Linux Driver Support Still Leaves A Lot To Desire

[johnc]

IME driver support is pretty nice out-of-the-box... but if you do have any problems, you're in a world of hurt unless you're a technical person. I've had some real fun problems but it was somewhat trivial (yet annoying) for me to fix... but ordinary desktop-oriented folk would be beyond screwed.

The question I have is whether or not the driver problems are because hardware vendors don't support Linux due to lack of consumer demand... or if the hurdle is more focused around the philosophy of kernel development (e.g., unstable API) or the license issues.

[ninez]

I am, of course, referring to PRESENT TIME, CURRENT HARDWARE, with a specific emphasis on MY current hardware. 10 years ago, yeah, it was a pain in the ass getting anything working on Linux. EVERY DAY it gets easier. Its been a few years now that it has been EASIER to get hardware working on Linux than on microshit. It is now TRIVIAL, while it is still like pulling teeth to get anything simple working on microdeath.

What part of 'recently' did you not understand, exactly? i am not talking about 10 years ago, i am talking in terms of 2010-12, on my machines and other people i know -> ie: *VERY RECENTLY*. ...And again, there is nothing trivial about hardware being poorly supported, buggy (or not being able to use certain features), having to manually configure things or it not being supported at all. - You obviously just don't use much crap beyond generic stuff - otherwise you would know better.

Fair enough, that you are putting 'emphasis' on your own situation - but you make it sound like these problems, don't even exist - which obviously they do. Half of what you wrote i was easily (without even thinking about it) able to point out real-world examples and shortcomings.

My absolute favorite microshit driver problem is LAN drivers... because you can't even download the rest of the drivers until you have those working.

Yeah, i don't worry about MS problems, unless i am being paid to do, so however, it is pretty trivial to jump on another machine, download them, put on a usbstick and then install them on the other machine. It's also fairly rare that the OEM doesn't include them when you purchase a machine. (i personally have never run into this LAN problem, and part of my job is MS admin.)

I'd also like to point out (in reply to another of yours above). It isn't only 3d professionals that require good acceleration and support for things like OpenCL. For example, Gimp a non-professional image editing suite uses GEGL - does support OpenCL (from git anyway) - I would love to see an OSS driver can beat my Nvidia in how fast operations happen. I would not want to use a piss-pot slow OpenCL implementation with Gimp - that is a serious usability issue (slow!).

it seems like you just lok at your own use cases, and pretty much say @#$$ you, to everyone else. You should stop making silly assumptions on what other users requirements are and should be.

[droidhacker]

This is not fact, more likly it a myth you are trying to start. Googleing for ""fedora 17" "not working on my"" gives about 51k hits, mot of them hardware related. ""fedora 17" "not working with"" will serve you another 233K, instead of wasting every bodys time here you should probably go help out some of the unfortunate useres with your magical advice.

Uh huh? You know how a google search works?
(1) it will give you many duplicate links,
(2) it will give you, despite quotes, links with missing terms (add in all references to "not working" that aren't associated with f17)
(3) it will give you all the links where the same person complained about the same thing in a thousand different places,
(4) it will give you links to every different post within the same thread.

Your search is flawed.

Maybe try searching for similar thing against microshit. Instead of tens or hundreds of thousands of "hits" (whatever meaning you attribute to that...), you'll get BILLIONS.

[droidhacker]

What part of 'recently' did you not understand, exactly? i am not talking about 10 years ago, i am talking in terms of 2010-12, on my machines and other people i know -> ie: *VERY RECENTLY*. ...And again, there is nothing trivial about hardware being poorly supported, buggy (or not being able to use certain features), having to manually configure things or it not being supported at all. - You obviously just don't use much crap beyond generic stuff - otherwise you would know better.

Fair enough, that you are putting 'emphasis' on your own situation - but you make it sound like these problems, don't even exist - which obviously they do. Half of what you wrote i was easily (without even thinking about it) able to point out real-world examples and shortcomings.

Problems exist with EVERY complex system. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Simple fact is that microshit has MORE and WORSE problems.

If you don't agree with that, then GO BEND OVER FOR STEVE BALMER.
A warning though: He uses CHAIRS.

