“New Linux distros still fail a task that Windows 95 — yes, 95! — easily handles, namely working with mainstream sound cards. That sends the cost of commercial, paid versions of Linux dramatically higher”, says Fred Langa for InformationWeek.Our Take: I have quite a number of PCs over here and all sound cards work with Linux. There are some problems some times of course, for example this one and this one, but overall, they manage to work. The real problem is in the compatibility between architectures that needs to get configured correctly, namely applications needing ALSA or OSS (which its configuration on modprobe.conf/modules.conf can not be recreated by hand by “normal” users, it is not a simple matter), ARts or ESD, and GStreamer’s schizophrenic sink-whatever stuff that no one really gets (I currently can’t get Gstreamer 0.8.x applications to work correctly on Arch Linux for example for no apparent reason, while it works on Slackware and Fedora2-test2).
Editorial: Linux’s Achilles’ Heel
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Um, software installations. I haven’t had a problem with my soundcard, but everyone knows what a pain it can be to install software on Linux.
I don’t know the technical details or problems involved, but if Linux could just read Windows drivers, a host of problems would be solved. I’ve read there are private companies that have successfully made Linux do exactly that, so it sounds possible at least.
There needs to be consolidation in the sound-server department. Actually, I’d be happy if sound-servers went away altogether, and the APIs are built on top of ALSA directly. Hopefully, KDE and GNOME will be moving to a common media framework in their next major releases. The current front-runner candidate seems to be GStreamer, but a lot of talk has been going around about NMM too.
Soundcards?
Try a standard logitech USB mouse, at least that was the case with Mandrake 10.
Even BeOS has better hardware detection than Linux does in many cases
I personally never had a sound card issue with linux before in my life…I don’t know what distro or how…but i think sound on linux may not be as robust as on windows but it always worked…
although using windows drivers under linux would certainly take the amount of supported hardware to a new level, i tend to think its a horrific idea. Poorly written drivers are notorious for causing system instability.. and I mean cmon of all things to borrow from the windows world, you wanna borrow one of the leading causes of instability?
just my .02
“Things rapidly went downhill from there, but this column isn’t about XYZ’s weaknesses in tech support, but rather about a general Linux problem. I can say that be””
Lets see I think author is completely biased to windows. One I have similar issue with windows if the support on the other side is a moron.
Again there are some hardware that doesnt work in windows but works fine in linux. If you are writing technical articles then you should know that all type of hardware are not supported by any type of OS.
But if you have issue here are some sites for resources
http://linuxquestions.org/
http://justlinux.com/forum/search.php
The author mentions various distributions but he conveniently omiited mentioning the sound card that did not work. Heck, I won’t be surprised if it turns that the card was on mute. I have never faced insurmountable problems with sound on linux.
Can you help someone who won’t disclose what distribution he’s using or what sound chip he’s trying to configure? I do agree though that sound should be easier. I have two SBlive cards, one is an original 4.1, the other is a 5.1 value. The original doesn’t work worth a crap with the snd-emu10k ALSA drivers and I have to use emu10k with OSS. The value card works fine with ALSA. Go figure.
Even Microsoft says that a major stability problem with windows has always been drivers, also compatibility layers tend to be slower and unreliable.
Linux needs backup from hardware companies, any other option will just do harm. If you have a compatibility layer for drivers, companies will only develop Windows drivers… Linux users will receive sub-par performance due the additional overhead of the compatibility layer.
Of course I understand that having such a layer will at least let me use hardware that otherwise I w’ont be able to use. So a compatibility layer becomes a viable solution.
Think of this, you buy a new electric car to reduce pollution. But due lack of “electricty stations” you end adapting a gas electric-generator to it. So basically you are still polluting ,or even better, think of hybrid cars, they are more efficient than regular cars, but they still pollute. Is it better to reduce pollution now by using hybrids or wait for a true electrical only option??? If you buy hybrids, electrical-car development could be delayed just to make profit of the hybrid market, or maybe it will allow to enhance the electrical subsystem to the point or getting true electric only cars. Who knows …?
Not a simple problem …
The install script for Alsa scanned through the options/controls of the sound card, and switched all of them “on” – including a “disable amplifier” (or something like that) option.
“The support staff asked for some log files and diagnostic dumps. I sent them. They then had me manually set some software switches and edit other settings, but that made things worse–the system then lost all graphics modes. I could login only in text mode; otherwise, the system was unusable.”
Sounds like this didn’t help things one bit which is a bit weird.
To be fair he sounded like he gave the OS a fair chance and installed it several times. Tho the fact that he says he was using a recent computer with Intel sound is weird as my Intel gear all worked first attempt for me and is well supported.
Posibly he just had bad luck. It happens sometimes
Sorry, Linux’s biggest problem is with 3D support. It supports audio just fine on every machine I’ve ever tried it with (>50).
Read harder. It was an on-board soundcard.
… so it’s better that the devices simply don’t work at all?
Me again. Finished the article now
“With that caveat in mind, I’ll tell you that the “XYZ” software in the above was Xandros 2.0 Deluxe. But again, none of the Linux distributions I’ve tried so far on this PC succeeded in getting the sound working. That includes majors, such as two versions of Slackware, two versions of SuSE, plus Debian, Xandros, and Lindows; as well as several specialty distros like Knoppix, Knotix, Morphix, and Gentoo. You can count that as seven major versions and four minors; or as nine distributions; but no matter how you count them, not one of those Linuxes fully worked. But every version of Windows since 1995 worked just fine on the same hardware.”
I have serious doubts now. I would say you would have to work quite hard to try all those distros and have a problem on ALL of them with a Intel sound card. Very very bad luck
Actually shortly after buying the computer I am using now I went to complain about the very poor sound quality in MS with my cheap and nasty card, an onboard AC97.
Until I found out that with most linux (mainstream) distros it works beautifully!
Soundcards?
>Try a standard logitech USB mouse, at least that was the case
>with Mandrake 10.
I use a USB logitech mouse on a computer where i have installed about every bsd or linux version available and i
had similar problem with mandrake 10, but then its not the only 2.6 kernel i run it must be something mandrake not general linux because fedora2 just runs fine with this mouse.
>Even BeOS has better hardware detection than Linux does in
>many cases
This statment is so so false..Beos is a great and fun OS but its starting to get OLD and even obsolute. (i run Max v3 and PE5) lots of newer hardware DOES NOT WORK under Beos like scanner/capture and other input devices. These devices run all without problems on my Linux distros. It can be that Zeta and/or OpenBeos do better hardware detection.
I have 2 cards,
1st – Creative SBLive 5.1 …
2nd – Via AC’97 simle intergrated audio card
1st problem – [Mandrake]It detected The VIA card but not SBLive, so i had to manualy DELETE the Via card and Install SBLive my old modprobe helped =]
2nd problem – [Slackware] I disabled my VIA card[bios], installed the System, And everything worked fine… then i Enabled mu VIA Card, reconfigured alsa, Oh! it detected 2 cards, and neither Worked. “Magicaly” after a third reboot and some tweaks everything worked…
Somewhere i read that the HARDWARE detection in Linux is a Simple modprobe U process…
“Read harder. It was an on-board soundcard.”
