Where are the Linux drivers?

From...

March 9, 2000
Web posted at: 11:19 a.m. EST (1619 GMT)

by Eileen Cohen

(IDG) -- Desktop computer systems go for a song these days. Competition among the big retailers is fierce, and many add printers, scanners, and other peripherals to preconfigured Windows-based systems to sweeten the pot. But woe unto the adventurous bundle-buyer who decides to jettison Windows for Linux: chances are that nifty color inkjet printer will become a desk anchor and the scanner a doorstop. Such is the heartache of proprietary device drivers.

The lack of device drivers presents a catch-22 to those who hope that Linux will join the desktop mainstream. Until Linux-curious users can be sure their system components will work, they may hesitate to take the plunge -- or may become intensely frustrated if they do. Meanwhile, the perception of some manufacturers that the Linux market isn't significant keeps compatible devices out of reach.

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A nested catch-22 is that many in the Linux community don't want hardware manufacturers to develop and release Linux drivers. Networking consultant and Linux advocate Rick Moen explains on his Website (see link below) that such drivers tend to be:

• binary only (because the manufacturers aren't used to an open source world)
• accordingly nonportable to many of the CPU platforms that Linux runs on
• liable to break irreparably as the kernel develops
• poorly debugged because they receive no peer review
• generally shoddy compared with what the community provides inside each kernel source archive

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The real desiderata are device specifications, the device-specific machine language that allows communication between driver software and device. Specs enable Linux developers to produce code for reliable and efficient open source drivers. Lacking manufacturer specifications, developers face the prospect of reverse-engineering drivers, using essentially trial-and-error methods, a laborious process that isn't always successful.

According to Linux kernel developer (and VA Linux employee) Theodore Ts'o, it's most difficult to obtain specs from makers of (usually low-end) printers and modems (the notorious winmodems) who have moved some of the functionality that's traditionally native to the device itself into the driver software. Manufacturers in the extremely competitive, game-driven video-card market are especially loath to release specifications.

But for Ethernet, serial port, and SCSI drivers, "it isn't much of an issue," Ts'o says. "We've been able to stay ahead of the curve."

Libra Computer Systems, a Canadian company that recently began distributing Debian-based Linux by LibraNet, is taking a grassroots approach to breaking the vicious driver-availability circle. Frustrated with complaints about Linux's incompatibility with hardware devices -- "the single biggest issue we have with customers," says Libra's president, Jon Danzig -- LibraNet has posted the Linux Drivers Petition, calling on PC device manufacturers to release their hardware specifications to Linux developers.

Posted on December 30, the petition had garnered more than 40,000 signatures as of this writing. LibraNet hopes to collect 2 million signatures, but Danzig thinks even a few hundred thousand would have an impact. LibraNet will probably run the petition for three more months and then send it to a short list of five or six companies that Danzig declined to name, emphasizing his belief in a cooperative, not a confrontational, approach: "At the moment manufacturers are looking out there and seeing millions of Windows machines, and every now and then they get an inquiry about Linux. There's not enough noise. They need to realize that hundreds of thousands of people could be demanding their products. We want to demonstrate that the market exists."

Sign the petition, folks. (See below for a link to the petition.)

But will recognition of the Linux market be sufficient to induce more manufacturers to release their specs? Manufacturers' fears that releasing proprietary information will give a competitor the capability to copy their technology certainly contributes to their resistance.

The facts, though, are "in general less serious than manufacturers make them out to be," Ts'o says. "Often I find that if you talk to engineers in [a] company, they'll say that 'we know it's not that big of a problem.'" But, Ts'o says, the product manager might not understand the issues or may think that keeping the specifications secret will keep people more excited about the device.

Ts'o believes it's "a marketing issue, not a technical one." Danzig notes that, historically, companies that have opened their specs have not been hurt. Epson's dot matrix printer command set, for example, became the industry standard.

Besides marketing strategies, legal concerns can further deter manufacturers from opening their drivers and specs. Dennis Schneider, the vice president of marketing for the remote-access server manufacturer Ariel, says, "We're in a country where everyone believes in the 'defend by litigation' strategy -- that patents, nondisclosures, are the way to market a successful product. It's very difficult for a large company to thread that needle [of deciding what constitutes giving away intellectual property]. A gray-space judgment call is very difficult for a large company's legal staff to get through. There's not a lot of gray in the minds of intellectual-property attorneys."

