Foxconn Does Hate Linux Support

[Chewi]

They are only one of the largest OEM motherboard manufacturers around, if not the largest.

Heh okay. I guess their boards for Dell and HP aren't branded under their name? My last machine was a Dell but I swear I've never heard the name before.

[yoshi314]

well they can't really hope to sell any of their mainboards (regardless of model) to be used in server environments, can they ;-)

if they want to stick to vista - so be it. i'll wave them goodbye. btw, i've never heard of that company before. and i surely hope i won't hear about them again.

btw. what happens if you use *bsd with that mainboard?

[deanjo]

Or all of this can be attributed to a innocent BIOS bug and the end user is dealing with a techsupport agent who is giving canned responses instead of dealing with the engineers directly.

[DanL]

Well, at least Foxconn shows its true colors and feelings about the FOSS movement, unlike VIA, which hides behind a mask (that's not quite as opaque as they would like to believe).

[c0un7d0wn]

Remember this billg email about acpi?

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowa...00/PX03020.pdf (pdf)

[_txf_]

Or all of this can be attributed to a innocent BIOS bug and the end user is dealing with a techsupport agent who is giving canned responses instead of dealing with the engineers directly.

Although it is strange that they would include specific linux functions when they claim linux is not supported, surely it would have been easier not to include a seperate table for linux in the first place? If they got the bios from somewhere else i.e. ami, why would they make the effort to modify it when they could leave it as is and just not answer linux support calls?

But I would agree that the tech support does not know anything (in my experience they never know anything), I wonder if the negative publicity will make them say anything meaningful from a proper source i.e. not gormless tech support.

[deanjo]

Although it is strange that they would include specific linux functions when they claim linux is not supported, surely it would have been easier not to include a seperate table for linux in the first place? If they got the bios from somewhere else i.e. ami, why would they make the effort to modify it when they could leave it as is and just not answer linux support calls?

Perhaps it was on the plan, you have no way of telling if it was completely done by one coder, taken over by another coder, etc etc. Mistakes do happen. If they didn't there wouldn't be BIOS updates to fix bugs period. Hell take a look at pretty much any opensource program, There are hundreds of examples of code that contain incompleted functions.

Some people jump to conspiracy conclusions way to fast instead looking at the most likely reasons to why something happens.

"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_Razor

[stan]

Thanks for the warning, Phoronix

I'm going to stay as far away from Foxconn as I can, and will warn other Linux users to do the same. This active aggression and collusion is going to be really useful in an anti-Microsoft suit, especially in Europe and South Korea.

[deanjo]

Some updates in the thread @ ubuntu

HI

just to say as am from Foxconn, No we dont deliberately sabotage the bios
Plus the person who replyed to the email did not understand Linux

but we will have the bios fix sometime next week and at the same time a relook at how we are testing are boards with linux.

since this board should have been tested.

please dont flame me

heAlmightyCthulhu am sending a message hope you will reply

thanks


UK Technical Manager

but i think the board in the early stages had problem with acpi for vista and was fixed.
but so i think your seeing the remain of the tested code, which should have be removed.

not the first time i've had to have acpi fixed on are boards
and will not be the last

This is a more realistic scenario then a company "sabotaging" a product. Notice the response was within 24 hours. Honestly, some people have to start looking at situations with a level head.

[_txf_]

Well that probably answers that. Either way problems like this won't occur to users with kernels >2.6.24

However I still think the whole noise was more or less justified, otherwise I doubt anyone from foxconn would bother replying.