Re: Winmodem support

kwrohrer@ce.mediaone.net
Fri, 14 Aug 1998 16:27:44 -0500 (CDT)


And lo, Craig Schlenter saith unto me:
> On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Chris Zwilling wrote:
> [snip]
> > I just wanted to put in 1.44^2 cents here... I hope that there isn't
> > anyone working on a Winmodem driver. I feel that there are better things
> > to waste time on - like coming up with a standard for sound card
> > programming. Winmodems in general (IMHO) are a brain dead design. I have
> > yet to see a piece of software do as good or better job than hardware.
> > This also applies to Winprinters and anything else Win.
>
> It may not be an issue for _you_ but taking the moral or technical high
> ground and saying there are more virtuous issues to work on or better
> solutions doesn't change the fact that I have to boot win95 to connect to
> the Internet right now from my machine at home.
>
> The more hardware support we have for linux, the better things will be
> IMHO.
>
> If someone is thinking of starting up a winmodem project, I'll try to help
> in whatever limited way I can.
(1) Unless "whatever limited way I can" includes getting specs from the
major winmodem manufacturers (or winmodem chipset makers) which would allow
drivers to be written, not likely.

(2) While it's cheaper to write software once than build better hardware
many times, it's probably cheaper for those who care to pay enough attention
to buy decent modems in the first place, or buy new ones (if they didn't
do Linux when they bought the machine, or bought a machine that only came
with a winmodem) than for good programmers to implement all the software
a winmodem requires, even if they do get docs. Especially if there are
significant differences in the various winmodems' hardware...

(3) The only problem with (2), is all the people who don't know any better,
don't want to pay for quality, and are buying up all those sub-$5 PC's.
If Linux is to truly dominate the desktop, we'll have to do it over the
heaped stupidity of the masses, or at least wait until everyone gets
cablemodems and stuff. Nobody's going to bother to dumb down an NE2000
far enough to make it incompatible but cheaper, right?

Keith

-- 
"The avalanche has already started; |Linux: http://www.linuxhq.com     |"Zooty,
it is too late for the pebbles to   |KDE:   http://www.kde.org         | zoot
vote." Kosh, "Believers", Babylon 5 |Keith: kwrohrer@enteract.com      | zoot!"
 www.midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html |http://www.enteract.com/~kwrohrer | --Rebo

- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.altern.org/andrebalsa/doc/lkml-faq.html