[ubuntu-uk] Non-default driver

[Alan Pope]

2009/3/2 Rowan <rowan.berkeley at googlemail.com>:
> Tell me, do you think there is any good reason, in anybody's minds but
> the LinuxCertified engineers, to use a non default driver at all? Is the
> "instability" in the r8169 driver a matter of common knowledge, or just
> something they dreamed up to make life more confusing?
>

Unfortunately it's actually not _that_ easy to fulfil Linux-type
customer requirements such that all of the following are true:-

a) provide a wide range of diverse hardware at low cost which all
works with linux
b) support all of those systems through any possible software upgrade path.

Those might be ideal, but they're really hard to achieve. a) has
problems in that as a small-time Linux Laptop vendor, you are at the
behest of the hardware vendors and manufacturers as to what chips go
in them. If the hardware vendor uses some bleeding edge chipset which
only has a stable driver on windows then you're screwed. The vendor
can of course also change chipset from one revision of a device to
another

b) is near impossible with a small vendor because whilst they could
test the next version of each distribution they ship on every machine
they ship, this would be quite a workload.

I'd say the reason they shipped the non-default driver is so that you
have something that _works_. If they didn't then you'd have received a
laptop which (out of the box) failed to connect to the network. Whilst
there may be side effects to this - such as some manual labour
required after a system update, the primary goal of a Linux hardware
vendor is surely to ship a device that works from the factory.

I seriously doubt there was any malicious intent, it makes no sense
whatsoever for them to deliberately screw machines up for customers.

Cheers,
Al.