The idea here would be to cut the driver layer out of Windows and attach it to Linux directly. This would become MS-Linux. If Microsoft actually produced an MS-Linux that was the standard Linux attached to the driver layer of Windows, giving users full Plug and Play (PnP) support of all their peripherals, nobody would buy any other Linux on the market.
John C. Dvorak: How to Kill Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I would. I like my open source drivers just fine, thanks.
This might be true, however Linux is free or as cheap as $1.00 a CD. MS Linux would have to compete with that.
It wouldn’t kill Linux. It would bring more people to Linux which is a good thing.
My new TV/radio card is not supported though.
I bought it from Frys on Saturday because it was on sale. I did not check if it was supported by Linux, because I did not have a computer with me to check it online, I had to either buy it on the spot, or lose the offer. I decided to buy it (there’s always Windows anyway). Too bad, Linux doesn’t support it: K-World/V-Stream Studio TV Terminator.
So, don’t tell me that you love your OSS drivers, we are not all with the same luck. And my two web cams are semi-supported, each time I upgrade my kernel, I have to recompile their third party OSS beta drivers. Yuk.
Firstly its not really possible to evade the GPL in the kernel. A blind eye is usually turned at propriety drivers but in MS case this would obviously be different.
Secondly Anti-trust legislation would probably prevent MS taking over Linux (after all you cant buy out your only competitor).
Thirdly MS wants windows not Linux cause it cant control Linux and in any case it would end up with loadsa free clones.
Lastly we already have PnP capability in linux via HAL and drivers are now almost on par with windows so the article is kinda irrelevant.
More people using linux or linux technology = more people interested in using linux… The idea that microsoft using a linux backend would kill linux is absolutely stupid.
Linux drivers are a real pain in the ass, I have much hardware that isn’t supported by Linux here (Winmodems, trackballs, a RAID controller, a scanner, a web cam, and 2 multimedia keyboards.) that’s quite a lot to leave in the closet.
i rarely saw interesting papers from this author, each time i read one of them, i find them ininteresting and uninformed. This time too…
I hope he doesn’t write this stuff for a living…
“So, don’t tell me that you love your OSS drivers, we are not all with the same luck.”
Why not? I love mine. That’s my perspective, and I’m entirely entitled to have it and express it here. You don’t like your drivers – that’s fine, it’s your perspective, go ahead and express it, and I’m sure you’d buy MS Linux if it were around. However, putting “nobody would buy any other Linux on the market” in the abstract is an absurd over-generalisation. Forget me – do you see RMS going out and picking up a copy?
I bought it from Frys on Saturday because it was on sale. I did not check if it was supported by Linux, because I did not have a computer with me to check it online, I had to either buy it on the spot, or lose the offer.
Sorry, but buying hardware on the spot without researching it first is really not a good idea, even if you’re on Windows. There’s a lot of hardware out there with absolutely horrible drivers. Even if I know that a piece of hardware I want to buy is support in Windows (which is like 99.9% of the time), I always check reviews for it first. I have a friend who usually does what you did and just gets the cheapest crap on the shelf, and then wonders why his stuff never works right.
It’s just too bad hardware companies are still dragging their feet on porting drivers to Linux.
Thats one way for MS to tackle Linux. If you cant beat them, join them. I dont see this as a way to kill Linux. The beauty of Linux is that you can get the source code for free and then make the changes you see fit to your particular computing situation. Thats something that Microsoft will never beable to compete with unless they too offer the entire source code to develpoers.
Thank you OSnews for posting this thought provoking article.
Dvorak is a doom sayer but he does raises some interesting questions:
What would happen to Linux if MS did decide to create it’s own version?
What would happen to all Linux newbies who struggle with special drivers?
What (evil) plans MS has for Linux? And can they manipulate the GPL license?
Why pay 20 million dollars to Linspire when they could have crushed them?
And much more
If Linux geeks are able to use Linux as it is nowadays, then this MS Linux won’t kill Linux, because they would still be using it. Now, Much more people would use MS Linux, people that nowadays are just unable to install or use regular Linux (normal people).
Let’s see how many cliches I can fit in here…
“Time is money.” Which leads right into, “You get what you pay for.” If you had spent some time researching, you prob’ly could have found a good card at a reasonable price. Instead, you just jumped at it “because it was on sale”.
“Waste not, want not.” If you hadn’t wasted time and money on a useless card, you would not still be in want of one that actually worked.
“Your options are good quality, low cost, and fast delivery… Pick two.” Well, we know which two you picked.
“The squeaky wheel always gets the grease.” Companies don’t have any incentive to produce hardware that is compatible with Linux or open drivers, because enough people are satisfied with mediocrity “because it was on sale”. Maybe you should write to the manufacturer and tell them you bought their product, but returned it because it was useless. Or, did that great deal include no returns?
It is interesting to see how some people in the PC era never switched to the Open Source era. Recently talking to some MS folks I saw the same thing that Dvoark thinks he sees.
1) As much as people would like to say it is about the drivers it is not entirely about the drivers. It is red herring argument
2) If the drivers were an issue and lets say it were solved then the issue would move to something completely different such as graphics, or applications or something else.
3) Linux is about people having fun and being in control of their own destiny.
The third point sounds silly, but in fact is very important and something that many people in the PC space just cannot get their head around.
For example imagine Apache came out with a new version of their server. And they said to use Apache 2.x you would need Linux kernel version y. People would be outraged. Instead Linux and Open Source has the ability to mix and match applications with operating systems. In other words you control your own destiny. You can upgrade what is important to you, and not what the software manufacturer thinks is important. This is called writing applications that are component based and modular!
If you’d actually read the article you’d see those are Dvorak’s words and not Eugenia’s. The fact they’re included in the abstract is most likely to entice someone to actually read the article due to it seeming such an absurd notion. The point of making a comment on the article is that you’ve read it, the point of making a comment on an article you’ve not read is generally demonstrated on that wonderfully ‘clued-up’ site Slashdot.
