OStatic

Recently, Matthew Garrett, a developer who works with a number of open source projects, including Debian and Ubuntu, wrote a guide for good power management practices. Though he states the guide is mainly for those working with desktop environment implementation and power management interfaces and utilities, he points out a few hardware/software relationships that might interest the casual end-user.

I've been doing some thinking since writing about kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman's statement that Linux supports more devices than any other operating system. Readers made some good comments, and after some time spent wrestling with my (yes, supported) webcam, I can venture an additional suggestion as to why it doesn't always seem that way, beyond Kroah-Hartman's theory of a non-supported device becoming personal.

In the case of my webcam, and in the case of one commenter, it seems the problem isn't necessarily the device driver. At lower levels, the drivers work. It's the layers of programming, interaction, and demand piled on the driver that makes the device feel broken. It is difficult to tell for sure, though, exactly what is causing that break.

On the O'Reilly Media site, there is an intriguing interview with kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman. Kroah-Hartman says he has evidence that Linux now supports more devices than any other operating system.

In the lengthy interview, he talks about why this is true now, and how hardware suppliers and open source developers can work together to bring more peripherals to life.

VIA Technologies announced that it's moving forward with its commitment to open source software by collaborating with the openChrome Project to improve support for VIA integrated graphics chipsets.

VIA and openChrome have been focusing on multi-head support and improving the implementation of the RandR (resize and rotate) extension. The VIA framebuffer driver source has been checked into the 2.6.28 mainline kernel. Perhaps most significantly, VIA has opened the documentation for the VIA CX700M and VX800 chipsets.