Winmodem drivers, space hogs
As co-maintaainer of the Linmodem-Howto, probably I can best help on
drivers for winmodems, which are increasingly prevalent in new PCs and
laptops. The drivers alone are in the 200-500 kB range. Support for the
Lucent, HaM, and IBM mwave chipsets comes as compiler kits which
additionally need ~1 mB kernel-header packages (though only essential
headers could probably be cut out).
Once the kernel-version of the release is fixed, will it suffice to
provide compiled drivers, or are we Legally obligated to use the
compiler kits with some proprietary binary components?
This is a subsidiary nightmare that on some PC hardware, DIALTONE
acquisition is still an unresolved problem. Very few Users have had an
easy time with Conexant (formerly Rockwell) binary only drivers with
support only upto 2.2.17? currently.
For all Linux distributions, many Newbies are now getting the base
installations OK on their $400 rebate PCs with WinModems, but it may
take many rounds of email to the List discuss@linmodems.org, before they
can abandon Microsoft for ppp communications. Additional, some IP
services, Compuserve for one, do not support Linux dialups. For a
backgrounder, glance at:
http://walbran.org/sean/linux/linmodem-howto-all.html
MarvS
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