Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Plaz who wrote (63052)	11/14/2001 6:54:59 PM
From: dybdahl	Respond to of 74651

Hmmm... I have never seen a Linux crash except on hardware error, so I am not able to give you examples of drivers that make a Linux crash. I have experienced that the main harddisk of a Linux crashes, which stopped all tasks that tried to do something on that harddisk - but Linux itself continued, and as long as I only worked in RAM, everything was fine, even the webserver could still serve the main page. But this was a hardware failure, not a driver failure. I also experienced the buggy Intel EtherExpress Pro Network card fail - with the Linux driver unable to make it run again. This network card has a known error, and needs to be reset from time to time, but the driver wasn't able to do so, complaining over that in the log. But except that the computer was offline, it worked fine and the TCP/IP stack was also able to do stuff on 127.0.0.1. This wasn't a hardware failure either. And then I have experienced a computer that could not run Windows 2000, and could run Windows 98 in non-safe mode 10% of all times, the rest of the times it booted, it just hang. It runs perfectly in high resolution, accelerated, with Linux. X-Windows has some trouble to start each time, but after a few attempts, it starts. My friend, who owns the computer, doesn't notice the attempts, he just knows that Linux runs perfectly on that PC. Again a hardware error, not a driver error, but Linux again shows how well it goes. A big difference between Linux and Windows is that many drivers are user-mode drivers on Linux. USB camera drivers are often user-mode drivers, and (of course) printer drivers are, too. On Windows, however, some drivers are not just user-mode drivers, and I guess this is what makes my HP printer incompatible with Windows 2000 Service Pack 2. User-mode drivers are just like programs - if they don't work, you can restart them. When talking about Linux drivers, please note that there are several types of drivers: - Tier 1 drivers: Supported directly in the kernel. Always use hardware from this group, if possible - then the hardware works directly from a boot floppy, too. - Tier 2 drivers: Separate drivers, but stable. Inconvenient but work. - Tier 3 drivers: Separate drivers, but not 100% stable. - User mode drivers. Hardware that has only tier 3 drivers is often referred to as being Linux compatible. But please stay away from it. Tier 2 drivers are widely used - especially for hardware accelerated 3D graphic adaptors and seldom network adaptors. You won't notice which type of drivers you use. It's all automatic, but just as Diamon has had great difficulties with stable drivers for Windows, there are also some graphics adaptors, that have difficulties with producing something stable on Linux. In this post, Linux refers to the OS, i.e. not the GUI. Of course the GUI crashes if the graphics adaptor crashes, but the OS doesn't. A successful Linux vendor knows how important it is to select stable hardware and a stable environment (power, humidity, temperature etc). If anything goes wrong, it's always the hardware. Just the opposite of my Windows experience. Lars.