At 11:18 PM 2/19/2001 +1100, Daniel Pittman wrote:
>On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Christopher Wolf wrote:
> > At 09:04 PM 2/18/2001 +0100, A. Demarteau (linux rules!) wrote:
> >>On Sat, 17 Feb 2001, Jan van Veldhuizen wrote:
> >> > This afternoon I bought a box with Suse Linux 7 and a set of books.
> >> > It took me 2 hours, but now X Windows is running properly. But my
> >> printer is
> >> > not supported, and I have not yet configured my ISDN modem.
> >>That's often the problem with first having the hardware and then
> >>deciding to install linux on it.
> >
> > Heck, hardware's not a problem as long as 1) you write all your own
> > drivers, or 2) you don't buy anything manufactured in the last 2
> > years.
>
>What a load of nonsense. I have not written a driver for Linux /ever/,
>and have not hand a problem with hardware - including things that were
>less than a month or two old.
>
>Now, not all hardware is supported, yes. That's not the majority of
>hardware, in my experience, and especially not the common hardware.
>
>So, you make the assertion that little is supported. Back it up:
>
>/What/ hardware are you talking about?
I'll give you an easy one: The Onstream "Linux Certified" DI-30 tape drive.
Works fine under Windows. Boot Linux. Recognized as an ATAPI EIDE
device. ide-tape loads and assigns it ht0. Doesn't work; generates lots
of pretty lines like:
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 8, key = 3, asc = 11, ascq = 0
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 10, key = 5, asc = 24, ascq = 0
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 1, key = 5, asc = 24, ascq = 0
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = a, key = 2, asc = 4, ascq = 2
After checking into what Onstream means by "Linux Certified", I find a
28,000 line kernel patch file that changes dozens of files. Huh? Just to
support one little tape drive?? Is this patch installed already? Guess I
have to download the kernel source and find out. Nope. I think.
So I end up re-writing ide-tape.c using the patchfile as a guide. Only
took a couple hundred lines of changes. (I'm not going to install 28,000
lines of questionable changes.)
Of course, a new user then gets to figure out how to recompile a new
kernel, including answering a hundred low level questions, only 80% of
which are actually documented. Hope you like "defaults".
I have others, including 2 year old Ethernet cards that didn't have drivers
I could find, other cards that seem to not be supported by any driver
related to it's name, and a real sound blaster that doesn't completely get
along with the sb drivers.
> > Of course, even this doesn't hold for video cards. Unless you have
> > free year to tweak the X config, you're going to have black bars all
> > around the screen (although truthfully, I've never seen an
> > installation that didn't -- on Linux).
>
>Again, I don't know what hardware you run, but I have not this specific
>problem.
>
>Now, most monitors will not use the full screen when you run any given
>mode through them. They will use something smaller. So, use the little
>buttons on your monitor and adjust it.
>
>The only reason most Windows machines come from the shop /without/
>needing that is because the little person at the shop has already done it.
>
>I have seen the same "black bars" when changing resolutions, colour
>depths, refresh rates or whatever, under Windows.
I think you've been spoiled. I have a Matrox Millenium card, pretty
common. Never have black bars under windows, nor matter which settings I
use. Always have them under Linux. Pushed the equations as far as they'd
go using the raw numbers from the manuals, and could not remove them.
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