The open call

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By Ashton Mills
12:44 Jul 25, 2008

Inevitably as Linux has gained traction it’s attracted more and more attention. From Dell selling Ubuntu PCs to ASUS choosing Xandros for the EeePC, it’s become almost trendy to add Tux to a product.

And key to this, of course, is open source. As a philosophy and a development model, it’s given us everything from Firefox to Ogg Vorbis and a whole shebang in between. Building, and using, open source software is becoming an increasingly recognised business model. Used well it can help the bottom line, or play a part in a strageic play – much like Nokia’s recent announcement of the Symbion Foundation releasing Symbion OS (which runs a majority of the world’s mobile phones) as open source.

It’s a rather interesting debate for some companies of what to open source, when to open source, and how to open source – if indeed at all. But increasingly, with the popularity of Linux, it’s becoming front and center for many.

Especially in the PC space. So it’s quite interesting when, at the time of writing, a rather large group of Linux kernel developers banded together to release a statement to the world: help us help you – open up a little.

The issue here is about drivers; while Linux has a veritable Death-Star sized metric of hardware support with drivers, of which almost all are open source, it’s that remaining percentage that has the developers bugged, as it were.

It’s not about a philosophical standpoint, either. It’s about functionality, flexibility, and support. If not the code, then at least the specifications, allow the kernel developers to write, improve, fix, and maintain drivers for the kernel. Closed source drivers, or hardware with no driver support at all, makes it hard for developers to provide Linux support.

And while the developers are going in to bat for themselves -- and ultimately, users like you and I -- it’s not a one-sided motivation. For the vendors there’s a monetary bonus: opening up the specifications, releasing source code, or actively working with kernel developers means your hardware is better supported, better maintained, and at a fraction of the cost of doing it in-house. The bottom line is simple: save more money, make more money.

I’m a good example of the latter – for the past eight years every one of my GPU purchases has been made on the basis of which vendor had the better Linux support. I use Windows too, yes, but Windows support was a given for NVIDIA, AMD (then ATI), and Intel products. But not all of them fared as well for Linux.

My money up until now has been going to NVIDIA. Its binary drivers haven’t exactly been great, but they were always better than AMD’s.

But that’s just about to change – the inevitable Tux tide has already won over Intel in this regard, and now AMD is joining in, releasing specifications for its latest GPUs and working with open source developers, leaving just NVIDIA now to lag behind. This was one aspect of a recent announcement from AMD, along with more fully featured drivers and, to boot, the inclusion of Linux drivers and Windows drivers on the same driver CD for its upcoming cards. Rumour has it the company is even encouraging third parties to put a Tux logo on the box to indicate support.

I think I know where my next purchase is going.

So the times, they are a changin’. The pull and growth of Linux, its veritable goldmine of a user base for hardware purchases, and perhaps even simple moves like developers calling for a more open approach are all creating better Linux support and a good return for vendors who play the game. And when they do, everybody wins.

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Issue: 133 | February, 2012

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