What on-board soundchip was it? I have Intel’s 845 GL with on-board soundchip on a P4 Dell PC and never faced any problem with more than any distro that I tried. The author did not mention what Intel on-board soundchip caused him the problem. I believe once we come to know what Intel card it was, there will be someone posting here saying it works just fine for him.
…and Sound Quality is much better on Linux… [Slackware, 2.6 Alsa, SBLIVE]
I bought my machine in November 2002. My on-board sound card is an Avance AC’97 Audio for Via (according to my Windows side of the machine). Works fine with ALSA on my Red Hat 7.3 – which is not exactly the latest distro. I did have trouble setting it up first with OSS – but that might have been because the output was muted – as it was in ALSA, but I figured that out. Maybe he and “tech support” didn’t figure that out – no surprise there.
Nonetheless, when are IBM, Sun and HP going to start leaning on hardware manufacturers – or even PAYING them – to produce Linux drivers? This is the only solution which will shut the critics up.
I had loads of problems with Windows 9x and sound drivers.
Ok, disclaimer, I am a *bsd user and an occasional linux user.
Here are some things that I notice about the article.
1) “So, for now, let’s just say I was trying distribution “XYZ,” a polished commercial Linux that seeks to go toe to toe with Microsoft Windows.Distro “XYZ” even costs roughly as much as a Windows XP upgrade, which suggests to me that it should be judged by the same standards, and not be granted the leniency that Linux sometimes merits when it’s distributed for free or at very low cost. Full commercial price means full commercial expectations.”
So a hypothetical distrobution, how about using a real distro for your analysis.
2) “Despite my very positive first impressions, I couldn’t get XYZ to work with my sound card at all, even though I was testing XYZ on a brand new PC from a major vendor. The system was based on an utterly mainstream Intel motherboard with an on-board Intel sound system. This isn’t some weird, off-brand system using unknown components: It’s about as mainstream as it gets.”
A fictionaly PC with fictionaly hardware. How can you argue with fiction other than point out that it is fiction. Also note that quite a few of those (fictional) mainstream PC’s use cheaper components. Just because it is sold in a large reatil outlet and by a brand named vendor doesnt mean the components are of questionable origin. Cost cutting by major vendors and superstores is a standard practice.
3) “And let me mention in passing, for now, that normal retail versions of XP (not tweaked OEM versions, but off-the-shelf retail CDs) had no problems at all with the sound system. With XP (Pro and Home), everything on the PC worked right away, with no special drivers or manual intervention required.”
Did I miss something, the article origianlly started to compare windows 95 and somehow it has jumped to Windows XP and hardware detection. Please note that several companies bundle there sound drivers with their sound card. Not to mention that the drivers are typically pre-installed on those store bought machines.
4) “Oddly, I got that to work–but only until I rebooted. Then the sound went away again, and nothing I could do (including reinstalling ALSA) would get it to work. But the fact that the sound briefly worked told me this was a software issue, and not a problem with the sound card per se.
I reinstalled the whole operating system, from scratch, four times! I poked. I prodded. I tweaked. I FAQed. I How-To-ed. I searched Usenet. Nothing solved the problem. ”
The sound went away so you had to reinstall the operating system? Why would you have to reinstall the operating system? Seems like someone was doing a little tweaking and could not fix what they broke. You dont reinstall the operating system because sound went away. This sounds way to fishy to me.
5) “The support staff asked for some log files and diagnostic dumps. I sent them. They then had me manually set some software switches and edit other settings, but that made things worse–the system then lost all graphics modes. I could login only in text mode; otherwise, the system was unusable.”
What were you making edits too?
6) “All I had to do, I was told, was get rid of the brand-new, fully functional sound card and install a card from a few years ago, and Linux would work just fine.”
Have you ever considered the reason why some drivers dont exist on the latest hardware is because vendors dont relase that info to the community. Your attacking a symptom not the problem.
7) “Maybe it’s me, but that oft-cited suggestion has always seemed a little odd. I can see where a new operating system might require new hardware, but why should a new operating system require old hardware? And if the hardware was to blame, how could XP handle it out of the box, with no special drivers or setup?”
This is answered in question 6. Someone is some sort of computer savy is playing dumb to what goes on in the industry.
And yes the author goes on and on how 2000, 98 then 95 sound drivers worked. Now that is just great, but why do those drivers work? The answer is still located to response number 6.
Done with this article and its continual whining, it just never seems to end. I will not waste any more time and discect his complaints if he will not specifiy hardware, distobutions and the information about the changes he made to the system. True the hardware may or may not be supported but the earlier attempts to the problems imply user error (IE: reinstall the OS because he lost sound).
I think the real problem is compatibility between OSS and ALSA or Esd and Arts. Its not easy to get them to work together. I would like it for one day a standard which would allow me to play XMMS and hear sounds created by flash movies on a web page. One standard is needed.
Poorly written drivers are notorious for causing system instability.. and I mean cmon of all things to borrow from the windows world, you wanna borrow one of the leading causes of instability?
I’m not entirely sure how drivers work in Windows, but don’t they communicate with the hardware through an abstract API (HAL)? In that case you could isolate Windows drivers’ address space (please correct me if I’m wrong).
I don’t know how many DDKs Microsoft has released but it is probably only worth supporting 2k/XP drivers for now, if time is short and there is a lot of work to do. It is certainly an idea I have thought of to solve the driver problem… You may even be able to make the code somehow portable so you could port it to other free OSs.
book = box :S
I have found sound on Linux to be better and more stable than under Windows but then I don’t use generic vanilla sound cards. Just ones who seem to have the worst drivers for Windows, or could it be that Windows is absolutely garbage in the sound department hense the development of ASIO drivers in the pro audio department. Direct Sound, gimme a break! LOL
Windows drivers run in kernel mode. They do communicate via the HAL (most of the time), but they make all sorts of assumptions about their environment.
This statment is so so false..Beos is a great and fun OS but its starting to get OLD and even obsolute. (i run Max v3 and PE5) lots of newer hardware DOES NOT WORK under Beos like scanner/capture and other input devices. These devices run all without problems on my Linux distros. It can be that Zeta and/or OpenBeos do better hardware detection.
This is not a fault of the hardware detection mechanisms, simply a lack of modern drivers!
So far I´ve not had the unpleasant experience described in the article, but then I check for Linux compatibility before I buy hardware. The problem is mainly that configuration off certain hardware is a pain right now.
Enter project Utopia. Once HAL/DBUS/UDEV is stable and complete configuration of hardware can be standardized, and all that remains is writing the drivers that actually use the hardware.
Me, I can hardly wait.So I won´t next week I´ll be buying new hardware to take Gentoo with the above packages added for a testdrive. Considering the heavy developoment going on I expect to have problems, I´ll make sure to report the bugs I run into.
Thanks, I kinda guessed they might, since some *applications* on Windows assume all sorts of access!
