The Linux Modem Problem? 106
muonman asks: "There is a business in town which refurbishes old computers and distributes them to kids, roughly at cost. Part of this cost is a $5 license for Windows 98 (they do use OpenOffice, tho). I have outlined to them the benefits of migrating to Linux, but the showstopper is modems, which most of their customers require. They buy in bulk at $4 each, with unpredictable chipsets. I can find reliable(?) drivers for Smartlinks, but cant buy them for less than $6 each, and I hate to recommend the switch in suppliers without more info. I haven't had luck getting license info from linuxant for using Conexants. It seems there has been no activity on the linmodem front for some time. Any wisdom from the Slashdot crowd?"
relicensing Windows 98 (Score:5, Interesting)
5$ for windows -- since when? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't get it for that price even at ebay. Something is not quite right about this one...
Uh... (Score:3, Interesting)
$5 OS + $4 modem = $9
$0 OS + $6 modem = $6
If they are concerned about unit prices - this is easy. IF they have other concerns about switching over the Linux due to support or application compatibility issues, then the cost of the modem is irrelevant anyways.
Re:Why Linux is a gimmick, not a solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Its a circular problem.
Re:Why Linux is a gimmick, not a solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux has the best hardware support for mass market machines of any non windows OS. And frankly, it has better out of the box support than windows.
The problem is not any more solvable than it already is, in other words, it isn't a technical problem. It's an economic one - MS can get away with developing almost no drivers because market pressure ensures that the drivers get written by hardware vendors.
Funny, how silent the Linux kiddies become when substantive discussion is afoot.
Silence is common amongst all fanboys when real problems are cited. But this is a troll. The problem is not substantially solvable.
The real question I have is, what are the advantages, in this case, of moving to Linux. Linux has become as strong as it has by being dedicated to practical solutions, not ideological ones. The best one I can see is that the licences for Windows are signifigantly higher than the $5 they are charging their customers. In that case a slight increase cost of hardware is acceptable.
Lucent modems are reasonably cheap, and the chipset has drivers (shipped with Linspire, back when it was Lindows). Also, Lucent is one of the better performing Winmodems (although my experience here is with the windows driver, so your milage may vary). If slight increases in hardware cost are acceptable, the Lucent driver is stable under Linux, and ships in serveral major distributions.
Re:Why Linux is a gimmick, not a solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically your strategy is to call names, and repeat an old Linux bash. Your statement has virtually nothing to do with the post.
Last I checked Linux is being adopted by the masses. Many many more people are converting to Linux than are converting from Linux. Entire countries are basing their IT infrastructure on Linux. So I will argue that Linux IS being adopted ona large scale. Of course it could be a larger scale, but Rome empire was not built over night; nor did it fall in one night.
I'll also say hardware compatibility is a major problem for Windows, especially given the multiple version of it. The people getting the refurbed computers will likely have a difficult time adding any NEW current hardware upgrades to their system. Since Windows 98 is no longer supported by MS, driver suppoort is waning.
Even when it was the only game in town HW sipport (especially modems) was flakey at best. I would have to reboot after every time I used my scanner. Sometimes my sound card would lock up after conflicting with my scanner. Also, I worked ISP technical support and EDI technical support during Windows 95/98 heyday. I can confidently say that most modems did not work well out of the box with any old flavor of windows.
Besides endless conflicts with IRQs and port assignments, especially with the "plug and pray" of Windows 95/98, most modems needed arcane initializations strings that properly matched up to the particular brand of modems used in the ISP bank. It was a mess. and very very annoying from a support perspective, probably cut years off my life.
Hard/Software compatibility is mostly a non-issue in Linux anymore, aside from bleeding edge components. In this case I would be willing to bet that the modem support will be better for a modern Linux distro, than for a 7+ year old OS. I would venture to say a modern Linux distro will support more common hardware better than windows98, especially since USB support was in its infancy with 98.
You have clearly not spent any time with Linux, nor have you probably spent a lot of time trying to support any significant number of remote machines, dialup or otherwise. I have, and I will say that I would have left the tech industry a long time ago if I had to continue using MS operating systems and products.
Perhaps, your brain is big enough to remember all the exceptions, nuances, quirks within the convuluted and confusing dialaog box hell that makes up the Windows world. With each iteraction of MS product line getting more confusing and more complex. My brain isn't, so once I figure out a problem once, it becimes a simple shell script (kind of like your batch files) so that everythign can be repeated again and again.
Ok I'm getting a little off target here myself. My point is Linux is not a gimmick, and your comment is mean spirited FUD at best.
-MS2k