Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1030270AbVLFWD7 (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Dec 2005 17:03:59 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030274AbVLFWD7 (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Dec 2005 17:03:59 -0500 Received: from main.gmane.org ([80.91.229.2]:6069 "EHLO ciao.gmane.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030270AbVLFWD6 (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Dec 2005 17:03:58 -0500 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: Nicolas Mailhot Subject: Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 21:39:19 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <1133779953.9356.9.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <20051205121851.GC2838@holomorphy.com> <20051206011844.GO28539@opteron.random> <43944F42.2070207@didntduck.org> <20051206030828.GA823@opteron.random> <1133869465.4836.11.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <4394ECA7.80808@didntduck.org> <1133880581.4836.37.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org User-Agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) X-Loom-IP: 81.64.157.3 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051129 Fedora/1.5-1 Firefox/1.5) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2666 Lines: 48 Arjan van de Ven infradead.org> writes: > There are lots of opportunities to put pressure on vendors, either > direct or indirect. Nvidia has a support department. If they get enough > calls / letters about their solution not being good enough, they're more > likely to consider the rearchtect solution. Indeed a single centralized complete online hardware database (with hardware rated according to driver support level) would go a long way to put real pressure on vendors. We know how to set up one for gnome/kde themes surely it'd be possible to create one for hardware ? (not the current nebulae of semi-complete overlapping projects, menuconfig entries, blog notes, linux-kernel notifications) But this requires _kernel_ _people_ cooperation. You're the ones who know what works and what doesn't. You're the ones who know which corporations are helpful. You're the first people users contact when they have new hardware they'd like to make work. You're the ones who know which drivers you're currently working on. The PCI ID database can be maintained without kernel people intervention. A "linux-friendly hardware" database can not. Right now getting hardware advice is a long and painful process. Hardware that works is only semi-documented. Hardware which doesn't isn't at all. Users have to comb numerous on-line databases and mail archives (full of obsolete/wrong info) to spec a single linux-friendly system. Few people bother to answer hardware advice requests on mailing lists. Linux users could reward friendly hardware makers if only you bothered to point them the right way. That is : - list publicly working hardware as soon as the kernel driver is ready - list publicly non-working hardware as soon as someone enquires for a reference which does not work. There's no magic. Hardware makers do all kinds of stupid stuff to please review sites. Review sites are influential because lots of people buy stuff based on their advice. Lots of people follow review site advice because review sites centralize info about all kinds of hardware, so you don't have to comb the web to find it. As Groklaw has shown - if you manage to do complete coverage of a subject, even an obscure subject like IP laws or Linux drivers, you suddenly get quoted everywhere. But to reach that stage you mustn't go halfways but record meticulously info about all the hardware you know of. -- Nicolas Mailhot - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/