[ltp] Mandrake 8.2 vs. TP 600e

[Dean L. Hedin]

On Monday 15 July 2002 10:23 am, Andrew Lee wrote:
> But I still couldn't get the modem working, so eventually I gave up and
> installed
> Windows 2000. Don't let anyone fool you, Linux is really not ready for the
> big time yet. What people need is to be able to work, not have to mess
> around hacking things up
> for weeks before realising it's never going to work.
> FWIW, Win2000 set up everything first time, no need for any drivers or
> downloads.

I agree, but I think it's important to know why this is the case.   Many
manufacturers have not fully bought into Linux with respect to driver
support.   

With  Microsoft, manufacturers would pay Microsoft to 
qualify a product's driver (and thus include the driver on the 
Windows CD) .   In the case of printer drivers, the manufacturer also
has to send two units to Microsoft's product lab for them to keep.

Such a qualifying mechanism does not exist in the open sourced world
(and probably never will).   In addition, the rapid pace of development in 
Linux means that manufacturers have to distro thier drivers as source code
otherwise they won't work over the long haul.  Manufacturers do not
like revealing thier source as they might loose a competitive advantage.

I ran into this issue recently when I purchased a Lexmark Z53 printer 
(BTW, which I purchased because the box advertised "Linux Compatability")

What I get when I try to run Lexmark's binary driver is the following:
lexmarkz53: Symbol `__ti13VDKCustomList' has different size in shared object, 
consider re-linking

What happened here?  Well, since the Lexmark engineers used a earlier VDK
library to write thier driver, it will not work on my system.   I've even 
tried installing earlier versions of the VDK library and it still won't work. 
And since Lexmark does'nt give me the source I am screwed.

Am I upset that I don't have the source? Not really.  I understand that 
Lexmark might have "secret stuff" in thier driver that they want to keep
that way.    I just wish Linux had a consistent driver interface that would
allow them to do so.

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