Some statements:
1- Drivers for PC hardware is not a specific problem of linux. It is a problem for every non-windows operating system and linux is the PC non-M$ O.S. with best hardware support (much better than BeOS, OS/2, *BSDs, etc) ! Blame hardware companies instead of spreading FUD.
2- The only feature of Windows 9x not present in linux is BSOD…
3- Sound support is now much better with alsa support in 2.6 kernel.
4- You never must buy a brand-new hardware without linux support to run linux. It is obvious ! And sound cards that doesn’t work with OSS or ALSA are not frequent. I have standard soundblaster soundcards (AWE32, AWE64 and Live!) and I never had problems with them on linux.
5- The auhor is ignorant on linux or he is just spreading FUD…
I’ve never tried anything past music and game playback with linux, but the drivers have *rarely* sounded as good as on windows. I said rarely because after I tried an audigy2 with linux, I was sold. It sounded great.
The author claims at the end of the article that he has done something empirically. Like above poster Rob, I seriously doubt anything scientific can be gleaned from this article.
Still, I don’t know exactly how the APIs and sound servers interact but I would like to echo the sentiments of other posters in that the KISS rule should apply. For me, a step in the right direction was when the latest 2.6 series kernel included ALSA…that made many of my sound problems go away.
Linux and Open Source keeps getting better and better, so keep on truckin’!
foo
You got a point. There is more than I had origianlly thought about when it came to this article. His standard PC should be an intel, right?
Wouldnt this potential PC have Hyper Threading? Wouldnt a windows 2000’s install have problems with muliple processors (based on HT) and require additional licences? It could be an AMD but since this story is a work of complete fiction its more than likely to be an Intel. 😉
I am also quite sure that windows 95, 98, 2000 have also properly detected his band new p4 processor with hyper threading. And it installed in a flawless fashion.
Its freakin’ amazing! I could have sworn that drivers for sound card were written by card manufacturers. Wow what insight!
The argument that Linux is not handling sound cards is crap (granted I haven’t read the whole article). Because the vast majority of sound card drivers out there are written by enthusiasts who have to figure out on there own the features of sound chips as sound card manufacturers are not always forthcoming with info.
The only reason sound card where working in ’95 is cause MegaShaft held a monopoly on operating systems and manufacturers were forced to write drivers for Win 95 to sell there stuff.
I can’t understand why this guy blathers on for 3 (long) pages about the sound not working on any of the Linux distros he tried and then he utterly refuses to state what model of sound card (or onboard chip) he was having problems with!
I’ve not had problems with onboard sound chips myself – I have a C-Media CM8738 onboard chip that’s worked in both Windows and all the Linux distros I’ve tried. As far as I know, pretty well all the common onboard sound chips are supported by Linux nowadays – it’s only going to be stuff off the beaten path that won’t work.
You might say the same about 3D graphics cards – if you stick with ATI or Nvidia, then you’ve got a very good chance that your card is supported. Go for another brand and it’s pot luck (on a low-end PC just for surfing/e-mail, I’ve got a Trident Cyberblade onboard and it gives dismal performance for 3D but, amazingly, it is supported by Linux !).
Sound hardware is generally a pain on linux, sure “most” of the time you get some sound, but quite frequently, you have to fiddle with settings to make it work.
How many sound card drivers support hardware mixing on linux?
Sure, both of the above are the hardware vendors “fault” for not supplying enough information so that some kernel hacks can produce good drivers. Sure, this story might be written by a pro-windows fanboy. Sure, it might not be totally true.
But that is not the point!
He is quite truly stating that hardware support is not there yet for linux, you can get “most” things to work, almost, and rarely taking full advantage of it. It is a sad fact. But please wake up and aknowledge this fact instead of starting a senseless windows bashing, half the replies here go along the lines of: “but but! windoze is bad too, i can do stupid things and make it crash!”. Reality check, I can make my linux boxes crash a lot faster, oh sure, the kernel “might” still be running, but when X crashes hard and I have to ssh in to revive the computer, it would be just as easy to reboot.
I don’t know if anyone else has worked in technical support, but reading this was like getting one of those calls where the user shouts down the phone for hours, but you are left with the feeling they have done something that they are not telling you about.
Either that, or they have some misconception about computers on a “cd-tray=coffecup holder” kind of scale.
I can believe the author had problems with a particular sound card on Linux. God knows it’s not perfect, but a supported card failing in eight different distros is a little unusual.
However, we will never know whether there is a Linux driver for it or not, as it’s only mentioned as ‘Intel onboard’
(Stangely unspecific in a three page article on getting a sound card to work).
It would be fascinating to know what exactly he got up to, while doing *sixteen* Linux installs and eight Windows installs over a two day period. And that’s not including the re-installs he mentions….
Once to get the sound working intermittently, (“I can say that because I later duplicated the failure with eight other versions and separate distributions of Linux before I gave up. Not one could get the sound working for more than brief periods.”).
And again to not have it work at all, (“Finally, I again tried XYZ’s distro of Linux. Nope, the sound simply wouldn’t work. I also tried eight other versions of Linux, all with the same result: No sound.”)
And then to say – “I’ve invested more than two full working days on just the sound problem”.
I consider myself a bit of a geek, but I have never gone to the lengths of installing over twenty four operating systems to get sound working.
If I was was doing the installs while researching for an article, fine, but I would not then say “That makes this install of Linux the most expensive operating system I’ve ever tried.”. It’s research, not a TCO study.
Damm, I think I’ve been trolled.
“Intel onboard” sound usually means the Intel i8x0 ICH sound module. I’ve got one in my machine, and it works just fine. ALSA detects it without any problems. This is Debian, btw.
I am running Fedora Core 2, test 2, and sound is generally a pain. It works, but there are issues.
When using ALSA, my “Master” volume only controls the front 2 speakers, instead of controlling all 6, (a 5.1 SBLive sound card), and they all steal volume from each other. therefore, If i tyr to increase the volume on the front set, the sound through the sub woofer goes all really low, and the rear speakers actually become quieter.
If I try use SPDIF instead of not using it, I get insane noise through the sound card, especially when playing at low volume. It is really a bother when trying to watch a movie under Linux. The silent parts have so much background noise, it is shocking.
Luckily, my speaker set has a remote control, so I can control the volume there, but it is really annoying since I was kind of used to using a multimedia keyboard whic enables me to control volumes.
I know OSS does not have those issues, but it is deprecated, and using ALSA is a pain. I have to play around randomly with the controls to get my sound reasonable. There are too many controls there. Using Creative’s windows drivers, I only use the volume, bass and treble, but here I have to to all sorts of different tricks to get my sound right. It is hard, not easy. I guess, what I really want is a proper master volume that control the output of all speakers. I cannot argue and say that Sound under Linux is better if that continues to be an issue.
author is damm right on this one. Everytime I bought a new machine for my self be it a laptop or a desktop, it never had 100% hardware detection from Linux. first it was i810 sound card then grahpics card and then nvidia graphics cards and then it was wireless drivers for Centrino stuff(I knw what are probs) but one can not give these excuses to users who want to switch to Linux. I knw frns who do not even touch linux precisely for these reasons. I hope things get better in future. Without it desktop remains a distant and impossible dream
If it’s an intel chipset and the driver doesn’t work, why is he complaining about linux and not about Intel? Is there even complete documentation available for this chipset?
