On Wed, Dec 26, 2007, Bit wrote:
>What is so fundamentally different about drivers in Linux and Windows?
A major difference with Vista is that their drivers are more concerned with
DMCA copyright protection than performance, and this goes down into the
hardware as well.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
>Specifically, video card drivers have always frustrated my understanding
>of what's going on under the hood. Say I have a nice video card from
>ATI. I need to install some cool drivers from ATI in order to make the
>card work at its best and in order to do any cool things like dual
>monitors. I download these drivers from the company's website, install
>them on my machine, and I'm off and running. Assuming all goes
>according to plan.
Video card manufacturers have a long history of changing things, with no
documentation of course as they're proprietary. So long as they provide
Windows drivers, they figure their job is done.
Linux doesn't have enough market share to really get their attention, and
developing these for Vista is made more expensive (see the article above)
so they concentrate their efforts where they will get the most return.
Bill
--
INTERNET: bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX: (206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
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