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The vast majority of GNU/Linux drivers is still written
and maintained as spare time projects. If someone wants support for a device
he either starts a driver project on his own or joins an already existing
project.
The hardware market is a minefield of patents, proprietary
specifications and mangled standards. Still most hardware manufacturers won't
release proper documentation for their products, which makes writing a driver
a tedious task. And they do not bother to provide GNU/Linux drivers on their
own either, since they do not see GNU/Linux a as force to be reckoned with.
This is especially true for the desktop market, where Microsoft provides
more than 85 % of all operating systems installed. GNU/Linux is growing quickly,
but if you start at 1 %, doubling the share within a year isn't that impressive.
Figure out on your own what to think of someone who sells you an expensive
piece of hardware and then won't let you use it the way you want to ...
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Mandrake does not write device drivers. This
seems to be a common misconception. Many projects all around the world write
them, the kernel team writes them, some vendors supply them. Mandrake doesn't.
Mandrake's purpose (and that of every other GNU/Linux distributor) is to
put all these individual efforts together into a distribution which is easy
to use and works.
Therefore there are several conditions a driver must
fulfill before being included:
- The driver must work ;-).
- The driver must be available in source code. Binary
only drivers suck, since you can't fix them on your own and you have to rely
on the issuing company to keep up with kernel revisions (they are compiled
against a certain kernel version and will only work with this special version).
- The driver must use an Open License, preferably the
GPL.
If you aren't allowed to distribute it, you run into legal problems. If you
aren't allowed to look at the source, you can't be sure if it doesn't break
anything.
- The driver must not break support for other hardware.
It is up to you to use drivers which do not fulfill
one or more of these conditions, but don't expect M to do it. Also consider
that M has no interest in maliciously 'hiding' drivers from users and usually
knows about existing drivers ...
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Vendor drivers are often distributed in source code
(.tar.gz or .tgz archives), which means you have to compile them first. Read
the article on Compiling Source Code
to get an idea how to do this. If you fail and need help, do not forget to
include the compiler error messages in your question as this will make helping
you much easier.
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Mandrake has its own supported hardware database.
Since hardware related questions are often discussed on M's user mailing
lists, you might give their archives
at mail-archive.com a shot.
Linux distributor SuSE also maintains a database of supported
hardware. Since this database has been around for some years, it is a
bit more extensive than M's - for now ;-).
Linux distributor Red Hat offers quite an impressive database at hardware.redhat.com, too.
A distributor independent resource is ZDNet's Linux Hardware Database (LhD). It lists
a lot of information about the hardware in question and comes with a user
rating and comment system. This is currently the best maintained database
on Linux hardware support.
Another, user-maintained database is Linux Hardware.Net, which also stores
hardware-related documentation and links to pages offering device drivers
for exotic hardware.
Navigation and quality of comments are not up to par with LhD, the discussion
board is only frequented scarcely.
The Linux Hardware
Compatibility HOWTO "lists most of the hardware supported by Linux and
helps you locate any necessary drivers."
comp.os.linux.hardware
is a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to discussing Linux and hardware related
topics. You can search it on the web via Google
Groups.
The Linux Driver Foundry
serves as a unified front end to all Linux drivers projects on SourceForge.
Linux
Voodoo offers some drivers along with installation instructions.
Google Linux
is fast and often returns good hits on searches for hardware information.
LinuxHardware.org
offers reviews, news and discussions on hardware and Linux.
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 Special Linux Hardware Websites
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