Companies which don't support Linux

[Timtro]

Hi All,

I'm writing an article, and I'm going to mention a couple of companies that don't support Linux well. Two companies that immediately came to mind are Canon and ATI. But it appears that ATI has gotten better in recent years.

Can anyone suggest another company which fails to support us?

Thanks!

[2hot6ft2]

Microsoft
Lexmark
Kodak

[Linuxforall]

CANON.......stay away from their products.

[Primefalcon]

Apple?

[Timtro]

Thanks for those.

Are there any companies that aren't mainly printer manufacturers?

Actually, I had tentatively written in Apple, after a recent experience I've had with an ipod. But I thought I would stay away from companies that produce OSs. The point I'm making is specifically about hardware.

I'll post a link to the article when I'm done. The article is about how Chrome OS could make it profitable for companies to support Linux and might lead to us taking a bigger piece of the desktop market.

Thanks a lot!

[prshah]

Linux device support usually depends on the chipset underpinning the device. For example, a few years back, most wireless chipsets were using a variant of the Realtek 818x family; this was recently unsupported (directly) until Ubuntu 8.04, which had a native RealTek 8187 kernel module.

So basically, you are looking for unsupported chipsets. Sometimes, even supported chipsets fail due to non-standard implementations. The manufacturer sometimes switches chipsets without changing product name or model number.

Examples of unsupported (directly) or poorly supported chipsets:
= Graphics cards: via chrome
= Canon scanners LIDE 100 onwards (prior models used gl840 chipset, LIDE 100 uses gl841 chipset).
= Audio : while intel_hda_audio is mostly supported, a few vendors have implementation bugs, which they work around in the driver software (Eg jack sensing, reassignment, etc). Note that the audio spec itself is solid; poor implementation by cheap-as-chalk vendors is the cause.
= Most TV Tuner cards based on the SAA713x and 878bt chipsets. While there are a few good models available that work right out of the box, the cheapers ones don't and require a lot of experimenting with the "model=" module parameter to get workng.
= via USB chipsets are known to be problematic at times, though this is more of a platform specific problem, I think.
= USB webcams (again the cheaper ones) which have non-standard implementation for standardized chipsets. Typical chipsets: cannot recall right now, will post back later.

I think you will have to point out in the article that unsupported chipsets are usually the cause of the problem.

[john newbuntu]

From an application perspective, Citibank. And then you add the "user agent switcher" add-on to firefox and they are happy.

[robertcoulson]

Especially Lexmark...Wrote them to complain about my printer not working on Ubuntu and their reply was "Call us and we will give you 25% off coupon on your next purchase of a Lexmark printer"...Yikes.
Robert

[dcstar]

From an application perspective, Citibank. And then you add the "user agent switcher" add-on to firefox and they are happy.

Yep, still too many websites are IE and/or Windows dependant - far too many to mention here.

If I ever come across one I usually complain bitterly and state that they have just lost my business - and possibly many other non-Microsoft users as well - because of this....... and also state that only crap websites are not browser agnostic.

A lot seem to get the message and (eventually) change - but only because people have bothered to complain directly to them.

[Endomancer]

Kaiser baas don't support Linux.
I got one of their digital photo keyrings for xmas and it wouldn't work with Ubuntu, I sent an email asking if they had a linux version of the installation softwear, to which they replied
"
Unfortunately there is no Linux software available. The software is designed to be used with the Windows operating system.

Thanks
Hasan

I still don't see why it can't be a plug and play item with drag and drop file transfer, then installation wont be necessary