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Linux Driver Support Still Leaves A Lot To Desire

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  • #71
    Originally posted by birdie View Post
    Where credit is due: major Linux problems
    Yes, a list of BullSh!t.

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    • #72
      Originally posted by crazycheese View Post
      Yes, a list of BullSh!t.
      Whether you like it or not, there are many users aggravated by most of what appears on that list. But I guess you either don't care about other people's problems or you're too enveloped in your own perfect world that you just don't want to see it. There's none so blind as those who will not see...

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      • #73
        Originally posted by crazycheese View Post
        This is "thin" initramfs, there is also "fat" initramfs.
        Most distributions consider there can be problems when new hardware is attached, so they either include "fat" initramfs or regenerate it automatically.



        It is not possible since windows 3.1, and every single my attempt has failed from there, because of HAL, driver integration (infestation) model and such things as NTFS streams.
        Repair option will just mess up the system. It is clearly stated by microsoft that REINSTALLATION is required when changing hardware.

        I thought that your microsoft masters have instructed you about it, so stop FUDing.
        I've done it before, but it requires similar hardware, especially regarding SATA/IDE drivers. For example, if you upgrade from an Intel chipset to an AMD chipset (or vice versa), you are probably screwed. However, if you go Intel to Intel or AMD to AMD, it might actually go quite easily. I went from 880G to Llano with no issues. Can't say exactly how an Intel leap would go, as I haven't ever attempted it. When I went AMD to Intel, it never booted right, no matter what I uninstalled or removed from device manager. Another big one is to remove graphics drivers before changing companies. Not doing so is almost a certainty of failure/issues.

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        • #74
          Originally posted by crazycheese View Post
          It is not possible since windows 3.1, and every single my attempt has failed from there, because of HAL, driver integration (infestation) model and such things as NTFS streams.
          Repair option will just mess up the system. It is clearly stated by microsoft that REINSTALLATION is required when changing hardware.
          It is possible to migrate a Windows installation to another computer, but usually it isn't or is troublesome (random crashes, slowdowns, etc.). I've tried several times, with WinXP, Vista and Win7. Sometimes, if you have similar hardware it works. Still, one time a computer's motherboard died, replaced the motherboard with a similar one (same chipset and all, but different brand) and it entered a BSOD loop. Some other time I migrated from totally different hardware platforms, and Windows booted and recognized most hardware and mostly worked. Successful migration of a Windows installation to new/different hardware is not guaranteed, unless you use sysprep. Even sysprep is not bulletproof, as it has f*ed working windows installation requiring a reinstall.

          With Linux it mostly works, given that your IDE/SATA drivers are in the init ramdisk image.

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          • #75
            Originally posted by glock24 View Post
            It is possible to migrate a Windows installation to another computer, but usually it isn't or is troublesome (random crashes, slowdowns, etc.). I've tried several times, with WinXP, Vista and Win7. Sometimes, if you have similar hardware it works. Still, one time a computer's motherboard died, replaced the motherboard with a similar one (same chipset and all, but different brand) and it entered a BSOD loop. Some other time I migrated from totally different hardware platforms, and Windows booted and recognized most hardware and mostly worked. Successful migration of a Windows installation to new/different hardware is not guaranteed, unless you use sysprep. Even sysprep is not bulletproof, as it has f*ed working windows installation requiring a reinstall.

            With Linux it mostly works, given that your IDE/SATA drivers are in the init ramdisk image.
            How's win7 compared to XP when swapping the actual harddisk? I remember XP crashing when you swap a harddisk. You'd need special tools to adjust certain things in the OS/registry and then some.

            Granted, with certain distributions, that use UUID's for mountpoints, you need to update those references as well when swapping disks, or update the UUID on the drive to match


            Lots of stuff going on in this thread. Some right, some just utterly wrong.

            Linux, is like the 3 legged dog. It's not perfect, it's slowly improving and getting better, but you just have to love it.

            Like in the real world, many people wouldn't want the 3 legged dog, some will kick it and shove it away. But this little puppy, is the cutest and sweetest of them all. It's also amongst the smartest. It will learn anything you teach it. Sometimes it bites, but you just have to remember, it's a young and growing puppy and just doesn't know everything yet. You don't even have to pay the puppy shelter it was born from, as they will be happy it has a good home to go to. Donations however are as always welcome.

            Everybody else wants Chihuahuas/poodle. It's a vile little creature. It may look all pretty and perfect, but when your not looking, it'll pee in your shoo's. It's not well behaved and barks at everybody. It wants to be the only dog on the block and will do anything it can to remain that way. You can't teach it any new tricks, it came pre-trained from the kennel. Most really don't like their dog, but that's the only dog that's affordable, the beagles are somewhat better, but way to expensive. Well, this one is infested by incest diseases and won't last more then a few years. And even you can just get another one in a year or two when it has gone, if your unlucky they've discontinued breeding this kind and you'll have to settle with the new one, with its own quircks and annoyances. Just after you sorta where able to deal with this little bastard. Oh, and that free dog from the puppy shelter? there? Bah, who wants an ugly 3 legged mutt.

