Possibly offtopic : Binary only driver

[Stephen Pollei]

On Sun, 2004-11-21 at 10:28, Stefan Sonnenberg-Carstens wrote:
> What I think about.
> >From a users point of view, an average user
> could expect the following :
> Buy hardware, insert installation cd, start installer,
> plug-in hardware. Go working.
I expect in the future via project utopia and the hotplug/udev/hal stuff
etc; that I buy a piece of hardware and stick it in and it *works* .
If it doesn't just work then I'll do one of several things:
1) help reverse engineer it.
2) return it to the store for a refund.
3) not get it in the first place

I've recently helped do #1 for a cheap digital usb camera that I got
from a promotional offer thing. I contacted gphoto. Used usbsnoop on my
brother's machine(I don't have windows on my machines). I got help from
someone on the list who used the usbsnoop logs to write a driver that I
only needed a few tweaks to. Now I have a driver for it that still needs
some polish. gphoto is about to make a new release, and I hope this
driver can get into it. If the timing of different things happens
currently then I expect FC4 to just do-the-right-thing when I plug in
the camera. BTW it also supports a webcam mode, so I'll need to contact
some other people, to get that going after I help polish-up the basic
stuff.
 
>There are bothered buy a system which
> "forces" them to dig in mud.
> Users don't want to dig in mud, they want to dig the mud.
Yes sir, they shouldn't have to mess with CDs, how quaint and passe when
we got yum, etc. I agree we shouldn't be so user-unfriendly to force
them to have a bunch of CDs they have to use to install hardware, or
have them dig around on a bunch of web-sites.

> You take every experience away and declare it useless.
> That is the *real* reason many companies fear the penguin - or the fish.
> What they've learned and believed in over decades is shit then.
> So I think that is the real challenge of a modern Linux system.
OK paraphrasing your words, we should duplicate the same kind of
defecation -- sounds unsanitary and unsavory -- Thanks, but no thanks.

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