Non-free Extras?

[Rudolf Kastl]

2006/2/23, Ivan Gyurdiev <ivg2 at cornell.edu>:
>
> > >From personal experience i do agree. simple example:
> >
> > socket 939 nforce 4x board fc4 vs winxp pro sp2 integrated:
> >
> > FC4: everything working out of the box no additional drivers needed
> > besides raid didnt work in the installer. (known problem)
> > Rawhide: Raid controller works out of the box aswell
> > WinXP pro SP2: Onboard nic not working at all and downloading of
> > driver not possible since no working NIC.
> Can we please stop posting meaningless examples?
>
> Six years ago, when I started playing around with Linux I couldn't get
> my Lucent winmodem to work, and Red Hat would not support it (which was
> infuriating for a paying customer).

There was always a hacked windows driver that worked just fine... no
source for it though so how would an open source company support it?

Its quite a different deal with hardware that doesent have specs
available. For someone migrating to linux it can be bad luck... for a
long time user of linux with the intention to have stuff working i see
2 options:

1. reengineer it and write a driver
2. get the vendor to release specs and someone to write a driver
3. or buy hardware that works

again my centrino laptop has no wireless problems and i dont need the
ndiswrapper crap either ;)

regards,
Rudolf Kastl

p.s. i see no point here either to get more indepth of the topic.

 Today, my wireless card does not run
> out of the box. By the argument you present above, I should conclude
> that Linux has made no progress in six years. Right now we're at 50%
> supported hardware (yours works, and mine doesn't).
>
> 05:08.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212
> 802.11abg NIC ( rev 01)
> Installation of the Windows driver clearly not possible, so I'm in no
> better position than you on WinXP.
>
> --
> fedora-devel-list mailing list
> fedora-devel-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>