Yeah, i don't worry about MS problems, unless i am being paid to do, so however, it is pretty trivial to jump on another machine, download them, put on a usbstick and then install them on the other machine. It's also fairly rare that the OEM doesn't include them when you purchase a machine. (i personally have never run into this LAN problem, and part of my job is MS admin.)

I'd also like to point out (in reply to another of yours above). It isn't only 3d professionals that require good acceleration and support for things like OpenCL. For example, Gimp a non-professional image editing suite uses GEGL - does support OpenCL (from git anyway) - I would love to see an OSS driver can beat my Nvidia in how fast operations happen. I would not want to use a piss-pot slow OpenCL implementation with Gimp - that is a serious usability issue (slow!).

it seems like you just lok at your own use cases, and pretty much say @#$$ you, to everyone else. You should stop making silly assumptions on what other users requirements are and should be.

Gimp does not require 3D acceleration.
MS says fuck you to *EVERYONE*.

[johnc]

My absolute favorite microshit driver problem is LAN drivers...

Get a motherboard with a Realtek r8169 NIC and load Linux on and enjoy some fun. Pretend for a moment that you're just an ordinary, non-technical guy that doesn't know anything about compiling software, installing kernel modules, or even about how to diagnose random hard freezes.

This is an example of why vendors like Gigabyte say "just use Windows".

Not that you can really blame Realtek about it... their driver works flawlessly and is GPL'd. So in theory any fixes should make it into the kernel some day (if they haven't already).

[glock24]

Well, I've been a Linux user since '98. Since then, I've had many computers and I've installed several flavors of Linux on them.

From my experience, hardware support has been better under Linux than under Windows. Most of the hardware worked out-of-the-box under Linux. The most problematic parts were always video cards, and one or twice the sound card. Some printers work even better under Linux, some others work partially or don't work at all unless you install some additional software.

HP printer are supposed to have strong Linux support. Most of them do, and work great, but some others need additional bits to get it working. The best example are the cheapest lasers and inkjets, that need a firmware blob to be loaded during initialization. Some Canon printers require a special driver provided by canon, but it's usually not updated and tends not to work on newer distros (for old printers). Brother printers and AIOs require a special software provided by the manufacturer. Most other brands work out of the box.

Some years ago webcams were either a hit or miss, but nowadays I have yet to see a webcam that does not work.

I've always had relatively new hardware (I tend to replace my computers one a year), and I like playing games from time to time, so that means either nVidia o ATI video card. This is the only reason I still have Windows installed. Gaming under Linux has always been problematic, with either proprietary or free drivers. There are always artifacts and/or performance problems on most games (free and paid). I tend to prefer ATI GPUs because OSS has usually been better and even the binary blob worked better than nVidia's. I've had the following GPUs: ATI 8500, 9600, Xpress200, X1250M, HD2600M, HD3650M, HD4650M, HD5670, HD6850, HD7690M; nVidia RivaTNT, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce4, GeForceMX, GeForce4600Ti, GeForce5200, GeForce7600M. The mobile chips are always more problematic, as early support is usually flaky or nonexistent; only after a couple months does proper driver support come. Power saving features are hit or miss with OSS drivers. Binary drivers usually have good power management.

My wife's laptop is a Gateway T1628 with Radeon X1250, which is and odd example of a computer working better under Linux than Windows 7. Under Windows HDMI out does not work well (artifacts, flickering), video and audio get corrupted after sleep, and it comsumes more power. Under Linux HDMI work flawlessly, and there's no problem after putting the computer to sleep.

My last laptop (Asus F8Va) had a Radeon HD4650 (I upgraded it from a HD3650), and everything worked great, except for video acceleration. 2D was faster with the OSS driver, but power consumption was high (~10-15W higher). Turning on power saving features with KMS just locked it up, so I had to use fglrx. Total power consumption was overall lower under Linux than under Windows by about 2W.

A little desktop I put together with and E-350 worked flawlessly out of the box, and also consumes a bit less power under Linux.

