Dne, 31. 12. 2010 21:08:27 je Doug napisal(a):
On 12/31/2010 12:50 PM, briand@aracnet.com wrote:On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:03:24 -0500 (EST) Stephen Powell<zlinuxman@wowway.com> wrote:Manufacturers are not doing this because the consumer wants it. Theyare doing it to cut costs./snip/they get away with it because most people run windows, the mfr provides the driver, and when it breaks, people expect it because it's windows./snip/You will always be in trouble with hardware under Linux because of theWhy does it bother you that the driver is a binary? Are you qualified to modify it if you had the source code? Certainly 99% of us are not, norlack of mfr's drivers, and when they do provide drivers they are generally binary objects, e.g. NVIDIA. It's very frustrating, so I for one appreciate your rant :-) Brianwould we want to if we could. In the immortal words of Anne Landers, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
Precisely the problem. I had this problem with at least two pieces of hardware: - a Belkin PCMCIA wireless card that lost any support about 2 years after I purchased it. No Windows after XP support it. As opposed to that, I can easily make it work in Debian via ndiswrapper. Now just imagine if that driver wasn't binary: Linux volunteers would probably support it for another 10-20 years. - the in-built Broadcom wireless card in my laptop. Has been having problems from the very beginning. Uses a binary blob. In my experience, if there was no binary blob, and the development was handed over to the Linux community, the card would probably work without a hitch.
Just my 2¢. YMMV I just don't TRUST proprietary developers. -- Cheerio,Klistvud http://bufferoverflow.tiddlyspot.com Certifiable Loonix User #481801 Please reply to the list, not to me.