On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 07:19 -0800, Brad Fuller wrote: > I want to understand how the design of these (Win-centric) mobos are a > hindrance to running Linux. As you examine cheaper hardware, you will find that vendors cut corners by stripping away anything not needed to run Windows. Often they do this by making the hardware dumber and pushing more functionality into the driver. You saw this in the past with Winmodems. When Winmodems came out I don't think you could even have used one on Linux if you had a driver, because they require an RT task to do the DSP and Linux could not have scheduled such a task reliably enough to keep from getting booted and the kernel was not yet capable of that. For example many of the cheaper onboard AC97 sound chipsets have no hardware mixing and no hardware volume control - they rely on the Windows kernel mixer. Since the equivalent technology on Linux is not as mature we have problems. And since the crappiest hardware is disproportionately affected, and requires the most work, many of the issues don't get fixed. Lee