Linux wouldn’t die from use or interest. I think the idea he’s trying to get across is that if Microsoft was getting all the cash from Linux (and successful distro/support companies have clearly shown there’s money to be made in linux), then suddenly a lot of the other distro companies that help keep development going to varying degrees would slowly wither away. Then it’d be a matter of who wants to keep working on linux to keep making MS money. Granted I doubt this would seriously work as there are several really nice and non-commercial distros for starters, I can’t see an MS-Linux dominating the market that entirely, and I can’t see MS doing that.
i would not want a Linux distro tainted with MSFT drivers or any other software…
Sorry, but buying hardware on the spot without researching it first is really not a good idea, even if you’re on Windows.
No regular people ever do it. They buy it and it’s supposed to work. If it doesn’t work, ask for a refund. Only geeks (0.5% of buyers) look for linux compatibility before buying.
It’s just too bad hardware companies are still dragging their feet on porting drivers to Linux.
You’re stating something you don’t know. The Agfa scanner was one of the most expensive of the store ; the trackball were $110 each, the webcams are Intel, and the RAID controller is from an ASUS board bought last year. I always buy the best hardware.
That article is -completely- stupid. Use the linux drivers in windows? How the hell does this endanger linux. The power of linux isn’t it’s drivers (though the driver interfaces are really good now), it’s the security, design, and overall stability of the linux kernel.
Putting linux drivers into the windows kernel… What’s that leave you with ? ? ? You still get stuck out in the fucking mud with the insecure Windows kernel…
I think the guy that wrote that article has his head up his ass.
to kill linux.
I also have a laser printer that doesn’t work under Linux: an Epson EPL-5700. The technician said I would have to use Windows to print properly.
> though the driver interfaces are really good now
You’re talking from a developper’s standpoint. Obviously regular users have a different point of view. If you put a linux CD in your CD-ROM drive to install it, and it doesn’t detect your RAID-0 array, obviously you won’t go very far…
You’re stating something you don’t know. The Agfa scanner was one of the most expensive of the store ; the trackball were $110 each, the webcams are Intel, and the RAID controller is from an ASUS board bought last year. I always buy the best hardware.
Most expensive doesn’t necessarily mean best.
Aside from that people seem to forget there was a time when windows didn’t support EVERY piece of hardware out there. Things weren’t always so cut and dry with adding new hardware to a windows box. Hell they still aren’t.
>and it doesn’t detect your RAID-0 array
Debian sarge has been doing a good job of this lately.
However, the way abstracts are used on OSNews makes them seem far more like the opinion of the site than is strictly necessary, and warrants a little caution in how they are phrased. We’ve been over this before.
You got it backwards. He’s saying Windows Drivers in Linux. Instant 100% compatibility.
Come on people!!!! Why so serious? Dvorak has been doing this stuff for years….he’s TRYING to provoke. Why? Because it’s FUN! Just like Linux is fun and that won’t EVER be taken away from us. We ALL know that. I laughed so hard when I read that article that my side hurts. Dvorak had his tongue FIRMLY in cheek writing that thing.
Anyway, I just dumped Windows on my laptop and went 100% Linux (used to dual boot), but since ALL OF MY HARDWARE WORKS WONDERFULLY right out of the box (I had to install special drivers for Windows), I don’t see an issue here! The driver situation is improving RAPIDLY and will continue to do so, rendering the article obsolete and useless, even if it wasn’t tongue in cheek (which it was)….
I hope….
I think…..
Uhh….
I highly, highly doubt this would ever come to pass. It’d be a total reversal of tactic for Microsoft and pretty much admitting defeat. There’d still be no Windows compatibility so it wouldn’t really change anything; if people were going to switch to Linux they’d have little reason to choose that.
And a huge legal debate would be provoked about derived works; whether the GPL applied to the code Microsoft added to it. Which would probably result in them having to GPL a huge chunk of code, at which point any other distro could use their new driver layer (or any part of it) with complete freedom.
It’s a hypothetical situation. Won’t happen.
i fail to see why Microsoft would be intrested in this to be honest, taking a wild hunch they are rather more worred by firefox which seems to be geting more popular, i find that non tecky friends have it while linux still gets blank looks, i suspect spyware has lot to do with this.
roger
“You’re stating something you don’t know.”
What do you mean, I don’t know? Of course I do. After all this time, it’s still a hassle just getting support for a winmodem (even thought they’re crap) much less something like a webcam or whatever. Who’s fault is that if not hardware companies? They’re either too frightened of being shut out of Windows or too damn lazy to just port the drivers over. Yes, they are dragging their feet.
This guy always has some stupid idea of the kind posted in this paper. Who cares what a PC mag columnist has to say about something he doesn’t know about? The idea stated in this paper is just plain stupidity,expresed in the manner of the PCmag articles he writes. It’s a waste of time to read this guy’s column, as usual. The title is just to get the attention of we the LINUX community.
I saw an interview with him on some business show a month or two ago on CNBC or CNN. He was moaning about how stupid it is to have Intel and AMD both manufacturing CPU’s, and how its a wasted duplication of efforts and resources. In his view it was about time Intel bought AMD and be done with it. He thought it would be much better for the computer industry if that took place. This guy obviously doesn’t give a damn about computer users and consumers anymore.
That’s impossible! Running any software smoothly under Windows is a dream!
would I not buy it, but I’d make sure to spread as much bad PR about illegal monopoly tactics as possible.
Are you talking about the Epson EPL-5700L or the EPL-5700? The first is a European model and it is known as a “winprinter” (think “winmodem”) and has trouble running under the current version of CUPS. The second is a North American model and it works very well with hpijs/CUPS.
Agfa Scanners have had a rough history under Linux. Some work, some don’t.
As far as the trackballs not working, let me express some doubts…
The original point stands, though. If you want to use hardware on a Linux system (or a Mac, or even a Windows system) do a little research first.
John C. Dvorak *is* irrelevant. Always. Remember this.
Joe:
From google on:
Epson EPL-5700 linux
First hit:
http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-EPL-5700
Quote:
============================================
BW laser printer, max. 600×600 dpi, works Mostly
Recommended driver: hpijs (Home page, view PPD, download PPD)
Generic instructions for: CUPS, LPD, LPRng, PPR, PDQ, no spooler
Edited Notes
Works OK but only in 300 dpi mode. 600 dpi is mostly OK but some glitches appear in text.
