On Linux-friendly manufacturers (was: Re: Linux friendly Mainboard, Video, and Sound Card Manufacturer?)
On Jan 15 2005, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
> Scotty Fitzgerald wrote:
> >I was wondering if there were any known manufacturers of
> >Mainboards and Video, and Sound Cards who are known to develop
> >their product with Linux in mind.
It seems that SiS is a Linux-friendly manufacturer, since they apparently
give enough documentation and help with drivers for their devices.
Another company that seems to be Linux-friendly is Realtek, but I'm not
that sure.
> We've been through this before and you are basically on your own. I now
> have an Abit KT7A and an Athlon 850MHz.
Yes, going through this is not an easy thing, especially if you want to use
Open Source software only, with graphic cards in particular being a
nuisance, given the current state of things.
I'm still using an Asus A7V motherboard with VIA KT133 chipset and a Duron
600MHz processor. The problem that I have is that the current processors
that AMD seems to be producing nowadays aren't fit for my motherboard and
PC133 RAM is not the cheapest to get, since the technology shifted to
DDR-SDRAM.
And now, with this x86-64 thing and SATA, I think that my system is really
way outdated.
In other words, I am stuck my desktop. At least, it works quite well with
Linux. I only wish it were slightly faster for some tasks (like compilation
of large projects and messing with LaTeX together with Emacs).
And it would be nice if there were review sites (like Anandtech and Tom's
Hardware) that had more focus on Linux and Open Source drivers.
[]s, Rogério.
P.S.: One of the nice things about devices with Open Source drivers is that
you can potentially use them with another architecture. For instance, I
grabbed a Realtek 8139 card and plugged it into an old Powermac 9500/180MP
running Linux.
It worked quite well after I recompiled my kernel with support for the
card, something that would probably not be that easy if the drivers didn't
have their source open.
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