One of the best things that has happened to Linux enthusisasts the world over is the confluence of two big players one in the Linux arena (Ubuntu aka Canonical) and the other in the PC hardware space (Dell). And the end users have already started reaping the benefits.
The benefits include device driver support for hardware components which were otherwise not compatible with Linux. A couple of years back, I had to struggle getting my internal modem based on a conexant chip to work with Linux. These internal modems are infamously known as winmodems because they delegate some of its job to the parent operating system and work flawlessly only in Windows.
Because they were not full modems, most of them are incompatible with Linux and are as good as paper weight. I have documented how I got my internal modem to work with Linux with some difficulty.
Now the good news is that Dell has released device drivers for the conexant internal modems for their E1505n and 1420n machines which is available here for download.
The driver is provided as a deb package and so will be compatible with other Debian based Linux distributions.
11 comments:
There is more to the Linux community than Debian. The example you provide does not benefit anyone who uses other distributions. Are the drivers you point to open source? If Dell is only releasing them as pre-compiled Debian packages, then they are probably not.
now if they'd only be open source drivers. my ipw3945 has a proprietary intel driver which likes to panic, or as of late, suddenly have really high latency (400ms or so) for no reason. i've no doubt if this was an open source driver, it'd be fixed by now.
Way to go dell. It is a good thing that dell is taking the initiative to provide device driver support for devices which are otherwise not known to work with linux. But it would be a better idea to open source the drivers as it will help others too such as freebsd and openbsd...
Cool man...
Now I can put to use the 2400 baud internal modem which is lying in the attic.
On the other hand I might just go out and buy a dell machine running what else Ubuntu.
Anonymous said...
There is more to the Linux community than Debian. The example you provide does not benefit anyone who uses other distributions. Are the drivers you point to open source? If Dell is only releasing them as pre-compiled Debian packages, then they are probably not.
7/20/2007 08:04:00 AM
I believe that you can use the program 'alien' to change a .deb file to a .rpm file. Suck it up.
It is easy to convert the .deb package to .rpm or .tar.gz
check the program - alien.
How pathetic.
" Anonymous said...
There is more to the Linux community than Debian. The example you provide does not benefit anyone who uses other distributions. Are the drivers you point to open source? If Dell is only releasing them as pre-compiled Debian packages, then they are probably not. "
They make an os for people like you, its called windows.
"I believe that you can use the program 'alien' to change a .deb file to a .rpm file. Suck it up."
That will not un-compile the binary files. The drivers are not open source unless they are released as source code. Try using a real distro like Gentoo or Slackware.
Dell? Pfft... those winmodem drivers are from Linuxant - http://www.linuxant.com/
Not to mention non-HDA winmodems have been working well with ALSA as well.
I do give credit to Dell for dkms but that's not even used in Ubuntu as it has restricted deb packages instead.
These are just the usual crap of binary only drivers with a small amount of source code to interface with the kernel. It is i386 only (so no support for 64bit systems), and will only work with whichever ac97 interfaces they included in their binary components. So you can't use the modem and driver on other systems unless it is an already supported type (can't add new ac97 designs yourself), and you can't use with 64bit systems which most people are going to start to want pretty soon. When a new kernel comes out, the driver is likely to break too unless someone updates the interface code.
If this is all Dell has to offer, then they are providing no improvements to the Linux world what so ever. We have had this kind of crap for drivers for years before Dell ever considered using anything other than Windows and Intel.
""I believe that you can use the program 'alien' to change a .deb file to a .rpm file. Suck it up."
That will not un-compile the binary files. The drivers are not open source unless they are released as source code. Try using a real distro like Gentoo or Slackware."
Apparently other people have to think for you...he was referring to an earlier post saying a .deb package was only useful to debian users...which is of course not true because of tools like alien which do converting. Additionally, any Linux user who trys to push their own personal OS is just silly...a penguin..is a penguin..is a penguin.
'nuff said.
Post a Comment