This printer is not to be confused with the European-market EPL-5700L, which is a winprinter for which there is only partial support for now.
User Notes
Works perfectly at 600dpi with hpijs/CUPS.
=========================================
Time to find it: 15 sec.
====================================
Agfa scanner (you didn’t mention which model number)
From google on terms: agfa linux scanner
First 2 hits:
http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Hardware-HOWTO/scanners.html
http://www.buzzard.org.uk/jonathan/scanners-usb.html
First hit, quote:
24.2. Alpha, Beta drivers
Agfa Focus, Focus II (SANE agfafocus)
Agfa Focus Color, Focus Color Plus (SANE agfafocus)
Agfa Focus Lineart (SANE agfafocus)
Agfa Arcus II (SANE microtek)
Agfa StudioScan II, IIsi (SANE microtek)
Agfa SnapScan 300, 310, 600 (SANE snapscan)
Second hit, quote:
Agfa
Snapscan 1212U, 1236U, e20, e25, e26, e40, e42, e50, e52
This scanner apparently uses the same command set as the Agfa SCSI scanners. However a firmware download is necessary before the scanner can be used. Further information, copies of the firmware and firmware download scripts can be found at the SnapScan SANE web page at http://snapscan.sourceforge.net/
=======================================
Time to find the hits: 15 sec.
You don’t mention the models on the webcam, or the trackball, or the raid controller, so I can’t answer driver support for them.
================================================
It bothers me when people complain that Linux doesn’t
have driver support for peripheral foo. Let me give you
a little lesson on logic. Manufacturer Bob makes some
peripheral called foo. Bob chooses to
a) Not provide a Linux driver for foo
and
b) Doesn’t provide hardware specs so the Linux community
community could make for him (for free) his Linux driver.
Now here are some questions to think about:
1) Who is at fault here? Bob, or the Linux community?
If you answer Bob, give yourself a pat on the shoulder
for showing good sense. If you blame the Linux community,
give yourself a boot to the head and see if that helps
to restart the thinking processes.
2) As a capitalist, trying to maximize profit by increasing the available demand for product foo,
does it make sense for Bob not to provide drivers
or provide specifications to the Linux community?
If you say “no, it doesn’t make sense” give yourself
another pat on the shoulder, maybe get yourself a nice
cup of java, or a good, ice cold beer for a job well done.
If you say “yeah, it makes sense”, I suggest the
shampoo treatment: boot to the head, and see if your
head is working right. If it isn’t, try it again.
The most common and stupid excuse given here is that
if the manufacturer were to provide hardware specs,
his “competitors” could then steal his technology
and make a better product. This is asine, because his competitor doesn’t really care, he shops at the same
supplier as Bob does for his components, he makes
his own (cheap) design that does the same thing. In
fact, it would be harder for his competitor to waste
time reverse-engineer foo, than roll his own instead.
3) If Bob has to pay a royalty fee to a hypothetical
company (call it Macroshaft) for his driver to work
on a Macroshaft OS, but doesn’t have to pay a royalty fee
for a Linux driver, does it make sense for Bob to ignore
a free market for him?
If you answer “no”, it’s bonus time. Go out and party,
you’ve demonstrated you’re a good capitalist and should
give some thought to starting your own business. If you
answered “yes”, I’m sorry I can’t help you if you don’t
want to be helped.
I think Dvorak thinks too much in terms of typical proprietary IT paradigm. He should, for example, read Bruce perens’ article “The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source”: http://perens.com/Articles/Economic.html
I suppose MS would only be welcome to contribute to the Linux world, be it MS-Linux or not, but there’s no way MS could ever control the Linux market the same way they have dominated the (naturally MS dominated) Windows world. For example, we would still have hundreds of alternative Linux distributions just like before besides of the new hypotethical MS-Linux with its supposedly better driver layer. Linux kernel development would still be done in a collective and cooperative open fashion where no single person or company can dictate the future.
MS Windows world is an example of very proprietary mono-culture, while Linux and the GPL is all about freedom and cooperation. Freedom to sell or give away free, to make modifications and customized versions etc. You also have to be willing to co-operate with the rest of the open source community because that’s where the whole power and action of open source is. Lone greedy players just don’t seem to succeed in the open source world in the long run.
Besides, why would the driver layer Dvorak is talking about be so all-important? Thousands and thousands of people are succesfully using Linux even now, without any such extra driver layers. (Granted, for example, many hardware manufacturers should have better Linux drivers.)
He’s always saying stupid stuff like this. Putting Windows drivers on Linux would help it, not hurt it. It would be utter disaster for Microsoft in the meantime.
1) It would widen Linux’s hardware base. Microsoft can’t keep the driver loader closed source, for the simple reason that anything that expansive and in the kernel is bound to require enough access to the kernel internals as to be considered a derived work by the GPL. Even if they theoretically could, they’d be at the whim of the kernel developers with regards to compatibility. I suppose they could fork the kernel, but at that point, there is zero benefit to MS, because they just have another codebase to maintain.
2) It would widen Linux’s software base. Microsoft blessing Linux would cause a surge of software ports. Now, MS could try to fork the API too, but that’d be impossible. First, any such fork would require that the changes be made available under the GPL, so they couldn’t keep it diverged. Second, forking the API is impractical. If you fork in the first release, then the OS will have no software to run. If you fork in a later release, ported Windows software will break along with Linux software.
Actually, I hope MS follows Dvorak’s advice. Then, they’d just be relegated to pushing a Linux distro!
It’d help at first. But MS would simply keep it a couple steps behind to make sure that its hardware compatibility is bad. And at the same time companies would say “yay, now we only have to release windows drivers!”
I think the bigger question is:
How much code would have to be rewritten to even make it technically pheasible?!
Patents are Linux achilles heels. Companies can own patents, but Linux can’t really own any (unless someone incorporates some kind of official Linux corporation that can own all the patents used by Linux and rented to companies to use.) That means that Linux can never build a portfolio of patents. Also, companies can pay to use patents. Microsoft can license fonts, technology ,etc. Linux can’t really do that. So basically, if a few companies want to kill Linux (like Sun and Microsoft), they just have to file for a whole bunch of really good patents and send a cease and desist letter to anyone who is using Linux “illegally” or submitting code into Linux “illegally”.
