There's always someone willing to write a driver for devices. There's a whole project built around it. http://www.linuxdriverproject.org
This is one way of combating the concept of built-in-obsolence. If my device still works, why am I forced to buy another one?
ping for later
Won’t happen. There are way too many devices where the hardware manufacturer is the sole supplier of the driver. Even serious attempts to standardize (e.g. Postscript) have no good way to anticipate new features to make full use of the hardware in question.
A lot of the stuff is pretty standard already... SATA, monitors, USB 1.1 through 3, Firewire.
But it ain’t gonna happen with that 256bit fancy pants video card ... or with that specialty two sided sheetfed scanner. If the manufacturers aren’t willing to make a version friendly with a Mac Pro (in the case with high end video cards) they aren’t gonna bother with Linux, which is mostly in the server and hobbbyist and low-end consumer arena.
When I read the headline “Kill all proprietary drivers” I thought it was yet another anti-global-warming executive order coming down from the EPA.
Yesterday I installed Windows 7 on this computer. The pre-check I did told me that my printer was compatible. However, after Win 7 installation, my printer didn’t work. Why not? Because Hewlitt Packard decided not to support numerous of it printers with drivers for Windows 7. So, my HP Laserjet 1012 didn’t work.
I went on-line and found a work-around that isn’t perfect, but will allow me to print. That’s the last HP will see of my money.
To heck with killing prop drivers, I would be happy if they killed all those stuipid unneeded “helper” apps that install in my system tray that use .NET framework or some other Library type DLLs to install that then just sit in my app tray and consume massive amounts of memory and processing time.
Like I really need some HP shovel ware sitting on my desktop to tell me that the drivers has been updated or that the toner on the printer I rarely use is still at 89% capacity....
Also banning other crap that “driver suites” tend to install like ANY sort of damned browser toolbar or anythign that runs ar startup that isn’t directly driver related. I don’t need another volume mixer for my sound card when the windows one works just fine for 99.9999% of the users out there, at least give me the option when installing the driver to leave the blankety blank shovel ware off.
I won’t say “never happen” but put me squarely in the “doubtful” camp.
I have a very good friend who is one of the main driver developers for a very large graphics chip vendor (who could that be?)
He has told me on not one, not two, but on dozens of occasions (and always not in response to a question but on his own) that his company would NEVER do this as there is too much secret sauce rolled up into their proprietary drivers. Basically if you understood their proprietary drivers you would understand way more about how their devices work than the company would want you to understand.