If not, I don’t see how he can blame the linux developers at all.
The last time I installed windows (I dual boot) I had no sound AT ALL. I have a turtle beach sound card and the default windows install has no drivers at all to support it. I has to get the drivers off of the web an install them manually. When I installed Slackware (no hand holding on this one), the sound card worked OUT OF THE BOX, all I had to do was turn the volume up.
This guy obviously hasn’t realized that the lack of drivers for sound cards, or any device for that matter, has everything to do with the people making them, not the OS they are used in. I wrote to turtle beach about drivers and they told me that they have no plans to ever support Linux… Hmmm.
Ok, someone correct me if im wrong here:
“That’s what originally led me to explore virtual PCs. VPC software masks a system’s true hardware, and instead uses software to emulate generic, run-of-the-mill hardware. In the case of sound systems, the VPC software I used emulates a plain-vanilla SoundBlaster card. ”
“…When I got the VPC software set up, I first tried installing Windows XP in a virtual machine. It ran fine, and used all the emulated hardware, including sound, perfectly.
What about Win95–nine-year-old software? No problem at all: A vanilla install of Win95 ran the system perfectly, and with full sound support; with no separate drivers, tweaks, or manual adjustments needed.
He managed to get the sound working in windows 95/98 by using a virtual pc emulator, that emulates the sound card as a soundblaster card.
Does that raise any eyebrows ?
There is no way, the sound card would work out of the box in windows 95, sorry no way. This article is completely and utterly flawed
I think that the soundcard is ix80 pretty much i can guarantee it, our uni have bought a load of new computers, with onboard intel mobo’s with this soundcard, using 2.4.x the sound wouldnt work in debian when i upgraded to 2.6.4 using alsa the sound worked. The machines dual boot Redhat 9 which sound works with out of the box. I wonder why he only used debian based distros, probably they all default to OSS.
I will not deny that linux doesnt have sound problems, it does. If you have a good sound card, such as an sblive then the sound works brilliantly, if you have a cheap onboard soundcard then more likely than not you dont get hardware mixing. Also X does lock up, I have had it lock up so bad that even sshing in didnt work and only a reboot fixed the problem.
(this was only ever experienced with the nforce2 chipset, and is a well documented acpi bios bug, which has been resolved in 2.6.5. It has to do with the cpu disconnect function, if this is disabled in the bios then the problem goes away anyway)
If he was running the linux distros through the virtual pc, and sound was not working, then it seems fishy to me. A lot of this article doesnt make sense. Its like he is purposefully trying to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt. He is blatently saying they might look flashy now but dont work.
Judging by his fluidity in writing I think he may have forgotten to turn the sound up
.
The beautiful thing I have found in Linux is that once something works it doesn’t seem to break until I break it. So the question is, did he make the correct entry into /etc/modules.conf?
Someone else stated above: If there’s no support did he check to see if it’s Linux’ fault or of it’s the fault of Intel for not supporting their chipset. Because Intel has gained a reputation for not supporting their hardware (centrino). I kind of doubt XP supported a new sound card “out of the box.” I’m sure he ran the motherboard drivers disk before he had sound working correctly. Since Windows XP can only support chipsets made up until SP 1 was released; after that you must use install drivers that come from somewhere else.
Sound has never been Linux’s best quality, but mine works. Maybe he should quit blaming the kernel for hardware support; and quit generally referring to it as a “software problem.” There is also a small chance that his board is going, Linux doesn’t do well on failing hardware. I doubt that though.
Linux doesn’t fully work in Microsoft virtual PC? how unusual!!! worked fine in vmware and that pretends to be a sound blaster too.
It also used to take somw configuration to get sound working in windows, as many have noted. The author clearly knew how to do this. He clearly does not know how to set up sound in linux, nor how to fix things (reinstall to fix?!?!?!) buy a book about linux, read it, try again with a little knowledge. Alternately (as I suspect would be more his style) go on a course for a few days and have someone teach you.
OR best of all
ONLY write about stuff you know, it’s like a 5 year old reviewing a porshe and moaning that it crashed into a tree because he couldn’t see as well as on his bicycle.
Don’t make me laugh! Windows 95 hardware detection is a horror. A horror! I spend literally tons of hours, even days, to fix common problems.
Examples include _driver_problems_ with: soundcard, motherboard, videocard, USB (yes i had OSR2), modem and for my SCSI controller i needed 3rd party drivers.
But… what was really, really terifying is that i never knew what i’d get. Sometimes this wasn’t properly recognized or installed, then that. It was always different! There were patterns where the same wasn’t properly installed (as in drivers) but the normal solution didn’t always helped. I also had to use 3rd party CD’s and drivers by default for -like i already said- my SCSI controller and also for my onboard (Win)modem and the soundcard.
While the overal OS was relatively quite stable -especially to OSR1 which i abandoned previously- this simply was a horror. Reinstalling the OS every once in a while was needed and common with Windows 95 OSRx so i guess you can imagine too i came around the above problems quite a lot. I’ve also used Windows 95 OSR2 for about 2 or 3 years, mostly with pleasure too, this being one of the major problems with the OS.
That said, i can only laugh when one claims sound support or hardware in a random (GNU/)Linux distribution is as bad as in Windows 95. It clearly is not, and when you’d compare it absolutely you’d see a random, shipped Linux kernel supports more hardware than Windows 95.
I know there are some problems with Linux and sound. IMO, it is up to either ALSA or the distributor to solve this. But uhm, who needs sound in a corporate environment? I wouldn’t give the possibility to my employees.
That said, a few common problems:
* Permission. Solution: add yourself to the correct group or change the ALSA configuration. Can be done in some GUI.
* Sound card not supported. Solution: bad luck, try OSS. Some GUI could use OSS as automagic fall-back. Up to the distributor, IMO.
* Muted. Solution: check which chipset and revision needs X or Y to be on in order to play music (just that) and put these on on some moderate number. Put Master on 90, and PCM on 50 for example and unmute these. People using Surround and such are not Novice people and should be able to RTFM in order to get their stuff working. But allow them to learn in easy manner. Also possible with GUI.
In case no one read till the end, because it was hard reading (someone who actually believes Windows 95 handled hardware issues well), he was using Xandros 2.0. I haven’t figured out what the sound card was yet.
I tried digging through Intel’s site for a rare few chipsets supported on Win95, but there were over 50 items they have supported for Win95….
No he didn’t use virtual PC for the linux tests. He only used virtual PC for the windows tests, No wonder sound worked perfectly in all of the windows installations, even windows XP would have asked for the driver CD.
He installed Linux not using any emulation, yet compared it to Windows 95 that was running under emulation. This article is a complete crock.
I posted up on their notice board about it. What a b******* article pure FUD.