The important concept to bear in mind when discussing software issues with Linux apologists is the “Linux Fault Threshold”. Clever use of this concept helps you to avoid losing your temper with someone who might actually be able to render practical help. The Linux Fault Threshold is the point in any conversation about Linux at which your interlocutor stops talking about how your problem might be solved under Linux and starts talking about how it isn’t Linux’s fault that your problem cannot be solved under Linux. Half the time, the LFT is reached because there is genuinely no solution (or no solution has been developed yet), while half the time, the LFT is reached because your apologist has floundered way out of his depth in offering to help you and is bullshitting far beyond his actual knowledge base. In either case, a conversation which has reached the LFT has precisely zero chance of ever generating useful advice for you.
Here’s an example taken from IRC logs to help you understand the concept.
user: Why won’t my fucking Linux computer print?
linuxbabe: what printer r u using?
user: I don’t know. It’s a Hewlett Packard desktop inkjet number
linuxbabe: hewlett r lamers. they dont open source drivers
<——LFT closely approached!
linuxbabe: but we reverse engineered them lol. check the web. or ask hewlett for linux suuport??<—— but avoided, he’s still talking about the problem
user: Thanks. I already did that. But I can’t install the drivers on my fucking computer. I’ve got a floppy disk from HP, but my floppy drive is a USB drive and Linux doesn’t have fucking USB support.
linuxbabe: linux DOES have USB support!!!!!!
user: yeh for fucking infrared mice, and for about a thousand makes of webcam it does. Get real here. For my fucking floppy disk drive, I am telling you through bitter experience it does not. Even if someone has written the drivers in the last week which I sincerely doubt, how the hell am I going to install them given that my floppy drive doesnt work????? this ought to be in the kernel. what good is a fucking operating system that doesnt operate?
linuxbabe: Imacs dont have floppy drives at all
<—– useless point, but not LFT. All apologists make pointless jabs at other OSs
linuxbabe: so you ought to be greateful that Linux does. drivers like that shouldn’t be bundled in the kernel makes it into fucking M$ bloatware. bleh download drivers from the web!!!! apt-get is your friend
user: So everyone keeps telling me. Unfortunately the fucking modem doesn’t work under Linux either, and since the Linux installation destroyed Windows, that leaves me kind of fucked.
linuxbabe: Linux doesnt destroy windows
user:mandrake installer does. It “resized” my Windows partition and now the fucker won’t work
linuxbabe: you shuold have defragmented. windows scatters data all over your hard drive so the installer cant just find a clean chunk to install into. it isn’t linux fault
<—- distinct signs of LFT being approached
linuxbabe: that windoze disk management blows
user: so why doesn’t my fucking modem work?
linuxbabe: what computer hav u got
user: A Sony Vaio PCG
linuxbabe: that doesn’t have a modem
user: I assure you it fucking does. I used to use it to check my email back in the days when Windows worked.
linuxbabe: its got a winmodem. thats not a modem
<—– nitpicking over technical terms is a sign of impending LFT
user: what do you mean?
linuxbabe: a winmodem isnt a proper modem. it just uses proprietary windoze apis. doesnt do the work of a modem at all.
user: Very interesting. Now how do I get the fucker to work with Linux?
linuxbabe: well the trouble is that micro$oft won’t open up the drivers they just keep it proprietary and becos theyr a monopoly all the lameass manufacturers fall into line
LFT REACHED !!!!!
user: So in other words, my fucking modem is never going to work with Linux at all?
linuxbabe: no no no. in the first place you never had a modem you had a winmodem. in the second place its M$ fault that the drivers are closed and you can go to jail for trying to reverse engineer them like this guy dimitri skylab and the DMCA. its nothing to do with linux that M$ fills the world with its proprietary crap
user: But in terms of actually getting my computer to work with Linux, I get the impression that it won’t?
linuxbabe: M$ should have to open up the drivers have you read CatB? and vaio sucks because they won’t open up their standards either.
user: Congratulations on wasting half an hour of my life, you fucking loser. And stop pretending to be a fucking woman. Your advice is useless. You, and the other hundred members of the so called fucking Linux community for which you stand, have broken my computer, wasted my time, patronised me senseless, revealed your lack of real knowledge, patronised me again and you *still* can’t get something as simple as a fucking laptop computer to fucking work. Your so called free fucking software, like your so called fucking free advice, is still too fucking expensive. I cannot believe that you have so little fucking self-respect that in order to find the attention you clearly crave, you have to spend your life lying about the usability of a fucking computer operating system, purely for the joy of creating problems which you can then pretend to solve. You are worse than a fucking fireman who sets buildings on fire. I have had enough of your fucking Munchausen-by-proxy version of tech support. Now get off this fucking channel, hunt down someone who knows what they’re fucking doing and bring them here or I will never, repeat never, use your fucking system ag ….
Not so fast buddy..
First of all software patents are not valid everywhere, secondly any kind of advanced and in many cases not so advanced software development you are likely to infringe on someones patents. IE if you go after someone you are opening up yourself as a possible target for counter-action. And considering IBM has the largest patent collection of them all I doubt very much that they’d sit down and take it if you were about to try to duke it out on patents. In fact they have already IIRC used a couple of them in their counter-suit against SCO..
Software patents serve two purposes. The first is as the business-variant of the MAD-doctrine (Mutually Assured Destruction – nukes.. ) if you like. The second is as a convenient way of cementing the market by providing an easy way of killing competitors who have too few patents or not enough dough to take it to a court. Now, that doesn’t work with linux since pretty much every major player except MS has their fingers in the linux cookie-jar… In other words, if they tried anything like this they’d probably be in a world of hurt.
This guy is great. Technology experts i say… He’s even more fun that Rob Enderle…
Seriously though… MS Linux is, as a true Microsoft product, even more overdue than Longhorn:
http://mslinux.org/ “MS Linux: Shipping in November 2003”
ah yeah… almost forgot this: </sarcasm>
This guy totally misunderstands what is good about Linux drivers.
I’ll take one instance, sound card drivers.
Under Linux, there is a unified driver layer, ALSA, and the legacy OSS. Any ALSA mixer can control any ALSA card.
