior, driver wise. I cited the faster SCSI, the handling of unsupported hardware under XP, I've not cited the bluescreen of Windows XP with my Creative Live 5.1 card (which was dieing, but in Linux, never crashed the OS), the fact that when one of my MB died and was replaced, Windows refused to run or even be repaired with the new MB while Linux just ran like nothing happened, but there are others.
Member since:2005-07-12
>> NO, my scanner was a color one, and was not 8 bit.
>> It was 24 bit I think.
Then it is NOT a mustek 12000 SP - The Mustek 12000 SP is a 12 bit grey 1200x600 optical SCSI 1 scanner designed for Window 3.1, NT 3.5 and MAC OS classic of that era - placing it WELL over a decade old.
>> And none of these devices are ISA, it's one SCSI,
>> one PCI and one serial.
The reason I mentioned ISA is it all SOUNDS like stuff of the ISA era, not necessarily ISA... It sounded like you were using stuff that was made when VLB was still standard equipment - now it just sounds like you don't even know what your own hardware is.
>> I even have an old 8 GB SCSI disk that surely
>> trash your latest SATA one in normal use
That would depend on the drive and what you are doing with it... Since U160 and normal SATA end up roughly the same in performance (I doubt you have a 8 gig that supports U320), it's probably a wash since most of the 8-10 gig drives, even the 10k RPM ones were 5-6ms on latency, while most SATA drives today are pushing close to 4ms latency (even if they lose a bit on seek time, they make up for it elsewhere)... of course, with those drives running SATA 3gb/s it probably starts to shift in SATA's favor, and I bet my 10K RPM SATA150 WD Raptor trashes your old scsi drive rather handily - though 15K/U320 SCSI is still 'where it's at' for speed. (which is why I have my windows swap, linux swap, autodesk hash and adobe scratchspaces all routed to a 15K RPM 36 gig Hitachi Ultrastar.
>> The NForce4 on another PC mainboard works very well
>> too. But I won't continue, as your other facts are
>> just wrong (like Ge7600GT not working with 3D
>> acceleration on Linux, or Audigy2)
WHEN I can get the mainboard to let the damned PCI express interface work right, letting the accellerated drivers load, I get 'white space' bleedthrough like frame limiting is off, and it invariably locks up X within moments of starting anything openGL based - and that's after jumping through the endless hoops to even INSTALL the blasted thing... Sorry but if I wanted to spend two hours dicking on the command line to get something simple to work, I'd still be playing with Xenix on a Model 12.
>> FYI, some people do professional
>> music recording just like you on Linux.
In yes... out? Not so much. >2 channel analog output is broken, scratchy, and reminiscent of the old VIA vs. SB Live 'crackle' - leading me to think it's actually a conflict between the emu10k driver and ACPI. (since that was the cause of the problem with the live - you turn off ACPI in bios and problem solved)
Smurf is pathetic compared to Vienna (which is usually what it's compared to), there's no midi comp program that actually lets you change soundfonts on the fly (you can only preset whatever happens to fit in memory) - Let's face it, Cakewalk Sonar kicks ass, everything else is a chocolatte wannabe...
>> was still unable to burn a CD when doing tons
>> of other thing
Win98 maybe...(though thinking on it... uhm, no...) 2k/XP had no such issues I was ever aware of - and at least back then I didn't have to go to the command line every time I wanted to switch CD's. (sorry, cheap shot)
It's like the old joke of the *nix user who claims years of uptime and swapping out Hard Disks, CPU's and RAM without ever having to reboot... "Wait, didn't you have to reboot last week?" - "Yeah, but that was just to attach my USB flash disk" (I say, I say, that's a joke son...)
Sorry, but your configuration seems highly unique (polite way of saying 'out there') and certainly your experiences run contrary to not only most everything I've ever heard about linux, but also my own experiences with it - which is why on my main PC it's always been an 'also ran'. Better hardware support as a rule is the LAST THING the majority of people think of when it comes to linux... unless of course you are building a server or are happy with early 1990's level computing needs.
Oh, and five years IS obsolete for one reason - you try getting 1:1 replacement parts at the three year mark, much less the five. The average life expectency of most electrical devices these devices is usually about 18,000 hours... aka just over 2 years continual operation... Most people don't leave them running all the time, so naturally this works out to about 6 years on the outside before total failure... some devices will die sooner and need replacement, others won't.
Which is why if you tried to replace that... let's see... 2001 so that's a 1 to 1.5ghz class P3 or regular Athlon? 2ghz P4 or a XP 1500 if you sold your kids into slavery (go ahead folks, it's ok to laugh)... If you bought Athlon, you're at least lucky socket A held on like a rapacious swamp sow, but if that's a socket 423, a replacement mainboard would run what? Does anybody even sell those new anymore?
Edited 2006-10-03 14:17
Member since:
2005-07-12
Young in computing... BWAHAHAHA... oh man, you slay me.
mustek 12000 SP driver (SCSI scanner) - ok, so a DECADE AND A HALF old 8 bit SCSI greyscale scanner you could replace with a USB device with better capabilities and faster scanrates for $40
an old TV card (by a company bought by Hauppauge I think, can't remember the name)- a product that likely also hasn't been produced in years... Probably a Zoltrix, meaning again a $30-40 replacement for something with twice the capabilities
serial gamepad adapter - Serial? Do you mean USB... no, you said adapter... lemme guess, the old hardwire a bunch of diodes to a PIC chip to run a NES/SMS controller routine? (I find it unlikely you have a Gravis Stinger - those never worked) Odd, PPJOY seems to work fine here... (but then, I'm running my SMS gamepad off the parellel port since I need the serial port for the Master System LCD shutter glasses) Not that said complaint can really be considered valid, since good linux games can be counted on one hand, unless of course you are playing two decade old arcade classics under MAME.
Ok, so my initial guess was correct, you are trying to keep afloat a bunch of hardware from the ISA era... Usually I applaud the effort, but after THREE DECADES of doing this stuff, sometimes you've just got to throw it all in the trash - your complaint is akin to being upset your Trash-80 Model 1 won't run that 20 gig hard drive. (you need a model 4 'cage array' or model 4P for that)
Unlike you, I don't expect anything more than five years older than the last major revision of an OS to be supported in Windows... and I've found that my current hardware - Nforce4 mainboard, Ge7600GT, Audigy 2, Adaptec 29160, Acer 640S scanner... even my Brother printer and multiple monitor setups... Just work better / to their full capacity under XP - and /FAIL/ hard under linux. (on the other hand Windows isn't allowed anywhere NEAR my Dual Xeon server - THAT runs Sarge) STILL have yet to get 3d accelleration under linux - and I've switched video cards 3 times, still no go even on distro's that allegedly do it out of the box - much less working 5.1 audio, soundfont support... (I generally run 512 megs of SOUNDFONTS since I do music composition as well) doesn't know what to do with my Thrustmaster cougar... etc, etc, etc.
FIVE YEAR rule man - Three years is obsolete, five years is trash-heap time. Planned obsolescence and so forth... Of course that actually illustrates something I've always noticed about linux; You are more likely to find hardware support for decade old stuff than you are something you bought new last week... which is annoying since the more 'useful' desktops keep upping the system requirements to the point they run like sludge on anything less than the latest and greatest - BAD catch 22.
Edited 2006-10-02 19:37