[fab] slashdot question -- driver support

[Rahul]

Max Spevack wrote:
> another fun one for any of your thoughts.  My guess is that most of the 
> answer to this question is a philosophic one about proprietary vendors 
> versus open source drivers, but I wanted to throw it out there.
> 
> -----------
> 
> 2) Drivers Vs Linux
> (Score:5, Interesting)
> by eldavojohn
> 
> A lot of people I talk to say they don't like Linux due to lack of 
> driver support. Is there anyway you see this problem being eliminated? 
> How do you court vendors to support their hardware on your flavor of Linux?
> 
> ----------

Linux does support a whole lot of devices by default and by some 
considerations the maximum ever in any operating system 
(http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html) . In general, 
Linux kernel developers prefer having more devices supported by default 
in the upstream kernel as opposed to having individual drivers 
distributed by other means.  This is in long term is the right idea and 
the Fedora Project is strongly in favor of having everything upstream 
and reducing the number of patches that we carry in any package and that 
includes third party drivers in the Kernel even when they are open 
source ones.

Having said that, there are situations where there is a longer lag time 
between the availability of latest hardware and the distributions 
supporting it especially when the hardware vendors themselves dont 
provide the specifications or directly provide and maintain the drivers 
themselves and even include it before the actual hardware release which 
is increasingly the prelevant choice.

There are also things like trade secrets, third party copyright 
licensing, patents and contracts which are allegedly the issue with some 
vendors retaining proprietary drivers. With 3D drivers as a obvious 
example of this problem,  vendors like Intel 
(http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/) looking to increase its base and 
undercut competition by supporting its cards with open source drivers. 
AMD making some similar noises it simply makes better business sense for 
other vendors to proactively do the same or atleast react to the 
competition.

Red Hat has been working with many vendors promoting and helping them 
support their devices through open source drivers with development, 
integration and testing and the benefits are shared by all 
distributions. There is also a Red Hat effort 
(http://www.kerneldrivers.org/)  which is already integrated in the 
latest Fedora development tree that can be useful to prevent the 
hardware support lag time.  There is also DKMS in Fedora Extras.

The current situation is the desktop and client side has a parallel to 
the server side status of Linux a few years back. With more market share 
and vendors competing with each other to have a bigger chunk of it we 
are likely to progress more and support things better over time.

Rahul