Under Windows, you can communicate to the sound card via ASIO, WDM, MME, GSIF (Gigasampler), PureSound (Echo), EASI (Emagic), Vxd (good ol’ win98). All have totally incompatible mixers and propriatory interfaces.
Some cards support some of this collection of APIs, some support others. It works, but it’s messy, and without porting the card’s mixers as well, and large bits of Windows’s kernel it would be a nightmare on Linux.
This article is essentially garbage engineered specifically to drive linux enthusiasts to the site and discuss it on forums like this. It’s not even that interesting or thought-provoking. If Microsoft has any strategy in the works to “kill” Linux (and it almost certainly does), I’m going to guess that will almost certainly be of the baseless patent litigation variety and that it will most likely not involve any real software engineering on Microsoft’s part.
of a world where i dont need drivers as every soundscard, network card or whatever else have a set of standard commands that its supposed to understand and a set of ids indentifying the hardware to the kernel. that is true plug and play, similar to usb hid and storage standards. plug it in and forget about it.
but then we have mess like this cdrom that used a cd-writer signal to initiate a firmware upgrade sequence. still, if linux or similar could query the item to see what it is then one would not have to send a writer signal and see if the drive sendt back a ok or a error.
this is why proper standards are good!
What pre 2000 distro of Linux are you using?
Compiling a kernel to use new hardware, what crap. Have you ever heard of driver modules? Been around for quite a while, research (a simple search on the net will help) the module you need and then as su/sudo in a terminal type “modprobe (module name)” and hit return. If it works then you have the right module and you can then add it to your modules.conf in /etc or like the rest of us Arch Linux users to your modules line in rc.conf
How fn hard is that? Oh, and no reboots needed.
NEXT!
If you use Linux and don’t bother checking prospective hardware compatability with Linux then you are a MORON.
Usually I like Johns articles, because they make you think, but not only is this not possiable its also not business wise for Microsoft. By making a Microsoft Linux it would directly compete with it’s own Windows products and waste tons of money and research with a good chance of MS Linux working better. Who wants to look like a fool spending millions on an OS that has been defeated by another OS that was intended to be a hobbie? If I were Microsoft I would concentrate all my efforts into making Windows better.
…then MS-Linux will cause Linux market-share to increase, Windows will die out and then all new drivers might aswell be written as native linux drivers, Microsofts driver-layer will only be needed for legacy hardware, after that, why would anyone buy MS-Linux?
But Dvorak is way off base here anyway, the major stumbling block is Windows application compatablity, you can work around the driver issue by choosing the right hardware. If Microsoft made a Windows API emulation layer (like WINE, but actually works well), then they might have something viable to base MS-Linux on.
All this is completely hypothetical because Microsoft won’t embrace linux until they are dying and have no other choice.
Its Office
Seriously, if Microsoft created a lower cost Version of microsoft Office for Linux, it would create a rift (follow me here) because then you could have the Office compatability on Linux, this, would drive up adoption, primarily in the corporate market, where such compatability is important. Then Microsoft would just have to let the product flounder a bit, have it almost = to Office on windows for a time (think Office X on mac) then, offer meager updates before silently abandoning the Software in a few years, The Microsoft Office on Linux people will more then likely migrate of Microsoft Office 2009 on Windows when the compatability shift kicks in ala Office 97/2000.
Plus Microsoft looks good for releasing its flaship product on Linux for a time before it became “not financially soluble”
It works the same way, if Microsoft wanted to kill Mac, they would just stop creating office for it. While Joe-Public would not stop purchasing Mac’s No one in a coporate invironment would go near them.
The 100% compatability Factor with Office keeps people in need.
Now I know Open Office and Star Office and Koffice all come close… but for buisnesses, it needs to be 100%, you don’t need to whip up a presentation in open office and have it looking like ass when your potential customer opens it in Microsoft Office.
And thats my stance on the whole thing.
Didn’t somebody once make a version of Linux that translated windows drivers to linux drivers on the fly? Some company in Montreal? Or was I dreaming?
Simple question, how many people are now using their window wireless drivers? I know I am with gentoo
HEY! what are you all talking about??? yes this guy is right, absolutely right! can’t you see this? W$ drivers on Linux would kill it…
… in the BSOD sense 😉
I know that the Elsa Gloria L workstation video card I used a while back was the reason I used Linux on that computer.
There were only WinNT drivers for this card (until it was totally out of date and they released a shaky win95 driver), so if you wanted to use win9X you were out of luck.
Then I tried Mandrake, and it worked without going “driver hunting” or any special configuration…
I was happy to have an easier time getting the system up and running under linux. Better for me…
People in the past have made similar agruments concerning
Microsoft in the past, such as “why would anyone in their right mind chose NT over netware? A product that is still far superior to any thing they have to offer?” or ” Sure, go ahead and keep the rights to the operating system, everybody knows that the money is in the hardware…”
Dont be so ready to count them out. They have a knack for taking risks that proves just about everyone wrong. A lot of times what seems the obvious results of what may happen are not even remotely close to what actually occures
I see lot of people moaning and grumbling about how Linux doesn’t support some hardware. I don’t think you really get the idea of open source. The truth is you should write to the manufacturer of the hardware. They are the ones not supporting Linux and it isn’t some lazy open source developer not supporting the hardware. I choose to use Linux because I choose not to do business with a monopolistic company with history of repeated unethical business practices. It’s a conscious choice I made and also I only buy hardware that will work with Linux. You can chooose to buy Windows and use all the hardware you want but it’s gets really old when people complain about spyware and viruses afterwards. Even if I was to put my personal ethics aside, I think doing the extra work to research which hardware is supported is well worth the effort of protecting my private data. Frankly they can also choose to buy a Mac Mini and be done with those problems just as well. There are enough choices out there that playing the “victim” card no longer works. I simply don’t have any sympathy for the people who think they have no choice but to use Windows and suffers from poor quality of the product. I’m not shedding any tears for some guy out there that’s a victim of identity theft because he clicked on some attachment and now the Russian mob cleaned out his bank account. Everyone makes choices and they have to live with consequences of those choices. Blame game is over folks. There are viable alternatives even if it’s a road less traveled.
