[ardour-users] ardour-users Digest, Vol 37, Issue 16

[ubuntuvoice]

On Sat, 2007-10-02 at 19:36 -0500, Thomas Vecchione wrote:
> I think you misunderstood the entire point of my post you quoted.
> 
> I was saying that the installation systems on various distributions is 
> not something that manufacturers have to deal with at all.  ALL they 
> need to do is provide the open source driver to the kernel(Simplified 
> slightly, must meet quality requirements of course etc.).  The 
> distribution has the responsibility of providing the installation system.
> 
> I was not however saying that the manufacturers have nothing to do with 
> supporting hardware in Linux, which seems to be how you took it to mean.

I understood clearly.  I was saying without delivery of the  drivers
from manufacturers or at least substantial help in development they
simply cannot be packaged. 

Your right that the distributions probably would have issues in
packaging them due to quality issues,  copyrights,  and other reasons. 

What I was suggesting is that the debate as to whether the distribution
uses source code,  tar balls,  rpm,  or deb packages or finds a driver
acceptable is moot without the initial delivery.  

In some cases there are drivers available,  as in the the Echo Audio
Cards.  People have circumvented the manufacturer. Echo/Event
apparently was a case in point of not wanting to help create the
drivers/firmware.

To often somehow somewhere the ball has been dropped as to distribution.
Its bloody evident when you read the install instructions which wander
all around and sometimes have language barriers.  Bless those who tried,
but its not the same. So what are these drivers then?  Ghost ware?  

I just got to wondering recently how many drivers are indeed out there
without the help of the companies and how many of them are just in need
of a little validation before they work fine and are fairly easy to
install.  The best would be a proper package for each distribution.

There must be a significant amount of them,  and not just audio cards.
Audio cards are fairly easy to track,  but something more obtuse
probably is sitting on someones personal web site out there.  

The next question would be why would a distribution want to carry all of
the drivers?   If there was a repository with both open source (linux
user made)  and proprietary drivers that did testing, provided the
standard, the problem might be be solved,  if people let it.  

Packagers would just package them up and send them back for inclusion
and distributions would just link to it to help make their downloads
less.  Of course the debate your talking about,  then has merit.  

It seems to me that hardware manufacturers are a bit like spoiled brats
and there isn't a Linux equivalent of Windows Hardware Quality Labs to
submit their drivers to. Then again, how many times have you seen the
stern Microsoft warning about the driver your installing not having
their seal of approval?    Clearly not everyone behaves according to MS
standards huh?

The other interesting thing that develops is companies who are nicely in
bed with MS and Apple can quietly release code to one channel and not
several scattered developers who are hopeful to develop something.  The
middle channel is a way of life for them,  naturally they relate. 

Elsewhere in your comments you illustrate why it isn't a perfect world
and perhaps why a driver repository might be an idea,  besides
certification.   Drivers tend to leave this earth along with companies
and their websites.  

Sorry to seem to give you a hard time on it.  Having feel into a gap
between a distribution and firmware lately,   I suppose this has been on
my mind.  No offence meant.