Re: how to buy hardware
Hi.
Yes, you are right, but whether there are any other ways for getting
information about Linux-friendly hardware?
I didn't find them.
Sincerely,
wanderlust.
У сб, 2007-09-22 у 17:24 +0200, Guido Guenther пише:
> Hi,
> On Sat, Sep 22, 2007 at 01:02:35PM +0300, wanderlust wrote:
> > Well, there are two ways, and 1 of them you found.
> > The second way is to check whether device is supporting for work in
> > Linux with the manufacturer.
> The problem here is that Linux hardware support from vendors usually
> means having binary blobs in either kernel modules (see nVidia, ATI) or
> closed source userspace drivers (see Epson, HP) and having to compile
> your own kernel modules, ghostscript or saned or whatsoever to even get
> this binary only crap working. The consequence being that they won't be
> included upstream - ever - for good reason, of course.
>
> This adds an additional maintenance burden, especially in large
> environments, where you have dozens of different printers, scanners,
> etc. and don't want to have different software versions around, just to
> support this broken concept of a "driver". It furthermore defeats all
> the added flexibility you get from free software:
>
> a) being able to maintain a driver for as long as you need it
> b) being able to upgrade to newer versions whenever you want to
> c) being able to fix bugs the vendor doesn't fix (at least as long as
> enough specs are available)
>
> The certification ideas of http://linuxwireless.org/CertificationIdeas
> make lots of sense especially as it would enable non geeks (as found in
> the buying departments of large organizations and companies) to choose
> and buy Linux friendly hardware. Vendors should really start putting
> "open source linux drivers available" stickers on their products.
> Cheers,
> -- Guido
>
>
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