Lack of a consistent Linux GUI is the main reason I use Windows on my main work system, drivers aren’t such a problem. But drivers did stop me from using Linux on a media centre PC I built. Buying an extra copy of Windows was a lot cheaper that replacing my expensive sound card and video capture card.
Even when there are drivers available for Linux they’re often limited and a lot more hassle to use. In Windows all my graphics card options are available in a nice GUI that’s accessed through an extra tab on the display control panel. The last time I tried linux (Mandrake a few months ago) all the advanced options (including dual headed display settings) were only accessible by editing a config file. Many options required X to be restarted, while in Windows I can change just about any option instantly.
I couldn’t find any way at all to access the surround sound features or optical TOS-Link connector on my sound card, it only worked in basic stereo with the Linux driver. While in Windows I can access all my sound card settings instantly through an icon in the system tray. That’s very useful as I want different setting depending on whether I’m listening through headphones or speakers.
Maybe all that will be fixed in the future, I plan to have another look at Linux in a year or two. But at the moment it’s problems stop me from running it on any of my PCs.
If Microsoft produced a version of Linux then I’d definitely try it, especially if they created an elegant Windows style GUI for it. But why would Microsoft do that? I can’t imagine it ever happening.
I have been read many How To’s in Linux Doc site…
Why don’t you guys put this How To’s to Linux Doce site, it will be a great humor after we all read the (real) Linux how to’s.
what’s so special about that so-called top secret middleware thing? colinux has been out for ages
“Well some on have said that hal and other stuffs in these new Linux generation, have less problems with drivers”
Hal is nothing but a stupid high level wrapper, it abstracts apps from drivers or low level apis like alsa. It’s not like like windows hal which actually abstracts hardware details like interrupts, dma channels, power management etc from the drivers. There is no coherent linux driver model other than having a /dev entry and using posix syscalls.
Been around for quite a while, research (a simple search on the net will help) the module you need and then as su/sudo in a terminal type “modprobe (module name)” and hit return. If it works then you have the right module and you can then add it to your modules.conf in /etc or like the rest of us Arch Linux users to your modules line in rc.conf
How fn hard is that? Oh, and no reboots needed.
Like config file editing and compiling apps from source, that kind of thing is fine for Linux geeks. But do you really expect normal users to be willing to deal with that?
It may be easy enough once you’ve spent time researching kernel modules and reading FAQs and HowTo guides. But you’re delusional if you think that most people are willing to do that just to install a driver. Most people are used to an OS where drivers are installed with a couple of mouse clicks, not with CLI commands and file editing.
I don’t believe it’s even possible to somehow unbolt the ‘driver layer’ from windows and graft it onto Linux like some software chimera. At that level they’re fundamentally different designs. The whole point of drivers is to glue the hardware to an abstracted layer in the OS. This sounds more like quackery from powerpoint guys who’ve been staring at ‘abstraction layer’ boxes for too long. Look at how long it took them to create a unified driver system for WinNT and Win9X. How many people here have had the same Win32 API call behave differently in Win9X, WinNT/XP, and WinCE? This sounds closer to computer philosophy or metaphysics than actual computer science.
Yeah, they had linux running under Windows as a task, it’s called machine virtualization. You might have seen it in VirtualPC, VMWare, etc.
I’ve seen idiots waste there time making linux run on a casio watch
I’ve seen idiots make linux run on an xbox
I’ve seen idiots make linux run on a beaowulf cluster of ipods.
I’ve seen idiots make linux run on a texas ins. calculator
I’ve yet to see an idiot make a layer/program/kernel that accepts windows drivers as native drivers.
it can’t be that much harder. if a popular devices comes out someone hacks a driver and makes it work (Hello iPod, webcams, even WINModems… funny)
why? No clue. i guess it’s more fun to make linux run on everything except an x86 computer.
(Yeah! i’m drunk and the spelling sucks!)
“Lastly we already have PnP capability in linux via HAL and drivers are now almost on par with windows so the article is kinda irrelevant.”
Hate to say it, but I’ve been hearing (and, alright, saying as well) the same/similar things for years now…”we just got XXXYYY support, and our drivers are almost as good as windows anyhow”….this despite having about half a dozen unsupported pieces of hardware floating around my apartment and the same number of poorly/partially supported ones
I have been trying to make a conscious effort not to say “our driver support is almost as good as windows”, partially because it plants the idea both in the speaker and listener that one day (soon) driver support for linux will be as good as that for windows – but obviously that won’t be so unless linux has as much mindshare (essentially, marketshare) as windows, and while I would quite like to see that happen, I don’t see it happening ‘soon’
The other reason I don’t say it any more is because I’m just sick of it. Whenever I buy hardware, I spend the requisite time (not that long, by my standards) firing up a few web searches looking for firsthand accounts of linux users with the hardware I’m thinking of buying. If driver support was “almost” as good as windows’ I wouldn’t bother, or would spend a lot less time doing this as I’d have the assumption that by default XXXYYY piece of hardware would have (good) linux drivers.
Of course, I’m not meaning to belittle the awesome work of people satifying their geekish (by my standards, anything lower-level than C is well into hardcore geek territory) urges by reverse-engineering open source drivers for pieces of hardware as diverse as HDTV tuner cards and wireless lan cards, but what I am saying is that their (laudable) efforts are never going result is drivers as complete, as quickly produced, as those written by the hardware companies themselves – for windows
Yeah? Well I’ve seen idiots try to run Windows on an x86 Computer!
now thats stupid… and dangerous
Something I forgot to mention in my previous post – IIRC ndiswrapper lets you use windows drivers for a few diff things – wireless lan cards and modems being two I’ve heard of – so hasn’t what john dvorak was talking about (bringing the vast range of windows drivers to linux) already been started….by an bunch of open-source guys, not MS?
Dumb to do for Microsoft. If you write software and you can choose between writing it for OS A or OS B who can also run OS A perfectly than you are an idiot if you don’t choose OS A (everything else being equal). This is also why the number of software titles that can run on windows XP and not windows 98 is so minimal (outside those that are system tools for XP like defraggers, virusscanners etc.)
ps. Writing a API compatible kernel too linux isn’t that difficult. All the BSD have it (they may have used part of the linux code). The big problem for an OS seem to be the drivers as the rest can be done by a few smart men.