When I installed Mandrake 10 I thought my sound didn’t work. Kaboodle, Noatun, XMMS, nothing played. I posted my problem here and someone told me to go into the preferences and switch from OSS to ALSA, because ALSA is embedded in the Linux kernel and that’s what everything uses from now on. I did just that and now all sound works properly. I wouldn’t be surprised if Fred Langa (he used to write for the now-defunct Windows Magazine) just didn’t configure his system properly.
Sorry for the rant here, but after fighting with Alsa for almost an afternoon I think I am allowed to post this.
Alsa may be a good soundsystem technology wise but structurewise it is a mess. First you have the drivers, then you have the weird alsa daemon, then you have a bunch of more than weird config files which don´t follow any accepted rules.
Then add another soundserver, since multiplexing still is not mandatory on the driver level and probably you have to hook a software synth on top of that if your card does not midi instead of providing a software synth on its own.
Putting a midi mapper on top of the alsa-alsad-sounddaemon mess is a mess on its own.
What we basically would need from a configuration standpoint:
a) add soundcard driver
b) add driver for a midi mapper
c) be happy
No sound daemon, no alsa daemon, no configuration mess
multiplexing belongs into the driver or into the mixer driver (which is loaded anyway – period!
Ok we need eventually driver chains, then add one simple config file and thats it!
The current state of affairs is, lets say it that way, from a user point of view very annoying.
I am totally aware of the problems but I am telling that a normal user would not bother to see whose problems it is and he would damm not care about whether intel is at fault or not. He would see if his stuff works or not. And Linux developers are responsbile for it if they charge for(Companies like Novell/Mandrake) and they can not run away from their responsiblities. Surely, OSS Developers who do not charge for their code/s/w are not in anyway obliged to do that and we have no right to demand from them but NOVELL/SUSE/REDHAT/Mandrake etc should be
everyone here is jumping up & down at the article. okay, he couldn’t get basic sound working, he’s dumb
but sound under linux is a <u>MASSIVE</u> problem. i rean really. windows 3.1 could play more than one sound at the same time. linux? sure, if you have ESD or ARTS installed – the former suffering from massive audio/video desynchronisation and both of them meaning all applications must have ESD/ARTS compatability. a few companies dip their toe into gaming under linux (e.g. UT2004 under linux), but have to write 101 sound output plugins just to be able to play sounds at the same time as someone’s mp3 player runs. seriously, it NEEDS fixing, and not just with _ANOTHER_ daemon (JACK, i’m looking at you). enough effort needs to be put in that all existing OSS, ALSA, JACK, ESD, aRts, etc apps can trasparently and with no changes all interoperate with the same unified pre-supplied structure laid out at kernel-level. I should be able to play mp3s and still recieve alerts from GAIM – but not have to kill artsd & all media apps if i decide i feel like a game of something.
On board sound with motherboards are problematic no matter what OS you are using. I have heard several complaints from even Windows users having difficulty getting their on board sound to work. It’s not only a Linux issue.
As for myself all my hardware (Asus – mobo, Nvidia – graphics, Logitech – wireless keyboard/mouse, PC Cam and Creative Labs – Sound Blaster Live 5.1) was detected by default when I installed SuSE Pro 9.0.
Sure there are problems with some hardware but that is why windows and linux come with hardware compatibility lists.
Linux being a less well supported platform is more restricted with what you can and cannot use, but given the lesser support it is hardly a major suprise.
I have a network card that only works upto windowsME, there is no support for 2000 or XP using it.
There are creative labs sound cards too. Try getting a driver for some of them when it isn’t in the box. Twice, the best place was a 3rd party site.
On the linux side, I have everything working, but my dlink wireless network card driver doesn’t work as well as it could. It is usable though, and when I upgrade I will get a better supported card.
“Bottom line: For broad hardware support, Windows is still much better than Linux. That’s not bias–it’s a demonstrable fact.”
How does testing Linux on a single machine, and having a single device not work (a sound card,) make the above statement a demonstrable fact?
While I admit that Windows has better support for some hardware, I have had many experiences where linux “just worked” with my hardware and Windows did not.
There have been many instances where linux (generally RedHat or SUSE) had no problems with my video card, network card, sound card, RAID card, etc. – and Windows (2000 and later) on the same hardware required me to download and install drivers.
Its far from perfect, but in many cases Linux hardware support is fairly decent.
This user is talking thru the *beep* crack…. I don’t beLIEve he installed this many operating systems in this short of time. I beLIEve he listed all these ‘tested’ operating systems the same way someone tells tech support they’ve done this ‘list’ of things just so they don’t have to jump thru hoops….”
He states he tested on:
“…Xandros 2.0 Deluxe. But again, none of the Linux distributions I’ve tried so far on this PC succeeded in getting the sound working. That includes majors, such as two versions of Slackware, two versions of SuSE, plus Debian, Xandros, and Lindows; as well as several specialty distros like Knoppix, Knotix, Morphix, and Gentoo.
In addition during this two ‘business day period’ he installed the following OSs on the same system:
I first tried installing Windows XP in a virtual machine. It ran fine, and used all the emulated hardware, including sound, perfectly.
Next, I tried Windows 2000, which is much fussier about its hardware than is XP. But the sound worked perfectly, using only Win2K’s built-in drivers, from four years ago. No problems at all.
I next tried WinME, which uses hybrid drivers; some like Win2K’s, others like Win98’s. But again, using only the retail software’s built-in drivers from when the operating system originally shipped, WinME detected and used the sound system just fine.
How about Win98? This is software from six years ago, but it, too, detected and ran the sound system perfectly, using only the operating system’s original, built-in drivers.
What about Win95–nine-year-old software? No problem at all: A vanilla install of Win95 ran the system perfectly…”
BS, BS, BS, – er!
During this ‘two business day period’ (let’s say 18 to 20 hours — this is really stretching it). he installed 17 operating systems on the exact same system. This included Gentoo. Well from what I hear Gentoo (if you know what your doing ) takes 3 hrs plus to install… hmmm times running out to install those other operating systems.
Formatting the drive this many times alone would consume at least 4 to 5 hrs on a ‘modern’ system (considering the smallest 72000rpm drive available is 40Gb). Yep, linux can format a partition pretty quickly, and many partitions can be mounted on different linux OS platforms, but Windows XP is the only Win OS listed that can perform a quick format. Therefore, the other Windows OS would need to spend time and reformat the drive each time. Hold on — he could have installed Windows on Partitions 2GB or smaller to save formatting time — OK fine. How about that Windows 3.1 that he said he installed on this system. Windows 3.1 can’t read drives larger than 8 GB. hmmm… sounds fishy. Hey WinNT 4 was released about the same time as Win95. Knowing that WinNT 4 (no service packs) could only recognize disks 8GB or smaller(yes I know WinNT 4 SP1 could) one could assume win95 had this same limitation (I don’t recall the limitations (if any) on disk size for Win95) — therefore he probably ran into this same issue installing Win95. So the question becomes where did he buy the system with only a 8GB hard drive in it? I would really like to read an article from someone that actually knew what they were talking about or at leasts tested his claims before writting a 3 page article!
GRRR!
Maybe good old Fred was using SCO Linux.
As that company can’t even copy GPL code properly, it is quite conceivable their sound implementation is broken.