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            • #76
              Basically you can clone win7 and use it on similar hardware. Similar means first of all the controller should work with ahci driver. If that is not the case it is always bad. If you use ntfsclone to clone the partition you have to use a hexeditor/dd to clone the serial number of the hd as well - 4 bytes at offset 440. Usually you can boot it - win8 even goes one step further when you use it as win8 to go on an usb hd. The problematic part however begins when you dont use oem activation. Even when the hd serial is the same the rest of the system is different and you have to reactivate. In that view linux is much better, no activation needed. You can install onto usb hd as well and as long as you use network-manager (because you will get different ethX devices) you can go online easyly. As long as you use the oss drivers you can boot it anywhere you have got support for the gfx chip. Well i even extended that and wrote a gfx autodetection for binary drivers but fglrx stopped working for xserver 1.12 on 64 bit and therefore i can not create an iso image with it. Wake up amd!

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              • #77
                Why I have to run Windoze

                I'm an old-time Linux user from the early 90s. Recently, with considerable reluctance,
                I've made the decision to run Linux on top of VMware on top of Windoze on my laptops.

                There are 2 main reasons:

                Hibernation does not seem to be reliable.
                Lack of usable support for USB monitors.

                I understand that the Linux kernel community has its priorities, but
                laptop support seems to be somewhere down on the list. It would
                be a big boost to my confidence in using Linux if some serious
                attention were paid to these items. Some kind of diagnostic
                tools are needed to let everyone know when a driver is crapping
                all over the kernel space, or if memory was corrupted during
                a hiberate/restore cycle.

                I'd go and help out, but I have a day job.

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                • #78
                  I read Phoronix regularly, but never felt the need to post before.

                  Hardware support is the biggest problem I have in Linux. Sometimes it's very good, other times it's just awful.

                  I'm currently running Arch and a recent update killed the brightness controls that worked fine on my Sony laptop for over a year. I could probably fix it, but I'm not sure that I can be bothered.

                  On the same laptop, a bug at the time I set up the OS means that the trackpad was detected as a PS/2 mouse. The VGA out is stuck at a low resolution and I've not been able to find a fix.

                  On my old Dell laptop, Debian could always find the wireless card, but it never found the wired card. Ubuntu worked with both out of the box. I started using it as a server a few months back and there were some problems with the graphics (yes, even just on the command line!).

                  I think that graphics support is incredibly important. Going back 15 years, I'd have said that the PC was the best gaming platform, but over time I've decided that it's just not worth it (for me at least) to keep upgrading just to be able to play the latest games. I've flipped between consoles (NES, SNES, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360) and PC over the years, but since the Xbox, I've not gone back to the PC. As such, I stopped caring about the GPU in my machines.

                  That's changed recently though, with just about everything trying to be GPU accelerated. Even Adobe Reader uses GPU acceleration (on Windows at least)! The benefits of dedicated hardware for video decoding are also clear. Using my AMD GPU in Linux feels like a very second class experience.

                  I think Linux is certainly better than Mac OS X in this regard. Plugging in a supported device in OS X produces the same response as plugging in an unsupported device - i.e. nothing. I get that Apple's going for simplicity, but when you plug in a printer and it has no driver for it, the least it could do is help you find one.

                  Windows on the other hand to me has always been good for driver support. I've never had a driver (from either Windows Update or the manufacturer directly) that doesn't work properly.

                  The only difficulty is in finding drivers for older hardware when moving to a newer line of the OS (particularly pre-Windows 2000/XP).

                  Sure a lot of stuff doesn't work "out of the box" and needs you to get the driver, but at least you can be pretty confident that you'll find one.
                  Last edited by Daveoc64; 21 June 2012, 08:10 PM.

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                  • #79
                    Linux/Windows driver support

                    I agree about OS/X & WIndows driver support - Nobody does as good a job at supporting third-party
                    hardware as Microsoft. The real problem at this point is that they may succeed at locking Linux
                    off the desktop with UEFI.

                    OTOH, they may commit corporate suicide with W8. That would be fine by me, as long as I get
                    all of the W7 licenses that I need.

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                    • #80
                      Originally posted by bittwiddler View Post
                      I agree about OS/X & WIndows driver support - Nobody does as good a job at supporting third-party
                      hardware as Microsoft. The real problem at this point is that they may succeed at locking Linux
                      off the desktop with UEFI.

                      OTOH, they may commit corporate suicide with W8. That would be fine by me, as long as I get
                      all of the W7 licenses that I need.
                      Well, MS has a huge advantage in dictating driver standards. Where else are hardware manufacturers going to go? Apple barely offers upgrades beyond drives and RAM, save the low-volume MacPro (which does not support many PCIe devices anyway). Device makers mostly have only one real option for profit, and that's to offer driver support for Windows, the OS that has the highest marketshare. Sadly, while most devices work in Windows, they occasionally suck. I've had some LAN and WiFi issues in the past on Windows (recently, I might add).

                      As for UEFI locking out linux, I might need some clarification. I've installed Ubuntu on 2 UEFI machines already. It just requires a small EFI partition and then it's all good. I believe Windows 8 was at one time planned to lock down the bootloader, but I think MS may have backtracked a little on that one, probably to keep from being sued. Even then I think that was more for WindowsRT devices.

                      As you said, Windows 8 is very make or break for MS. People are already needing the full power of PCs less and less, and I think that's why MS is gambling hard on a tablet OS. Problem is, they might be shooting themselves in the foot by making the PC experience so confusing. If people think global menu hiding is bad, what about totally hiding menus and functions off into hot corners? Toss in the jarring Metro-to-classic window experience, and I get the feeling people will not be fans of the change. I see it as a Vista moment, where people will be begging for downgrading to 7, thus extending its support well past Windows 9.

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