My current computer (Lenovo y470p) has switchable Intel/AMD graphics. Under Linux the dedicated GPU does not work with neither the fglrx nor the radeon driver. The Intel driver works well. But even under Windows the switchable graphics is a PITA, as only the factory supplied driver works. Overall power consumption with the dedicated GPU disabled in BIOS is higher under Linux. I get ~5h battery life under Windows, but about half that under Linux. USB3 support worked out of the box under Linux, it's flaky under Windows (sometimes external hdds do not work at USB3 speeds or lock with big transfers).

Most wireless adapters (PCI, USB) have had very good Linux support. Some years ago Broadcom chips were a real headache, but now supports seems good. Some Atheros chips have flaky drivers that give either bad performance or do not work right (eg. drop the connection).

I've never had problems with ethernet adapters.

Sound cards on some laptops usually had the wrong mapping of inputs/outputs, requiring a parameter during module loading. This has not been an issue since some 4-5 years. I have a 5.1 USB headset (Arctic P531) that works out of the box, and every other USB headset I've tried did too.

[gamerk2]

Yes, hardware support is one issue. But don't miss software support!

Windows installers kind-of suck from a packaging perspective, sure. But installing some piece of software designed for Windows is usually a piece of cake. Software designed for linux but not packaged for the local distribution is often a pain to get working! (Audio issues, dependencies, etc.) This is important, and distro-dependent solutions are not enough!

Ding ding ding. No idea why you even HAVE distributions with different out of the box driver support...makes it hard for the person using Linux for the first time, goes from distribution A to distribution B, and suddenly, half his HW stops working. Guess what he blames?

[gamerk2]

In Windows most of the drivers are provided by the hardware vendor, sometimes it work and sometimes it doesn't; when it work it's cool, but when it doesn't work you have an unusable hardware component and your hands are completely tied.
In Linux the community, in most of the cases, doesn't have the support of the hardware vendors so they do the best they can, other times the hardware vendors provide driver but doesn't care enough to make them work properly (proprietary or not), in such cases the community try to fix it but sometimes (proprietary drivers) it's impossible.

As you can see, you can be stuck in both OS's, the main difference is, when you get stuck in Windows you can do near to nothing to fix it, in Linux at least there's a chance to get it working even if the hardware vendor ignores you.

By the way, what happens with all these hardware components with Windows XP only drivers? In Windows sometimes the backward compatibility simply doesn't exist; how much 10 years old hardware components are no longer supported in the Linux kernel?

I think that all the OS's have their strong points and their weak points, and compare them partially doesn't have very much sense.

PD.: Sorry for my poor english.

1: Thats why MS has the WHQL program, which has solved a LOT of the problems with poorly written drivers.
2: The majority of HW released has both XP and Vista/7 drivers. In a few cases, independent developers *gasp* have created ones that work. In other cases, the default OS driver is at least partially functional with the device in question. No offense, Linux isn't going to win the HW support argument over Windows.

[gamerk2]

Uh huh? You know how a google search works?
(1) it will give you many duplicate links,
(2) it will give you, despite quotes, links with missing terms (add in all references to "not working" that aren't associated with f17)
(3) it will give you all the links where the same person complained about the same thing in a thousand different places,
(4) it will give you links to every different post within the same thread.

Your search is flawed.

Maybe try searching for similar thing against microshit. Instead of tens or hundreds of thousands of "hits" (whatever meaning you attribute to that...), you'll get BILLIONS.

Something to do with the size of the user base, prehaps?

Your search is flawed.

[gamerk2]

Well, I've been a Linux user since '98. Since then, I've had many computers and I've installed several flavors of Linux on them.

From my experience, hardware support has been better under Linux than under Windows. Most of the hardware worked out-of-the-box under Linux.

And...most hardware doesn't work out of the box for Windows?

Sound cards on some laptops usually had the wrong mapping of inputs/outputs, requiring a parameter during module loading. This has not been an issue since some 4-5 years. I have a 5.1 USB headset (Arctic P531) that works out of the box, and every other USB headset I've tried did too.

Out of curiosity, does the full feature set of the Auzentech HTHD work on Linux yet? I mean, USB headsets are about as basic a device as you can get, and Linux took years to get THAT working right...