Very Computer

     Generally, whenever anyone utters a phrase like "the balkanization
of Linux" I treat it with the same deep respect I give to "impending
modem tax" or "imminent death of UseNet".  Lately though, I'm seeing a
trend that sort of gives me pause.  Two incidents leap to mind:

          1.) Promise is now offering beta linux drivers for their
              Ultra/66 controler card.  The drivers are specific
              to the RedHat distro (with support for others to
              follow shortly).

          2.) Metrowerks has ported CodeWarrior to Linux; a version
              for RedHat and another for SuSE.

     Since we're talking about the same kernel, I'm trying to
understand why different versions of such things are necessary.
Perhaps the answer is so simple I just don't see it.
     In the case of the drivers, I'm wondering if the reason is more
political than technical (ie: RedHat has a hand in the programming, I
believe).  As for CodeWarrior, I trust there is a legitimate reason
(after all, it is probably more of a pain for Metrowerk to do it that
way than to release a single generic Linux version) -- but I sure
can't fathom what it might be.
      Regardless, such specificity is a bit disconcerting.  If we are
indeed moving in that direction, we're probably playing into M$'s FUD
machine.
      I'll be grateful if someone tells me I'm overreacting or
misreading the (so-far) sparse evidence of bad trend.

Testing.

Yes, you can surely get these things to work on other distributions.
But the vendor won't support you because execution of a four week test
plan against N configurations is expensive and slow. Ditto ongoing
support.

It was the Fri, 15 Oct 1999 02:53:31 GMT...

Quote:>      Generally, whenever anyone utters a phrase like "the balkanization
> of Linux" I treat it with the same deep respect I give to "impending
> modem tax" or "imminent death of UseNet".  Lately though, I'm seeing a
> trend that sort of gives me pause.  Two incidents leap to mind:

>           1.) Promise is now offering beta linux drivers for their
>               Ultra/66 controler card.  The drivers are specific
>               to the RedHat distro (with support for others to
>               follow shortly).

>           2.) Metrowerks has ported CodeWarrior to Linux; a version
>               for RedHat and another for SuSE.

>      Since we're talking about the same kernel, I'm trying to
> understand why different versions of such things are necessary.
> Perhaps the answer is so simple I just don't see it.

Answer: They aren't necessary. They exist for legal security,
probably. You can get a "Red Hat" driver module to work on anything
with a Linux kernel, as well as you can engineer the "SuSE port" of
CodeWarrior to run on probably any random distribution.

mawa
--
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appellantur.

Well, they're likely to be nothing more than kernel modules (Unless
they want to add some hdparm commands to some startup scripts), so if
they're binaries, it simply means they'll be supporting the kernel
versions that ship with Red Hat, which is odd since Mandrake is the
best selling distro ATM.

--
Darren Winsper - http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/darren.winsper
Stellar Legacy project member - http://www.stellarlegacy.tsx.org

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                                                -- Matthew Sachs on Slashdot

Seems to me that it is a reflection of the difficulty in marketing commercial
products for an OS with Linux's development model - if you charge money for
something, you are generally required to offer some kind of waranty. There is
a large number of distributions out there all claiming to be "Linux" and it
would be very expensive and time consuming to test your product against all of
them, hence you choose the most popular two or three and certify it against
them. It may well be that your product will work with most (if not all) of the
others, but it would be very risky commercially to offer any kind of blanket
waranty when faced with an ill-defined, and potentially moving, target.

Martin

It was the Tue, 19 Oct 99 09:00:26 GMT...

The belief that there usually is warranty on software may be popular,
but that doesn't make it true.

mawa
--
Don't like my signature cookies?

Maybe the situation is different in the US - here in England, if you sell a
piece of software which doesn't perform substantially as claimed, you will, at
least, come under great pressure to offer a refund. If I charge mony for a
program which I claim works under "Linux" and then find that it doesn't work
on a release in common usage against which I had not tested, I would have to
offer a fix or a refund to avoid legal action. Under those circumstances, it
is safer to test against the most common distributions and make no claim as to
suitability for use with the rest...

Martin