Users need help choosing their computers [LWN.net]

Users need help choosing their computers

Posted Nov 14, 2006 19:11 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
Parent article: Resisting the binary blob

I disagree with Ubuntu's decision, but one of the major forces pushing them in that direction is that it is so difficult for users to know, or find out, which hardware is well-supported by free software and which isn't. Users need help buying computers, and it might be in Fedora's interest to steer people in the direction of vendors who will sell machines that just work. This might be problematic for Red Hat because of business relationships, particularly with vendors like Dell who seem interested in supporting Linux for servers but not laptops, but third-party sites could do it.

The problem is that hardware changes so quickly, and the free Linux drivers improve so quickly, that most of the Linux hardware information on the net is out of date or filled with lists of hardware that is no longer sold.

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Users need help choosing their computers

Posted Nov 14, 2006 19:23 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

it is so difficult for users to know, or find out, which hardware is well-supported by free software and which isn't.

Amen.

In ages past, I seem to remember it not being too difficult to find some sort of hardware compatability guide that would help me figure out what would work. Back then, since Linux wasn't on hardware vendors' radar screens, what worked worked with free drivers, by and large. Yeah, lots of things didn't work, but for whatever you wanted, in general you could find something that would work that you could get at a local CompUSA.

Nowadays, for some things it's getting very tough to figure out what works. Video card with 3D support? Well, people tell you to buy NVidia, becuase it works... but not with free drivers. What works with free drivers?

How about wireless cards? It's nearly impossible to figure out which wireless cards that one might actually find in CompUSA will work at all, never mind with a free driver. Doing so requires digging through a slew of different web pages, many of which are a few years old and don't refer to any modern card, many of which are specific to certain classes of drivers, many of which are just forum archives. Last time around I ended up getting atheros cards because they'd work with MadWIFI -- but MadWIFI is one of those things that uses binary blogs, so I'm a little bit sad.

If we really believe in wanting the "common user" -- or even the serious but non kernel-coding geek like myself -- to be able to choose a completely-free system, somebody, somewhere, needs to put the effort into building and maintaining an up-to-date guide as to which hardware has reliable truly free drivers.

-Rob

Users need help choosing their computers

Posted Nov 14, 2006 20:01 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

The "average user" is incapable of building their own computer. The fact that people like us tend to think that a hardware guide would be usefull for most people just illistrates how ultra-geek we are. Generally speaking Linux community is out of touch with normal users.

The majority of computers sold today are laptop computers anyways and manufacturers typically try to make them as much 'black boxes' as they can.

In that case the hardware guide that people need to know is:
Buy a Intel-based notebook with Intel onboard video.

The trouble with that is that generally speaking those Intel systems come with Intel-based driver thatrequires closed source 'regulatary blob'. But wireless cards are much much easier to swap out generally then video.

That's about it.

The better solution is to get OEMs to support Linux on their hardware by default and encourage and aid the kernel developers in protecting their copyrights by creating distros that shun binary-blobs and binary-only drivers.

So if you get asked a question what hardware should I buy for Linux?
The easy answer is to go 'Get a System76 (or rcubed or whatnot) notebook computer with Intel video'

Your right

Posted Nov 14, 2006 20:18 UTC (Tue) by Felix_the_Mac (subscriber, #32242) [Link]

I am hoping to get a new system and am currently trying to figure out what the best graphics solution is using Free drivers; And as you say it is not easy.

Can X run the 3D desktop? Is Y faster than X when using free drivers? etc. etc.

If anybody can point me to a decent site I would be grateful.

But I think we need a 'Linux Hardware Quality Labs' that can test and certify hardware and give certification and logos.

Your right

Posted Nov 15, 2006 4:42 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Intel is the only company that supports Free software video drivers.

These are supported by Free software drivers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA

The GMA 3000 and x3000 are relatively new and drivers are relatively immature at this point.

ATI cards older then x1000 (the R500 series) are supported by Free software drivers. R200, R300, R400 ATI cards are supported by Free software drivers for the most part.

Supported:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R200

Supported:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R300

Supported:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X800

They are basic drivers. Probably give 40-60% the performance of ATI propriatory drivers. They are fairly reliable. There are certain models that aren't well supported..

Cards to avoid.

ATI, no open source support for 3d OR 2d.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R520
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R600

Avoid all Nvidia cards. No open source support for 3d.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia

Prefereably for best compatability you want to get a Intel motherboard with 945g chipset. If you need better performance then that then get a R420 series ATI card, probably a PCIE x800. Those are decently supported by free software drivers and should work out of the box on most recently released distro versions.

The GMA x3000 in the 965g will probably be attractive also, but aren't to common yet.

Graphics nightmare

Posted Nov 16, 2006 5:41 UTC (Thu) by rakoenig (subscriber, #29855) [Link]

If the recommondation is "buy an Intel GMA" then this means: Buy a system with an Intel CPU based on an Intel Chipset. I'm working at a computer manufacturer and I know that there are a lot of customers, that want to buy non-Intel products because of pricing issues or just because they don't want an Intel monopoly on the market.

