Reaching out to hardware companies

[J]

Please note, I'm replying to both Ric and Anthony, so my comments are inline.

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 22:42, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-10-22 at 21:23 -0500, Anthony Papillion wrote:
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>> So I've been using Ubuntu on and off for a few years but recently
>> decided to devote my entire laptop to it in my effort to oust Windows
>> from my life as much as possible. So far, with a few exceptions,
>> everything works great even on my older (4 year old) machine.

Nice!  FWIW, I'm running it on my wife's former desktop (about a 4 or
5 year old AMD Sempron box) and on an AMD Athlon 1600+ system I built
back in 2000.  I love putting Linux on old hardware, but I'm big on
nostalgia too.

>> The exceptions to the 'greatness' are: audio, wireless networking, and
>> some video (mostly Flash).

Unfortunately, as you pointed out, this isn't so much Linux's fault as
it is the hardware vendor.  HOWEVER, things have gotten so much better
than they used to be that you have pointed out the only real
weaknesses any more. Yes, there are corner cases to this, but by and
large, the biggest problem children with hardware compatibility today
are wi-fi, audio and some video devices.  Your issues with flash is
more likely a software issue than hardware, so I'll not touch that one
here.

>> I know the old line about 'it's not Linux's fault, it's the hardware
>> vendors' and I understand that. But I'm wondering what kind of concerted
>> effort is being made to reach out to those vendors that do not support
>> Linux?  I'm sure Canonical is actively working with many vendors but
>> could the community do more?

Yes, Canonical is actively working with vendors to get systems across
the spectrum from netbooks to servers tested and certified.  For the
record, as Ric points out below, so does Red Hat (they still do) and
so does Novell/SuSE.  I'm not sure if other Linux distributions have
actual formal testing arrangements with hardware vendors do, but I
know that the big three do.

>> I'm considering starting a group with the specific goal of doing
>> hardware outreach. We'll interface with companies that don't support
>> Linux, we'll lobby them, we'll work with them in whatever capacity they
>> need us, and we'll even write the drivers if need be.

>From a grass roots standpoint, I think this is  a great idea...
however, again as Ric mentions, it's highly doubtful that companies
are going to just ship hardware out to people randomly to test Linux
on.  The reality is that you'd need a real company and a secure lab.
Most of the time, hardware is tested under NDA and in a lot of cases,
we get hardware that is pre-release to  test on in addition to
currently offered hardware.  So this means a lot of security, a lot of
non-disclosure and a lot of legalese that makes discussing this a bit
tricky.

The enterprise arena is no worry.  Inroads are being made there but
the big thing is getting Ubuntu and even Linux in general onto
end-user devices that you could buy at Wal-Mart or Best Buy or Frys or
wherever.  Sadly, Microsoft still owns about 97% of the end-user
market and that is NOT going to change any time soon.  We're certainly
chipping away at it bit by bit, but that's going to be a very long
battle.

>> I'd like to get everyone's opinion on this approach. Is it something
>> worthwhile to pursue? What do you think?
>
> Red Hat did that quite successfully, as products were sent gratis to Red
> Hat's location in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) next to Durham NC.
> They would test the sample hardware and award the vendor "Red Hat Ready"
> status, if it proved usable,  with a cute logo they could use. No idea
> what happened to that.

Oh Red Hat's Hardware Cert program is very much alive and well.  Their
focus, though is on servers, blades and big-iron stuff like that.
They really don't focus on desktop or laptop systems, that I am aware
of.  That could change though as they seem to have shifted focus a bit
to corporate desktop environments too.


> But, it worked well at a corporate level, but I doubt vendors would send
> hardware samples to an individual or a small group of "concerned users".
> So, some sort of official testing lab would have to be created and
> become industry accredited. Otherwise the result would be "Well, Joe
> says 'It Works!'" And Joe would be hit with unearned income from the
> "gifts" reported to the IRS. <chuckles>  Ric

Indeed :)

Unfortunately, though people have, for years, bantered back and forth
about doing things like this, the group hasn't actually done it
outside of a few individuals who stuck to the idea and demanded either
Linux on their new system or a blank hard drive, and refused to buy if
one of those two conditions was not met.

Still, it's a goal worth working toward.  Canonical is working on
getting Ubuntu pre-loaded onto systems, but it's up to the buying
public to reinforce that work by actually demanding Ubuntu on their
computers.

Cheers,

Jeff