Does ndiswrapper not windows drivers for linux and isn’t the same true writing to ntfs
While many attack the author, take a few moments to consider that he may be onto something regarding the ‘possibility,’ of Microsoft doing something close/similar to what he has proposed.
Imaging Microsoft coming into the world of Linux under the guise of friendship while having a secret agenda to kill Linux and end the competition.
If Microsoft decided to develop it’s own Linux Platform, it would probably come with an enormous driver-base that would make most of us drool.
However, my past dealings with Microsoft have me feeling that they’re out for them, and they are quite shrewd in their long-term plans & objectives.
I know that I’d be quite skeptical of Microsoft coming to Linux, even with the best driver support,
No thanks…. Any offer from them would cost too much later on.
Eugenia
I have a Kworld card (a UK DVB-T one) and vanilla 2.6.10 with the patches from bytesex (http://dl.bytesex.org/patches/ )
Works a treat. Didn’t on stock vanilla or any vendor kernels. Have made a deb or you can have the .config if that helps
dmesg | grep card
cx88[0]: subsystem: 17de:08a6, board: KWorld/VStream XPert DVB-T [card=14,autodetected]
cx88[0]/2: cx2388x based dvb card
hth
george
I don’t know if anybody else has read this month’s Wired. It has an article that is essentially a letter from Linus to Bill set in the near future where Linus actually works for Microsoft. The letter addresses the developement of Winx (the Win API on top of the Linux kernel). This sounds strangely familiar to Dvorak’s article. The only difference is that Dvorak seems to miss the point.
This wouldn’t be anything new. Yes, Dvorak unfortunately does this for a living and this isn’t the first article of his that I read that just seems to be missing the larger picture
Rather irrelevant at the moment considering so many comments,but Dvoraks slant( and i really dont mind dvorak)just doesnt pan like someone who has actually used linux very much. Ive run mandrake,redhat,slackware, damn small,knoppix, and ubuntu on my machine( a piece of crap at that ,asus A7s-vm(puke) with an athlon 900 and 512 meg..80 gig.. and on board everything) and have never ever needed to do any fiddling at all with drivers. Not once. I can even access my digital camera, without the cameras software kit. Things are seldom that easy with ms…
Man, you’ve got some serious problems. The ex-windows user has had attitude from the word go, if he’d been in my irc channel he’d have been kicked and warned first for language, and then kick-banned.
The ex windows user has not done any research at all, if he had he’d have realised that resize for me can destroy data (and it’s recommended to backup prior to resizing). Partition Magic has the same warning.
Winmodem – I would have put it in a different manner, but the irc person is pretty much correct.
You simply cannot blame Linux for lack of drivers. Hardware manufacturers enshroud their hardware in secrecy, they do not contribute to the Linux community (well most of them). They use things like DRM/DMCA to hide their hardware drivers. You tell me how Linux can write drivers under those circumstances? You’re being a very unreasonable person in your demonstrative examples.
You’re assuming that all “online” support for Linux is like this IRC snippet, it isn’t. And remember – these guys are providing support for nothing, out of their own free time and love for open source/Linux. Be appreciative.
Dave
I don’t care what Microsoft does, or even Linux for that matter. I use FreeBSD, which is developed by the people who use it. It cannot be killed and it will never die. All this Windows vs Linux stuff is like watching children argue. I’ll use the same editor and email program 20 years from now that I used 10 years ago, and that’s the reason I choose to use it!
Linux has more drivers and supports more hardware than any version of Windows.
It’s a fact. Get over it.
This isn’t new – Dvorak has advanced this theory previously. However, he’s losing sight of one critical piece of information – Microsoft won’t abandon proprietary Windows unless its profit making potential has clearly passed and its proprietary nature makes it a liability. Translation – it would have to cost more to develop, support, and market a proprietary OS than to port the Windows APIs (.Net and possibly COM) and driver model to an open source OS. If MS were to make the shift, the easiest way around the GPL limitations of Linux is simple – use the approach Apple used and coopt a BSD distro instead.
Is it possible? Yes. Will Microsoft do it? No, not now. Windows is still a HUGE money maker for Microsoft. Will it happen eventually? Possibly. The OS marketplace no longer allows for the care and feeding of multiple proprietary OSes – during the shakeout during the 90’s and early 2000’s, the market winnowed down to Microsoft Windows and Unix-like OSes. All the other proprietary OSes were abandoned by their sponsors (OS/2, Netware, Banyan Vines, BeOS, etc). Why? Simple economics – for the same reason MS might eventually abandon their own proprietary OS – it wasn’t cost effective.
I am not trying to be rude but this is a very old argument.
Times change. Companies change. Technology changes.
I am old enough to remember when AT&T was a huge company. Then it was broken up. It was in turned aquired by its parts. The last chunk of the company may be purchased by SBC. MCI used to be power player. Now its almost gone and being purchased by Quest.
Redmond may be the top of the pile today but it is facing a competition from open-source software.
When companies refuse to encourage competition in their local monopolies – they eventually shoot themselves in the hind end (to put it politely).
Dvorak has been doing this tounge-and-cheek stuff for years. I stopped reading his articles years ago since I get bored to tears with the same formula.
The reason FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, all flavors of Linux are appealing to countries, corporations, local governments, and large group of individuals is because it gives them control again.
“So you came here to say that you don’t care about the article and have nothing to say.”
No, I came to say there is another alternative.
“That was a nice bit of wankage.”
I’m glad you liked it, even if you didn’t learn from it.
“Now crawl back back under your FreeBSD rock.”
No, I’ll continue to be happy with my OS while people like you cry in your beer.
You internet tough-guys are quite common, lol.
The premise is stupid. One of the beauties of Linux is actually its driver support because they are built into the kernel and that’s why once they are set up they just plain work. This may not be such a big deal now that Windows finally got PnPlay working but we all remember W95 when it was plug and pray and it was those very problems that made people begin to sound the Linux trumpet.
I enjoyed John’s article. He thoroughly enjoys stirring the pot and proposing interesting scenarios. M$ could develop their own version of Linux. However, I don’t see that changing the computing landscape.