Point noted, it is true it should just work, or work with minimal hassle, but to skew results, by comparing linux running on the machine, to windows 95 running under emulation, is just straight out insulting.
He is quite truly stating that hardware support is not there yet for linux, you can get “most” things to work, almost, and rarely taking full advantage of it. It is a sad fact. But please wake up and aknowledge this fact instead of starting a senseless windows bashing, […].
Yes, hardware support on Linux is not perfect, but you miss the point of the bashing of the article (and Windows).
A better point of view is that there is no other OS which is as good in hardware support as GNU/Linux without being provided by a company which has the monopoly for over 12 years (Maybe one of the BSD flavours is equally well, I don’t know).
So, yes, when somebody compares GNU/Linux to a Microsoft windows system without reflecting the above point properly, people have the right to compare Windows with GNU/Linux and state how bad it is although being a monopoly with lots of money.
Another point of view is that GNU/Linux is that the author has a *real* choice for his Operating System and Desktop only because so many people work on their free time to get GNU/Linux better, and the author simply didn’t acknowledges this. In fact, he even mismatches a distribution (with lots of additional software) with a Microsoft OS.
So, the people have every right to bash the author and his article.
The Windows bashing is not senseless: It makes you feel better when confronted with such articles.
Fedora Core 2 Test 2 — I can’t get MP3s to work.
In the past I’ve been able to Patch RedHat 9, and Fedora Core 1 with xmms-mp3.rpm, and get MP3 working, but I can’t get it installed on Fedora Core 2 Test 2. I run into dependency issues.
Anyone know a URL to an updated xmms-mp3.rpm? I can’t seem to find one. I tried “www.rpmfind.net” and “www.freshrpms.net” — no luck.
Sound Card: SoundBlaster Live Value!
Yeah software emulation to enable multiple sources to stream the sound sucks on linux. Thats what hardware mixing is for. Ignore all of those daemons, and use a sound card that provides hardware mixing on linux. Low and behold it all just works.
By the way games manufacturers dont deal with the software mixing, they use openAL, for 3d sound the mixing issue they leave to the OS / Desktop afaik.
Unfortunately most on-board soundcards, are just crap. Their hardware mixing support on linux is pathetic.
Having OSS or ARTSD for the driver to select from doesn’t make things easier, although thankfully OSS has now been dropped.
Also having 5 different daemons to deal with software mixing is just stupid. You should only need the one, choice is a good thing, but too much choice sometimes, is just stupid.
They need to unify them and select the best one and done.
Or alternately software mixing can be turned off and the soundcards own hardware mixer used. Hardware mixing is a houndred times better than software mixing anyway. If only the sound card manufacturers, would release the specs so that hardware mixing could be easily used in linux.
I have to use my Realtek ALC650 onboard under linux, my PCI card, a Philips Acoustic Edge (VLSI Thunderbird DSP) is entirely unsupported.
i might be a bit more fussy when i next recompile my kernel to try & fix some of my little niggles, perhaps it’d help.
For the average Joe’s Linux experience, when things work off the bat it’s great but when it doesn’t things become quite complex. It IS downhill from there. I would rather get things done than go spend countless hours (days even, for my computer skills) trying to work around, if not solve the issue.
Thankfully, it has gotten better for me as distros I’ve tried recently have had no problems with my hardware but Fred’s experience shows that there is still a big room for improvement in this area (hardware detection / configuration) for Linux.
I had about 4 years into Linux before I got a mac. My first, I mean very first , “experience” with linux was exactly as the authors. I was so flustered, I mean I had been at Windows since 3.1, so I wasn’t “stupid” as was pointed out to me by way to many ” experts” in the help forums. I should have quit, put my tail between my legs, and crwaled back to uncle bill begging to get back into the “Gates ” of hell.
But a funny thing happened, and I think it was pure pigheadedness on my part, but I didn’t quit. See, I stuck it out, and made a switch from an old linux distro (RH 7.0) to the uber modern Mandrake 8.1, and it worked!!! Of course, as time went on, I had to learn more and more command line trick’s, to make it work with new hardware. But every hurdle breeds a feeling of accomplishment, and your confidence goes up.
Our friend has many valid points, and although he paints all linux distro’s with the same brush, he’s missing a huge point. Why didn’t it work? What’s so special about this card that Windows could make it work all the way back to win 95?
If our friend can remember back to win 95 , there was this thing called “plug and pray”, and when you made hardware back then, it was plug and pray compatible, or it wasn’t sold. This all comes down to one thing, and one thing only. MONOPOLY. They had 90 % of the market, so if you didn’t have their digital signature, who would buy it? no one. So why does it work all the way back to win 95? Monopoly.
So why muck with Linux, if it’s hard to make it work, if it ain’t just point and click? Well for me, the same reason I now use Mac, I hated the fact that you went down to the store and bought something that was old, or cheap, and it didn’t work with plug and pray… you were screwed. I remember buying a sound card that didn’t work with win 95, and phoning up ms help desk, only to be told ” well, next time, look for win 95 compatible, ’cause we don’t have drivers for it”. and niether did the manufacturer of it, because win wouldn’t share code, and they went outta buisness, along with alot of good hardware people.
I use mac now, and before everyone screams ” well, same difference,” I am trying to get Linux onto it in the worst way. not because I love Linux over Mac. See above for reason. I’m not going to be boxed into that again!!!! No matter how much I love osx.3, and i do love it, I like choices more.
In my Opinon —
I personally think this article is one sided. Althought pointing out the facts that the (author) found. It does not mention what Linux Distro it was, and better yet, the Version.
The Versions are made for one reason, to indicate change. otherwise we have windows…. 2600.xpsp1.xxxxx-xxxx – Service Pack 1.
But It also depends on the hardware if it was using a new 7.1 24-bit/96kHz playback & recording sound card.. Course there are going to be problems. Heck I haven’t played with linux enough to see if it utilises my 4.1 .
So the article is trying to sway users away from Linux.
— (Throws 2 pennies on the Table)
I think the real problem isn’t just sound cards, it’s crappy detection of simple stuff like USB mice. I’ve got five buttons here, it’s an old mouse from almost the last decade, yet no distro will autodetect all my buttons. It’s like being crippled.
Then there’s the ridiculous overkill of choices: 11 different window managers?? That’s a feature????!! I just want ONE that works!!
I tried KDE this week, heard that it’s so fast, etc. but the damned thing was friggin’ ridiculous. No less than eight nested layers of folders from the K menu makes it just a little tricky to find something useful. Even in the first level there’re about twelve folders, and each of those has multiple levels underneath. That’s clearly insane, but it extends to all parts of the KDE – like Konqueror, where each menu gives access to five or ten trivial choices which need only be set once and for all. Context menus give five choices. Preferences out the wazoo.
I wouldn’t give KDE to anybody but a 3-year old, since it looks so much like Fisher Price and was obviously designed to distract and amuse people with all the shiny baubles.
Not designed to get things done. Not designed for me, or anybody I know.
First that is no fictionaly (Who are you Michael Moore?) OS it Xandros Business 2.0 if you didn’t read that correctly.
