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Submit hardware specifications to the Linux Driver Project

9540 points posted to Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Linux by upstaked 10/05/07 **REVIEWED**

Back in January kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman from Novell started a project offering companies free Linux driver development.

This proved so successful that Novell made it his full-time job and turned to a project with over 200 kernel developers: http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/ .

So Dell, submit specs and convince your hardware providers to do so too. I want to spend my money on great new hardware that runs on Linux.





We constantly work with our hardware partners to develop and maintain open-sourced drivers. Also, we make it clear that through their own developers (or other projects like the Linux Driver Project) they need to deliver on drivers.






cosh
10/07/07		 Wow two hundred kernel developers... that's like... a million people.... But what a brilliant idea to create free drivers! I do hope Dell get their parts manufacturers involved with this. They've nothing to lose!
jack.ripoff
10/13/07		 Yeah sure, brilliant!

Except OpenBSD has been doing this for over a decade... and without NDAs!
izach
10/14/07		 Nothing new, and BTW why only Linux, and not Windows?
jorge
10/14/07		 No body wants it, there is no idea for it, not even a category.
coolen
10/20/07		 Why not Windows? Windows already has drivers for pretty much all hardware on the market. If a company wants to create an open source driver for Windows, it's really only a matter of releasing the source, rather than rewriting their driver for a different platform.

For the Windows market, there's no incentive to release an open source driver anyway. It won't matter to the user: either they've bought it pre-installed with all hardware already enabled, or they installed it themselves, and nothing works anyway.

With Linux, on the other hand, an open source driver means that their hardware can work out of the box with no configuration. Linux isn't a huge market, but it's growing slowly, and in this market, the major deciding factor when buying new hardware

It's a good idea to at least make the hardware providers aware of the option, and the benefits. After all, it costs them nothing.
upstaked
10/28/07		 Pretty sad indeed... it does look like nobody wants it. There are a few companies with highly specialized devices that asked for their help, but none of those that matter, making "vista-ready" hardware ending up in our PCs.

See http://driverdev.linuxdriverproject.org/pipermail/devel/2007-October/000182.html for what's been happening lately: their are growing in number, and don't have enough requests from companies. So they started considering community drivers for merging into the main tree, as well as creating a list of drivers needed: http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/DriversNeeded .
desertc
10/30/07		 Great idea!! Greg has been begging for new projects and for companies to submit new hardware specifications.
dwood
11/15/07		 yep. I still think that Dell should partner with Novell more than with their current "contract"
azuriel
12/01/07		 Free, open, high quality drivers are the biggest roadblock to widespread Linux adoption. If Dell puts its weight behind this project, I'm sure it'd go far.
cjsouza
12/20/07		 Great idea. I don't use Microsoft Windows.
flgalera
Feb 29		 I bought an inspiron 1525 with vista. The same computer is sold with ubuntu preinstalled also in Spain. My computer has a ethernet card marvell yukon 88E8040, that simply does not function with ubuntu 7.10. I bought this computer because i thought it will have no problems with Linux, but... Dell should have fix this problem telling the manufacturer to provide the drivers.
matt_d
Mar 6		 I applaud GregKH's efforts. He is doing an outstanding job of bringing visibility to the Independent Hardware Vendor community about the need for fully functional Linux device drivers, and brings resources to the table to help get those drivers written and maintained. Excellent work!

For Dell's part, we have been very successful in working with our partners to develop, and maintain open-sourced drivers in kernel.org. We have certainly relied upon the Linux community to assist in this effort, but we also make it clear to our hardware partners that it's something we expect them to deliver, either through their own developers, or through projects such as the Linux Driver Project. We will continue our efforts to ensure that Dell hardware "just works" with Linux.
kara_k
Mar 6		 Changed status to **REVIEWED**.
 
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