Most people are not interested in Linux and would not adopt a M$ version of Linux in any case. I’m an avid Linux user; I don’t use M$ products at home. At work I need to use M$ proprietary software to do my job. I’ve found that some people express mild interest in Linux, but, not many people want to try it out.
The average user wants a computing experience that is convenient, easy. Linux will gain acceptance over time, but, it’ll be an evolutionary change.
M$ won’t crush Linux. Linux users would never run a M$ version of Linux. Why would windows users want to use Linux?
John’s article is interesting and a little silly.
I enjoy Dvorak’s articles, even if they can’t all be taken seriously. I remember sometime last year he was touting MorphOS as the OS of the Future. GPL, well supported, friendly GUI etc etc. Unfortunately it seems to have died
Dvorak is off his rocker (and yes, he always writes crazy articles like this). Let’s assume it is possible to make this Frankenstein MS-Linux. Will all free software developers stop creating free software because they don’t want to support Windows? Highly unlikely. Free software like OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Apache are partly so popular because they run on Windows as well as Linux.
It is hard to see Microsoft helping yet more free software get a larger audience and increasingly become another standard. What would be their money maker if they helped undercut MS Office?
Tainted simply means there is gpl incompatible code running in the kernel. And of course it would, you really think Microsoft would release under the gpl?!
But you’d have to know what you’re talking about to realize that.
It’s easy. If you want to kill Linux, kill its community.
I enjoy Dvorak’s articles, even if they can’t all be taken seriously.
Right, they are mostly enjoyable reads, funny and thought provoking. Although he seems to use the same plot a lot. He takes some factoids and mixes them with fiction to take them so far in one direction he is able. Starting again from the same set he could have reached the death of Microsoft just as well. He probably tossed a coin first to choose.
Dvorak could have written another article in the same fashion: “Hey let’s graft wings to my car so it can fly”.
Bad article from an author with no technical understanding.
Sorry, but buying hardware on the spot without researching it first is really not a good idea, even if you’re on Windows.
No regular people ever do it. They buy it and it’s supposed to work. If it doesn’t work, ask for a refund. Only geeks (0.5% of buyers) look for linux compatibility before buying.
That scientifically accurate figure is comparable to the number of computer users using Linux then.
Now, maybe people don’t look for drivers, but many look for info before bying into something. In Eugenia’s case , she took a calculated (very high) risk by bying something as exotic as a TV-card without looking up info on drivers for Linux, reviews about the quality of the hardware etc etc etc. While it’d be nice to have Linux et al support every piece of hardware under the sun it clearly isn’t the case.
Just let Microsoft read and follow his ideas 🙂
wtf? was he just bored and decided to rehash a cringely article? i mean, really.
read these two articles from 2 years ago: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030123.html and http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030529.html
dvorak hasn’t had an interesting article in years. i’d say he ought to just stop but i guess he’d then be left scratching his head looking for another job he isn’t qualified for…
“NOBODY CARES WHAT CRAPPY OS YOU USE.”
Wrong. I care. See how easy it is to prove you wrong?
I’m going to guess you are 15 going on 16, and that’s probably giving you too much credit.
Keep posting, you make a great clown! LOL
I think that if Microsoft were to go tho Open Source route because Proprietary OS’s became unprofitable for some reason (think Linux) it would not be with BSD or Linux. I believe they would simply open source WINDOWS because that is the platform that their other bread and butter software (Office, Microsoft games, Mocrosoft hardware drivers etc.) runs on.
Some of the above comments are missing the point. Linux geeks and open-source fans will at first shrug at the idea of such a frankenstein’s monster and continue using whatever distribution it is that they use, while most companies and enterprises who don’t care much about open-source idealogy will switch very quickly indeed.
As time passes by, MS will gain market share in the Linux sphere and then the Linux developers (I’m talking about the guys who develope the kernel, not apps for linux) and their sponsors and well-wishers (IBM, Novell, Redhat) will realise that all their hard work (and money, in the case of sponsors) is making MS even richer, and no one in the open-source world wants that. As a result of this, says John C. Dvorak, most developers will opt out of the Linux camp and the OS will die.
It might just happen, even though I don’t want it to happen. As many complaints as I have against Linux and it’s fanatical league of followers (I’m a BSD fan myself), I would not want it to die, at least not at the hands of a company like MS.
“Why pay 20 million dollars to Linspire when they could have crushed them? ”
How could thay have crushed Lindows???
In fact MS was the one taking the risk of having windows
considered a generic word “official” which it is.
So it was MS paying, right.
* looks at his collection of Debian installs. (5)
* looks at his collection of Debian installs on PPC hardware. (5)
What’s this “BUY” ?
In my annual “I’ll try to use linux as a desktop again and see how far things have progressed” of 2005, I came to the same conclusion I’ve come to since the first time I tried to install linux in ’99- the hardware isn’t the problem. The interface is the problem.
Forget hardware. Gimme transparent application compatability (I’d settle for something that functioned even half as well as Classic does in OS X) – something that’ll run the entire Adobe suite.
Oh, and <a href=http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/“>Quicksilver.
How can this idea kill the Linux philosophy ?
Linux philosophy is : when you buy a PC, you want it to run without buying an additional software (the OS).
It also means : when you buy a video card, you want it to be supported and exploited.
And the author says “(…)Or the user could pay for the Windows drivers and attach those to MS-Linux, resulting in an OS that had the PnP benefits of Windows(…)”
I simply don’t understand this paper.
I’ll never PAY for drivers, i already bought the hardware !
That could be under Windows or GNU/Linux, i don’t care !
I should’ve mentioned – though I’m sure at least fifty or so of the hundred comments before mine already have – that Dvorak is right about as often as it rains lava in New York.
Somebody who’s been predicting the death of the Macintosh since TCP/IP stacks were still third-party user-installed add-ons thinks he knows where computing is going? The only thing separating him from a blathering retard in a homeless shelter is that whoever’s paying him is even less cluefull than he is.
😀
Windows drivers aren’t that good either, ejected a dvd out of windvd and WinXP froze, it kept running when I could finally kill the application.. but accessing optical drives seems always a bit trouble some or unnecessary slow …