Try reading all the way to the end
And all these other OSes also didn’t work too.
Then he tried running different windows OSes in Virtual PC and also linx distro XYZ (Xandros Business 2.0)
He still couldn’t get the sound working (this in VPC)
Please read the article correctly. I’m half asleep and managed to get what he was saying.
I think he just had his sound muted, and didn’t check the sound mixer.
That is all
I don’t even need to read the other posts to know that many of them are pointless rants raving that “my soundcard works!”
Here’s the problem: There’s no one in charge of Linux, so no one can order: Build drivers for these soundcards.
That’s Microsoft’s advantage: Someone is actually in charge.
Sometimes, choice is just another name for chaos.
Fact: with ALSA surround sound in my Sound Blaster Live Player 5.1 is incomparably (and I do mean much, much…) better than with Windows XP.
Those vague error messages Win95 is famous for. How could it be a fair comparisom anyhow, when 95 is older then the hills and good quality sound on Linux (IMO, I’m a perfectionist when it comes to sound) is just coming to the fore, through the developments of ALSA? It’s bound to have issues. This guy just needs to give it time.
i’m thinking the author either:
1.) didn’t adjust and save his volume control settings
or
2.) maybe the one time he got it working he was running as root, but he didn’t give the proper permissions to whatever user he was running after that.
Pentium 100, 32MB DRAM and 500 MB hard drive space with a decent browser plus a file explorer and maybe Office 97
I don’t see a linux distro than can beat it.
In order to thoroughly cover the topic of “Linux’s Achilles’ Heel,” one needs to make the assumption that Linux has many feet, like a centipede or something, because it’s failings are many.
Linux is a religion, not an OS, as most of it’s users take far too much on faith, and have no idea what they are really going on about when they start singing it’s praises.
Compare this to your average Solaris user who more often that not has more than just a little bit of a clue about the technology that they are using.
No comment. Can you say B.S.?
I still haven’t read the article, but let me say something. I didn’t have any problem on hundreds of Linux installations I have done. OTOH, I got lots of problem with Windows and a few sound cards.
I think this is not a problem of the OS. What’s wrong here are those crappy sound cards. DON’T BUY SHITTY HARDWARE and you’ll never have a single problem with it (sound cards, video cards, etc.)
“Sometimes, choice is just another name for chaos.”
Never seen it put better. Very succinct. I love being a linux user, but hardware probs can be discouraging — especially for the newbie.
I tend to disagree. I would love to backup Linux in this case, but I can do much more with windows, and more easily with windows too.
Bass and treble controls do exactly as you expect them to using Windows. Try that with ALSA controls. ther are too many controls for ALSA that do not do as you want them to anyway. My bass easily yops out and becomes really annoying with Linux. My volume controls seem to steal signal strength from each other. A multitude of issues realy, which is a shame. Maybe it is a case, like ESR pointed out about CUPS, of not having a nice interface to do the necessary configuration. But it still counts as a negative.
>>> Linux is a religion, not an OS, as most
of it’s users take far too much on faith, and
have no idea what they are really going on
about when they start singing it’s praises. <<<
No comment regarding the religion thing since I am an agnostic. It is an established fact that Linux is an operating system based upon POSIX-compliant design. Most of my fellow Linux users are serious sys admins and power users that know their way around hardware. The trouble usually begins when clueless “other platform” users try to jump into Linux without Reading the Fine Manual. They generally don’t know how to install a sound card much less reseat it. I have made a lot of money repairing “other platform” computers in my area. I suspect this goes on almost in all computerized cities and towns.
Since going completely Linux last November, I have had zero problems. Allow me to repeat for emphasis: zero problems. Oh wait, minus a severe thunderstorm that passed through the local area I have only had to power down my system once.
Who is the “average” Solaris user? Can you be more specific on who these users are?
Troy
1) No my name isnt Michael Moore
2) How about responding to the other points that I made in the section. How about reinstalling the OS because you lost sound, once rebooted. Dont you think if you reboot again, sound would disappear again. Both you and the author a display a great deal of analytical thought.
3)”Try reading all the way to the end”.
Its tough reading mindless dribble. Good to know that you are capable of doing it.
Maybe I am just lucky but I have not had a sound card issue in like 3 years with Linux.
ALSA is not perfect. Sounds quality and controls can still be a bit tricky. That is where the real criticism should come.
The CUPS printer tools for RedHat and SuSE are both damn good so I do not get the no nice interface especially since at least what RH does is open source in terms of its tools.
You want hardware issues try cutting edge peripherals like some of the USB or Firewire hard disks or new USB scanners.
That is where the greatest gap in terms of Linux hardware compatibiity lies.
Author seems a bit missed in terms of his criticism.
+
Who is the “average” Solaris user? Can you be more specific on who these users are?
Yeah, I think there are three of them now…
The trouble usually begins when clueless “other platform” users try to jump into Linux without Reading the Fine Manual. They generally don’t know how to install a sound card much less reseat it. I have made a lot of money repairing “other platform” computers in my area.
They shouldn’t have to or rather they should, but they don’t so we should be planning for it. That’s the problem with Linux today, just like my Engineer turned Math teacher, Linux GUI designers and programmers assume that you know how to do everything already. Fact is people don’t, they don’t want to know, they want it done with a few clicks of a mouse button. No one wants to search through text files or fiddle with volume controls that have 40 different controls.(Hell, I don’t even know what they all do, I use two, Master and PCM that’s it, that’s all I need and it works fine).
People keep saying here and on Slashdot, to give Linux a little more time, how much time should I be giving it? When is enough time? I think back and I see that not much as been done with Linux in the area of module installation, you still have type make;make install add a ./configure if you have to. Until we can get to a point where Linux matches and/or exceeds driver easy of Windows, Grandma, Joe Average or who ever you call it will not be able to use Linux effectively.
Okay. Allow me to work the logic a little. “Engineer v. Math Teacher” example.
Kindergarden to Elementary to Middle School to High School to Associate to Bachelor to Master to Doctorate. Then the well educated individual teaches at the primary levels.
There are individuals living in the cave of the “other platform” and to them the shadows and “proprietary” chains are very real. Then one person breaks free from his or her restrictions and the cost of “closed sourced” slavery. They slowly walk into the brightness of knowledge and freedom of their new system. They return to the cave and teach the others about what they have discovered. Those who listen to the teacher will progress. Others will not and continue to be the “chained” slaves of their own “closed-sourced” perceptions.
Seriously, when people ask me what I use I hand them a Knoppix Live CD I have burned from my Fedora machine. I tell them I use Linux personally and professionally. If they want to know more I generally give them the name one of Marcel Gagne’s books depending on their knowledge level. SOme people are at the grammar level while others only need to cover the proof-of-concept sections.
Troy
Given that Linux may not be as easy as Windows 98, is it
really worth posting this article. I mean we see this
kinds or article everyday. “Oh man, my Linux install
failed. I better write about it and tell the whole freaking
world the obvious.”
