Star How Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS, Ever
Linked by Rahul on Sun 2nd Nov 2008 19:24 UTC
Linux 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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RE[5]: Uhm
by lemur2 on Mon 3rd Nov 2008 01:40 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: Uhm"
lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

True and that I have already pointed. Intel started supporting 3D with free and open source drivers merged into Xorg a long time back and they have drastically increased their market share. ATI has followed through as well. Before ATI, people were arguing for "secret sauce" and "patent worries". Now that ATI has opened up and VIA has as well recently, Nvidia is really the odd man out with not any valid excuses to do the same thing. Convincing Nvidia is surely part of the agenda in this statement https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Kernel_Driver_Statement


Nvidia state that their reason for not providing open source drivers (a la Intel) is that there are patents in their code where they have not been able to get the patent owner (not themselves) to agree to release source code.

If we read behind the lines here ... Nvidia are never going to be able to get that agreement either ... probably because the unnamed patent holder perceives their own best interest lies in making sure nvidia cards don't work well on open source operating systems.

There is no apparent reason why nvidia should not be able to provide specifications for their chips, however, so that open source could write their own full spec driver fior nvidia's cards (in a similar vein to what is happening with ATI right now).

In days not that long ago, it was simply the done thing for chip makers to provide full specifications for their new chips so that software authors (anyone and everyone, from any software company or group at all) could write drivers for them.

Somehow, in the intervening period, the industry has been completely turned around, and the source of software drivers has now somehow become expected to be the hardware chip manufacturer, exclusively. I wonder which party within the industry managed to get that all changed?

Edited 2008-11-03 01:42 UTC

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