Greg Kroah-Hartman is a longtime developer of the Linux kernel, known for his work maintaining USB drivers. O'Reilly Media recently interviewed Greg about his claim that the Linux kernel now supports more devices than any other operating system ever has, as well as why binary-only drivers are illegal, and how the kernel development process works.
"I went and asked every single hardware manufacturer, the big guys that ship the boxes, Dell, IBM, HP--what do you ship that isn't supported by Linux? They came back with nothing. Everything is supported by Linux. If you have a device that isn't supported by Linux that's being shipped today, let me know.".
If you would like to take up Greg KH on his claim, his email address is greg AT kroah.com
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Member since:2005-07-06
Sure, many vendors do exact that. Some vendors like Intel even get their drivers merged before they even release their hardware. What doesn't work is proprietary drivers. Whether the vendors make them or not is mostly irrelevant. Just because people know to make hardware, doesn't make them experts in being driver developers. Often, the opposite.
Member since:2007-01-22
Member since:2005-07-22
What? If you *do* make hardware, you know better than anyone about it to implement a driver. After all, most hardware is useless without drivers that interact with the OS. It's not like electronic engineers don't know C, or they lack programmers.
Member since:2006-01-16
What do you mean by that? A large portion of the drivers included in Linux is developed by the respective hardware manufacturers, most of them are even maintained directly by them, too.
Perhaps you just lack the knowledge about the Linux driver situation. Why don't you read the Article / listen to the interview then?
Member since:2005-07-06
The problem with that (I read that as allow separate, binary manufacturer drivers) is that it starts to destroy the integrity of the system, lots of unexplainable problems start to occur, and quite frankly, the vast majority of manufacturer written drivers are crap and there is no guarantee whatsoever how long they will keep those drivers available. Once a driver is in the Linux kernel it stays there until pretty much no one uses it any more.
Edited 2008-11-02 21:42 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-06-30
I wonder why some people pretend that a bunch of random developers with a limited amount of knowledge (either on the device or in hardware development) can do a much better job than a whole team of developers with direct access to the specifications and the hardware development team.
Sure, these random developers surely have more familiarity with the Linux kernel, but it doesn't mean that the manufacturer team doesn't know how to code. They can do a great job for other OSes where the ABI doesn't change with the weather while having a greater market share...
Member since:2006-06-28
Member since:2005-07-17
exactly, because the first thing open source people do to a manufacturer driver is pull out the spyware and adware. If that's the model then binary drivers simply won't last long.
Member since:
2007-01-22
well linux would have better drivers if they allowed them to be made by the same people who made the hardware. Everything is "as is."
Edited 2008-11-02 21:32 UTC