Linux is not like Microsoft where they can allocate
resources to anything they want. The only resources that
Linux has is the community and it seems like the “community”
spends more time whining rather than writing a freaking
driver for their sound card or donate money for someone
to write one.
“People keep saying here and on Slashdot, to give Linux a little more time, how much time should I be giving it?”
I’m not sure how much more time it needs, but it better get issues like this taken care of before Longhorn comes out. Until then, call me when I can get things to work in Linux with the minimal effort and time required in Windows, without having to jury rig this or emulate that to get everything to work properly. Only then will I consider making Linux my main desktop…
Fact is people don’t, they don’t want to know, they want it done with a few clicks of a mouse button.
Its a totally different platform. Its a different OS. Its going to be different.
I have also met more than my own shares of Windows users forced to use a Mac for a short project or whatever.
I have seen them crawl the walls when they have to learn a new way of doing things.
Until we can get to a point where Linux matches and/or exceeds driver easy of Windows, Grandma, Joe Average or who ever you call it will not be able to use Linux effectively.
Driver ease?
The driver thing is pretty easy usually for linux. It is usually there or it ain’t. Period. No third party or downloads. Either it came with the OS or your hardware is not going to work. (I can give all kinds of geek examples of exceptions. But I won’t because we are talking a regular end user.)
RedHat saw my USB mouse and my printer right away on my linux laptop the minute I booted it up with the stuff plugged in. Then again there is this one scanner at work that I tried to plug it into that the machine never could see. It is not Windows and will not have the same hardware support. Even Macs do not have the exact level of HW support Windows does.
Can it get better?
Heck yes.
I just find the same FUD on every linux thread.
Troll says, “You cannot do anything in linux whatsoever without doing a make;make install add a ./configure…”
If its a driver like the Lucent Modem one that does not come with the kernel then there is an rpm for it somewhere.
Heck in RH linux all you have to do is download the right one and doubleclick it on your desktop and keep clicking next.
Oh yeah, and the volume control in gnome at least does not have anymore controls than the Soundblaster plus utility that came with my windows box. What’s the difference? None. I still just use PCM and Master just like you.
Its the controls for stuff undeneath in SuSe’s case deep in the Yast tool and such that can get complicated and the quality is not always the best. SuSE just makes things complex in my opinion and I like the simplier RedHat tool.
In the grand scheme of thing, I do not ever give a flying flip if Joe Sixpack ever uses linux.
I am a Unix System Administrator and use linux because I like Unix.
I work on Unix for eight hours a day and I am use to it and prefer it and I want my laptop/workstation to run some semblance of a Unix-like system. Linux fits that bill.
I do not run linux because I am floating a revolution against the man.
To heck with Joe Average, I want easy to use tools but I do not want my system built for a walking talking tool.
I want ease of use not some dummy proofed system that tries to think for me and keeps getting in my damn way because it thinks it knows better than I do how the system should be, what state it should be in and how it should be setup.
To hell with all that nonsense it was half the reason I first installed linux back in 1996.
+
Linux is not like Microsoft where they can allocate
resources to anything they want
Have to call BS here. Linux folks damned well are free to allocate resources wherever they want, and I’m arguing that they are more free to do so as they don’t have the constraints of a corporate environment.
This leads me to believe that the top Linux folks don’t really care for the average user, and the current state of Linux (for the last decade!!!) is proof enough for me that this is the case.
“I’m not sure how much more time it needs, but it better get issues like this taken care of before Longhorn comes out. Until then, call me when I can get things to work in Linux with the minimal effort and time required in Windows, without having to jury rig this or emulate that to get everything to work properly. Only then will I consider making Linux my main desktop…”
If you’d left your number I could inform you of the possibilities you are missing out on. Poor poor anonymous.
Is this the same guy who drives an old pick-up truck, lives in a trailer (btw, I am a Linux user that lives in a double-wide in rural New Mexico), and says, “Here. Hold my beer.” Then drives into a lake to get noticed on the Darwin Awards the next day?
Seriously. Maybe this is a case of “cognitive dissonance” between “other-platform” and “Linux” users.
Troy
If you’d left your number I could inform you of the possibilities you are missing out on. Poor poor anonymous.
I’ll bet you use that linke on all the girls and wouldbe Linux users…
Let’s list what Linux supports that Windows doesn’t:
* Alpha
* ARM
* HP PA-RISC
* Intel x86
* Intel IA-64
* Motorola 680×0
* MIPS
* MIPS (DEC)
* PowerPC
* IBM S/390
* SPARC
I simply copied that off Debian’s website for Woody’s support list. Linux has great hardware support, end of discussion; no questions asked.
Yes, yes I do. No luck gettin dates so far
.
And a correction above, I listed x86 by accident.
I simply copied that off Debian’s website for Woody’s support list. Linux has great hardware support, end of discussion; no questions asked.
And how many of those platforms are supportred out of the box on a stok kernel? Not nearly all of those. More often than not, many of those architectures’ support is broken, and it take the distributers patches to get things working again.
Compare that to NetBSD, who’s various supported platforms are all working at every release.
Heh. A Linux choirboy.
don’t take me too seriously.
I’ve also had wierd issues with sound on linux. Probably I should chalk it up to the relative newness of ALSA (though it’s been around for 3 years or so) or something dumb that I did. I have an old Dell Machine with a preinstalled SBLive and I run Gentoo and Mandrake. Mandrake handled sound just fine, but Gentoo had some issues and sounds like crap (why the hell can’t I put PCM up to 100%, damnit!?!?). I know it’s expected for me to fiddle around with everything when running a self-compiled distro like Gentoo, but it seems like hardware detection and audio should be standardized into the kernel as a basic property of linux and not some sort of value-add space for distributors. If one of you linux guys is willing to give me a little help, please drop me an email and I’d be very grateful.
I don’t know what you fellows have been doing to windows to have to pray so much when plugging in hardware. Everything has always worked fine for me. Perhaps a stopgap windows driver compatibility layer could be built into linux. It need not be slow, because it’s not so slow on windows. Perhaps this will be possible once ReactOS’s kernel is sorted out.
I use Mandrake 10 and I have no problems with sound in any of my 5 different motherboards be it on board sound or if I choose using a soundblaster live with them. I also have a laptop and it has built in sound and have no problems with sound. Mandrake picks up all of them during install. From my experiences sound is much better on Linux than it ever was on that other os.
can only do so much, especially working on drivers (not main code). most people doing driver coding are volunteers and work by reverse-engineering hardware or relying on (sometimes poorly documented) published info by the manufacturer. we should applaud them, and at the same time lobby for the manufacturers to support linux and write the drivers themselves (much progress has been made on this aspect for the past few years though).
“People keep saying here and on Slashdot, to give Linux a little more time, how much time should I be giving it?”
You shouldn’t. You either have the patience to learn how to use Linux, or you don’t. And if you don’t, then you ought to be using something else. First thing people have to do is decide why they’re switching to Linux. If you don’t have a good reason or don’t really have the desire to do something different, to learn, to make an effort, then you’re simply not going to be happy with it. You have to go into Linux knowing and wanting what it has to offer otherwise you’re wasting your time.