Ariel, however, saw that the benefits of attracting the Linux-using ISP market outweighed any consequences of giving away software goodies -- especially since "the core of our product is in the firmware and hardware." The company ported its RS2000 product, originally written for NT, to Red Hat Linux in mid-1999 and joined the Open Source Initiative in September, making the source code for its Linux remote access drivers freely available.

Turning the tide?

Certainly some other manufacturers subscribe to Ariel's approach. Every day it seems there's at least one announcement of a new -- usually open source -- Linux driver. And other forces ameliorate the Linux device-driver dilemma, as well.

According to Ts'o, the situation will change "as more and more Linux kernel developers are getting hired by Linux companies.... If some big customer says that it badly needs support for a particular device, and we're being paid to write drivers, they will be written."

The same may be true if some big manufacturer decides it wants Linux support for its devices. On January 25, VA Linux Systems announced that its Professional Services Division will develop and test support under Linux and Samba for Hewlett-Packard's LaserJet printers, with VA managing the development as an open source project on SourceForge.

This project goes beyond basic Linux support for HP printers. Linux developers have already produced drivers for HP printing, Ts'o says, but "right now there are a certain number of 'easy by Unix standards' steps involved." From Red Hat Linux, for example, users need to "go though a couple of config screens and enter a bunch of parameters," he explains.

Marty Larson, director of VA Linux Professional Services, says the project is indeed all about producing drivers that will enable "one-click printing," not only from a Linux console but also from within open source applications that run under Linux. It's "similar to what end users enjoy [under Windows] -- actually better," he says.

Larson sees this collaboration with the world's top printer manufacturer as part of a trend: "There is demand for us to help traditional companies release open source code that will benefit the community."

UDI and Linux

Linux developers and users will probably also have Project UDI (Uniform Driver Interface) on their radar sceens. This multicompany effort, now spearheaded by Intel and SCO, began in 1994 and came to prominence when Intel joined in 1998.

Project UDI is producing an architecture and a set of APIs that allow for uniform device-driver implementations that are platform and OS independent. In effect, a developer could write a single driver that works on any device and any operating system.

Project UDI chair Kevin Quick says the project will release a few sample drivers -- the start of its reference implementation -- via SourceForge early this year. Ultimately the reference implementation package will include sample UDIs drivers for several OS environments, including Linux. The 1.0 UDI specification has been available since September 1999 (see link below).

The Linux community so far hasn't exactly thrown itself behind UDI. No Linux companies (unless you count SCO, which has recently shown signs of trying to morph into one) participate in the project. Some Linux developers, says VA Linux's Ts'o, have shied away from UDI on technical grounds, which include a belief that the extra implementation layer will degrade the performance of high-speed devices.

Some object to the project's indifference to whether UDI-based drivers should require an open source license. (An October 4, 1998, posting by Richard Stallman to the kernel-dev mailing list is the ur-statement of this position. See link below.)

That UDI might be a disincentive for manufacturers to release device specifications is also a concern. If a proprietary UDI driver were to come out with bugs or performance problems, no one other than the manufacturer would be able to fix it -- putting Linux users at a greater disadvantage than they are now.

Quick sees licensing issues as outside Project UDI's purview. He draws an analogy between the UDI specification and GCC, the GNU C compiler: an application ultimately distributed as either open source or binary can be compiled with GCC. The Free Software Foundation doesn't insist that only open source applications be generated from GCC. Similarly, the UDI specification itself is open, but whether or not software developed for it is open source is at the distributor's discretion.

UDI will help bring more and better device drivers to Linux users, "even if you look at it from a binary perspective," Quick explains, because vendors, released from worries about multiple platforms, will be able to focus more on "functionality, quality, and value-add," he says. "We'll see a corresponding increase in stability, quality, and features of device drivers, irrespective of any vendor's choice to release source or not."

Quick hesitates to reiterate a statement he made in a 1998 IT Week article in which he said Linux would be key to the adoption of the UDI inititative.

"Linux is pretty much a key component of any strategy going forward these days," he says. "UDI does not rely on Linux, nor Linux on UDI. But a mutual success in my opinion will only help both strategies."

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When Linux flunks driver's ed
(PC World Online)
ATI to release open source drivers for Linux
(IDG.net)
Opening the drivers
(LinuxWorld)
Lantronix ports RTEL network print drivers to Linux
(LinuxWorld)
What's the difference between Windows and Linux?
(LinuxWorld)
Linux still not ready for desktop, says SuSE CEO
(IDG.net)
A brief history of Linux
(The Industry Standard)

Rick Moen on manufacturer-supplied drivers
Libra's Linux Drivers Petition
Ariel
Project UDI
Richard Stallman's posting about UDI on the Linux kernel

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