Sometimes it is depressing

Sometimes it is depressing

Posted Jun 13, 2008 18:09 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179)
In reply to: Sometimes it is depressing by dilinger
Parent article: Andrew Morton on kernel development

Most people aren't seeing the problem because most USB1.1 devices work just fine in USB2.0 hubs. The problem described in the link you supplied is a corner case (some weird built-in serial adapter in a hub/dock thingy). The problem you've described sounds like it's specific to some portion of your hardware.

Sigh. I explained this a couple of times. It is not specific to my hardware. As I already said, I have tested this with several different pl2303 converters, including very expensive ones. I have tested it on different machines with different USB chipsets. I have even tested a couple of different kernel versions. I am not an idiot, you know :-)

The description of the problem is simple and I don't see why I have to keep repeating it over and over. Apparently USB1.1 devices have problems when plugged into USB 2.0 hubs.

I agree that it is not exactly the same thing as described in the linked post, but it looks dangerously similar, and as of 2.6.22 the proposed fix was still marked experimental.

I also agree that it is theoretically possible that only the PL2303 driver has this specific problem. I don't think that is the case though.

I dug through my hardware pile and found a pl2303. It works just fine in a USB2.0 port. If you want to moan about how depressing kernel development is, that's fine; but claiming that it's hopeless when you refuse to get involved is just silly.

See above. If you really want to show me that I don't understand anything, try it with a USB 2.0 hub. Run it for 24 hours checking if there is even a single missed byte in either direction. Then tell me that "it works just fine"

Also, I am not refusing to get involved. Did you also not see one of my posts asking what is a good venue to report this problem ?

I didn't mean to discuss this particular issue in depth. I did not ask for advice on fixing it. I used it just as an example. Apparently not a very good one, because my point did not get through.

In Windows, at least theoretically, either the manufacturer or Microsoft is responsible for doing something if there is a problem. In Linux there is generally no responsibility unless you purchase a support contract which is much more expensive than the price of a copy of Windows. What qualification would you use for this ?

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What I find far more depressing is when you've paid a company several million dollars for a
support contract and they still don't fix your bugs (I've seen this happen several times).
Every software project--free or not--has finite developer resources. Some bugs will take a
certain amount of time to fix no matter how many dollars or people are thrown at the issue.
You're making it sound like this problem only exists for Linux when I've seen it far more
often with proprietary software. The problem is fundamental and will not go away, but I've
found Linux to do a better job of handling it than anything else I've seen. It's still not
perfect, but it can't be. The only way you can be guaranteed to get your problem fixed is to
have the ability to fix it yourself. With Linux, you theoretically have that option. With
proprietary software, you don't.