On Sun, 2006-01-01 at 18:03 -0800, Noah Roberts wrote:
> On 1/1/06, Lee Revell <rlrevell@email-addr-hidden-job.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-01-01 at 17:06 -0800, Noah Roberts wrote:
> > > the new ones had a different "Conexant" chipset that didn't have any
> > > viable Linux drivers - all alpha mode...
> >
> > It's also difficult to say what constitutes a "viable driver". Most
> > people consider that a driver is viable if it supports the basic
> > functions of the device, like playing audio, sending/receiving packets
> > or displaying images on the screen. Then you have a shrill minority who
> > consider a driver non-viable, broken or useless if it doesn't support
> > EVERY single little feature of the hardware or do everything the Windows
> > driver does.
> >
> > I guess my point is YMMV as always ;-)
>
> My definition of non-viable is crashes a lot, doesn't work at all (as
> in this case), or is missing key features, and in the case above it
> was two weeks of waiting before I could even get video w/o audio from
> that card. I did some modifications myself to make it even get video
> from the composite input. It probably works now...I put the thing up
> and its been gathering dust for about a year or more.
>
Yeah that's a key thing to watch out for with Linux drivers: never
assume that a device is supported because the previous generation of
that device was supported - you have to match the model numbers
carefully. There's no substitute for a first person account that the
device works.
Lately I've even heard that some wireless vendors will change the
chipset in a way that breaks the old driver without changing the model
number at all.
Lee
Received on Mon Jan 2 08:15:04 2006
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