Those people don't have any option to get free 3D graphics support. Intel graphic is always on mainboards, but there is no PCIe plugin card that offers a graphic chip fully supported by free drivers.

The main manufactureres for graphic cards are ATI, Matrox and nVidia (alphabetically) where Matrox has a low market share. nVidia is evil by default because there is no free GPL driver available. ATI has some free drivers for older cards, but they won't fit into todays systems that come with PCIe slots instead of AGP.

The main problem why both ATI and nVidia refuse to GPL their drivers are IP issues I think. I doubt that releasing a graphics driver under the GPL will make it easier for somebody to "pirate" the hardware, but there is a high risk that one firm or the other has a software patent that is violated by the driver of the other party. In the long run the price of software patents is that we need to give up our freedom.

I'd love to run a machine with free software only, but I wouldn't like a monopoly of just one vendor. So I have to go with proprietary code even if its a pain in the ass. Sad, but there is too little market share of Linux overall to put pressure on the vendors.

Graphics nightmare

Posted Nov 16, 2006 12:49 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

What about VIA? Their EPIA boards have onboard graphics which I think is their own, rather than intel's. The drivers are free. No doubt it's performance is weedy in comparison to the 3 main manufacturers, but for many applications (perticularly the multimedia the boxes often target) it is quite good enough.

So you can buy non-intel computers with free graphics. Still on-board, admittedly, and not at the high-performance end of things. Those people need to follow drag's advice on which cards have free drivers.

Graphics nightmare

Posted Nov 16, 2006 12:55 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

Oh bollocks - a grocer's apostrophe in public <FX: hangs head in shame>.

Graphics nightmare

Posted Nov 16, 2006 15:56 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> ATI has some free drivers for older cards, but they won't fit into todays systems that come with PCIe slots instead of AGP.

You can buy new R9250 (r200) cards in both PCI and AGP.
You can buy new X300 (r400 aka r300) in PCI, AGP, and PCIe.

Granted, their current-gen X1k stuff has zero opensource support, but even those are available in both PCI and AGP form factors too.

> I'd love to run a machine with free software only, but I wouldn't like a monopoly of just one vendor. So I have to go with proprietary code even if its a pain in the ass. Sad, but there is too little market share of Linux overall to put pressure on the vendors.

My laptop has only free drivers on it, including for the Radeon board. It does everything I need it to do.

Your right

Posted Nov 16, 2006 21:23 UTC (Thu) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]

I've long been a loyal user of AMD's 64-bit CPUs, but Intel's combination of first-class support for
Free Software integrated video and top-notch performance from their new CPUs is making me
reconsider. Unless this situation changes, I'll be building my next system with Intel Inside, for the
first time in... In Ever, actually. (I think my first home-built system used a Cyrix CPU. :-))

Users need help choosing their computers

Posted Nov 14, 2006 21:10 UTC (Tue) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link]

> Video card with 3D support? Well, people tell you to buy NVidia, becuase it works... but not with free drivers. What works with free drivers?

Anything based on the ATI-9250 (or 9200, 8200 etc) will, it was after that that ATI stopped providing specs. It's adequate for e.g. Flightgear Flight Simulator, Blender, and such -- I don't know if it's up to say Looking Glass. OTOH, the cards are inexpensive.

But I take your main point -- it is hard to find this information in general, and it does keep changing as drivers are developed and refined, and as new hardware comes out.

Users need help choosing their computers

Posted Nov 15, 2006 5:40 UTC (Wed) by shapr (subscriber, #9077) [Link]

I totally agree with you.

I can't figure out which wifi card has oss drivers, the broadcom I bought didn't have the chip I thought it would have and I ended up giving it to a win32 user.

I tried to replace my NVidia card with something, ANYTHING that uses an open source kernel driver and will let me play tremulous in my spare time. But I can't find a decent performance comparison anywhere.

Who's brave enough to start a tom's hardware clone, something like GNUhardware.com? I'd contribute articles!

Users need help choosing their computers

Posted Nov 15, 2006 23:54 UTC (Wed) by JohnNilsson (subscriber, #41242) [Link]

You could create some kind of utility that connects to Ubuntus hwdb (or equivalent) to compare the users current hardware with known hardware, and suggest replacements for problem parts.

I guess it would be trivial to do a Linux version from the code that already exists. But to be really useful I guess it should be ported to Win32.

Users need help choosing their computers

Posted Nov 16, 2006 6:34 UTC (Thu) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link]

We desperately need a certificate "Linux ready" for hardware that is
fully supported and has vendor-specs available. Some organization (maybe
OSDL) would be the clearinghouse and publish the results of tests. If a
company sells a product that is "Linux ready" they could pay a moderate
fee to advertise with the Linux Logo on their product.

YES! Users need help choosing their computers

Posted Nov 16, 2006 16:11 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (subscriber, #1216) [Link]

ABSOLUTELY. I want to buy computers which work well with 100% OSS drivers, and it's incredibly hard to do, even with a lot of knowledge. This needs to be REALLY easy, instead.