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Taiwan mandates Linux-ready PCs (ZDNet Asia)
ZDNet Asia
reports on a directive from the Taiwanese government that requires
Linux compatibility for new desktop PC purchases.
"The Central Trust of China, Taiwan's government procurement agency, has commissioned the Taipei Computer Association (TCA) to ensure that bids from PC vendors include equipment that are compatible with Linux. So far, about 33 desktop PC models from Acer, Asustek, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard, have been certified Linux-compatible by the TCA, reported Taiwan's Chinese language newspaper, Economic Times."
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Taiwan mandates Linux-ready PCs (ZDNet Asia) Posted Jun 26, 2006 18:19 UTC (Mon) by etrusco (guest, #4227) [Link] Wow! Now this is what I call "wonderful news" (I don't like to say the obvious, but someone had to do it anyway ;-)That's the best "vote with your dollars" I've seem in a long time; let's just hope that the hardware vendors that are still "unfriend" to FOSS get the message.
And then we have MS (and MS' ploy, BSA) poeple FUDing as always... At least their comments make sense, so let's just change that directive to "the hardware must have specs open enough to be supported by FOSS systems"? ;-)
-Flávio
Taiwan mandates Linux-ready PCs (ZDNet Asia) Posted Jun 26, 2006 18:42 UTC (Mon) by jimwelch (guest, #178) [Link] The article does not say how they determine compatability! Do they allow binary "drivers"? If not, it will leave out some display chips. Maybe then the graphics suppliers (ATI, Nivada,...) will wake up and smell the coffee (Linux).
Taiwan mandates Linux-ready PCs (ZDNet Asia) Posted Jun 26, 2006 18:59 UTC (Mon) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] I won't pretend to know what companies like ATI and Nvidia feel about opensource drivers for their hardware. I will however point out that many vendors licensce code from others rather then reinvent the wheel themselves. In other words, they don't always own all of the code in their product. In extreme cases they might even own none of it.
So companies are faced with a nasty choice. One, spend a lot of money either buying the code they liscensed outright, or two, rewrite it. The second choice has pitfalls as there are potential patent issues.
Taiwan mandates Linux-ready PCs (ZDNet Asia) Posted Jun 26, 2006 20:55 UTC (Mon) by azhrei_fje (guest, #26148) [Link] They have a third choice: publish the programming specs and let the F/OSS community write their own drivers.Sometimes it pays to not overlook the obvious. :)
Taiwan mandates Linux-ready PCs (ZDNet Asia) Posted Jun 26, 2006 22:50 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Does it really work ? WLAN driver for my OQO was published (under GPL) few years ago. How well it works today ? Well... it's not included in standard kernel, it's not supported by lot's of distributions, etc. What makes you so sure "F/OSS community" will write it's own drivers when it's unable to even support existing drivers ? At least ATI & nVidia are providing updates... P.S. Don't get me wrong: a lot of hardware works great under linux when there are no published specifications or drivers. But often specifications are not enough and sometimes even lack of specifications does not stop people from trying. World is not black-and-write like you'd like to pain it...
Taiwan mandates Linux-ready PCs (ZDNet Asia) Posted Jun 27, 2006 0:49 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I think it works a hell of a lot better then what you think it does.
Look at any typical Linux PC..
How many Free software drivers does it use?
If you need more proof...
Look at Intel's hardware support.
They release specs and such for all their stuff. I recently bought a Intel-based Asus motherboard. Now this was a relatively new system; a 945g motherboard.
On a new distro (say like FC5):
It even has support for VT extensions for Xen and other fancy stuff.
This is what you get when you have hardware vendors that support FOSS developers.
Now try to do that on any newer ATI or Nvidia-based motherboard.. Those manufacturers are overprotective of their IP. They are invariably a pain in the ass to get working and it takes much longer for the kernel to get proper support.
What you pointed out is about worst case... The linux kernel developers dropped the ball on wireless support. They treated them just like another ethernet device... Were in reality they are complex software radios that require a whole host of new stuff that is unneeded in wired devices. Nobody realy understood this and nobody was in charge of dealing with wireless devices. So wireless support in Linux suffered. With the wireless development kernel branch this is rapidly changing howtever.
But other then that and probably those horrid 'SATA RAID' fakeraid adaptors that require propriatory kernel drivers and invariably are buggier and perform worse then normal md linux software raid.
IF you can get hardware makers to cooperate you WILL get good results.
Actually it's may often be better to release documentation first and get assistance right away on making drivers.
A lot of hardware developers, it seems, do code drops that are very bad and require a lot of work before they cna get incorporated into the kernel.
You see the dirty little secret behind binary drivers is that sure if your Nvidia and you have a bunch of opengl and unix kernel experts working for you, and you have a big bugdet becuase your making drivers for high end Linux/Unix workstations then you can afford to create good drivers. But the vast majority of hardware developers are hardware developers.. not kernel developers. They lack the programming talent, budget, and expertese needed to create good drivers for Linux. Also they must concentrate on getting everything out on the market as quickly as possible.
Low budgets, low programming staffs, and a huge push to get it done as quickly as possible does not a good binary-only driver make.
Companies that push drivers for inclusion into the kernel and have open documentation aviable seem to have the best Linux support.
Also look at things like Knoppix. This is a live cdrom with just free software drivers aviable and it's able to boot and support the vast majority of computer systems by default. That would probably be nearly impossible if you had to depend soly on binary only drivers and didn't have the budget the size of Microsoft's.
Taiwan mandates Linux-ready PCs (ZDNet Asia) Posted Jun 27, 2006 14:38 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] These are all good points. One thing I'd add though is it isn't guaranteed that ATI and NVidia own all the IP in question.
Pressure for free-software drivers Posted Jun 27, 2006 0:38 UTC (Tue) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] This is excellent news. A great deal of the commodity hardware in the world comes from Taiwan, and presumably those manufacturers would prefer to be supplying the Taiwan government's computers. The logical expectation is that all hardware coming out of Taiwanese manufacturers will have improved Linux compatibility.
What isn't so clear is what this means for the issue of free software in the kernel. Taiwan hasn't specified that the hardware must work with free software. The manufacturers may be able to satisfy the requirements by shipping non-free software, and Taiwan may be content with that in the short term.
It does make me more hopeful, though, that the pressure from inside the kernel development team to make non-free driver software logistically infeasible may now bear more fruit. If the government of Taiwan could be shown the practical effects of driver incompatibility, and the message from the kernel developers is a consistent "this would be much easier if they'd just free their driver specifications", the pressure to do so might increase much more.
Pressure for free-software drivers Posted Jun 27, 2006 6:46 UTC (Tue) by irios (guest, #19838) [Link] While it might've been better if they had specified that all drivers would have to be free, it might not make that much of a difference.
There is not that much of a problem with shut drivers, i.e. there are not that many! Why? Well, it is too much of a logistic nightmare to support binary drivers for so many kernel versions and linux distributions that are in the market, so only the richest can do it (close to) right.
If hundreds of hardware makers are compelled to have ANY sort of Linux driver available, most will soon discover that cooperating with the Linux community will help them have Linux drivers a lot cheaper, a lot sooner, with far better quality and support, and with a much reduced bit rot problem than whatever they could pull from a couple clueless employees locked up in their offices.
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