Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Getting started, were to begin?

Ray wrote:

> Bryan is about right here but I'd like to add that Linux hardware
> detection and compatablility lags a bit behind some other OS's.

If you since so, then you obviously haven't read Linus' extensive
comments on the matter.

AUTODETECTION AND WHY LINUX IS SO DAMN STABLE

Basically Linus _refuses_ to have the kernel "autodetect" anything
over busses that are not 100% accurate, or allow detection in ways
that cannot possibly hang the bus and/or system. This is why when
you install Windows 9x/ME and even NT/2000/XP it will sometimes stop
in the middle of installing and hang. Again, Linus has detailed
why.

Such "good" busses/standards include the well-defined internal PCI
(incl. AGP), PCMCIA (ISA), CardBus (PCI) and external busses such as
most SCSI-2 standards, IEEE 1394 (Firewire) and IEEE 1284 ECP
(select parallel ports).

Such "bad" busses/standards include the poor-defined internal ISA
and even ISA PnP and external busses such as ultra-shitty USB and
non-ECP parallel ports. Additionally, various "troublesome" device
such as video cards and the like are not automatically detected,
although the PCI/AGP detection should report all the information
necessary.

As such, in the cases of those latter "bad" busses/standards (and
"troublesome" devices), it is up to the distribution vendor to come
up with a method to detect them. And there are a lot of user-space
tools like "isapnp" that I actually prefer to use over the Windows
pro-active autodetection.

SUPPOSED "LACK OF DRIVERS"

Now if you are talking about the "lack of drivers," that is a pure
vendor issue. The Linux community produces 100x the drivers for
Linux that Microsoft does for Windows because most vendors not only
do not produce drivers for Linux, but won't release the
specifications for fear of losing control of their IP. Microsoft
themselves write few drivers, let alone don't even bother to test
half of them. You can see this with the darth of drivers available
for NT and even 2000/XP (although this is changing as vendors are
being forced to support XP).

Little do these companies realize that other companies like RedHat
and SuSE are more than willing to sign NDAs to get access to the
specs to write drivers. Again, never blame the Linux community for
lack of drivers because God knows they, again, write 100x as many
drivers as Microsoft let alone the quality if 100x better. Even
Microsoft realizes that the Open Source model is superior for driver
development -- largely because numerous OEMs have been demanding the
Windows source code to improve driver quality. Hence why OEMs now
have the "Shared Source" model -- although Joe user will never see
it.

It's funny, as more and more hardware is really software driven,
Linux is actually much better. Because instead of this company
doing this software modem and that company doing that wavetable
audio, Linux has a single software modem model and a single
wavetable audio module. All the vendor needs to do is provide the
basic interface to them and they're done. No royalties nor any
negotiations -- no re-inventing the wheel.

-- TheBS


--
Bryan "TheBS" Smith mailto:b.j.smith@... chat:thebs413
Engineer AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc. http://www.linux-wlan.org
President SmithConcepts, Inc. http://www.SmithConcepts.com