See This, Now Read This

My previous post might have been a bit misleading as Linux is not perfect and it isn’t without its’ hiccups. The fact that the Linux OS has not yet become large enough to get support from most hardware manufacturer’s and game developer’s is Linux’s biggest problem at the moment. This doesn’t mean that there’s absolutely no official hardware and software support. If you have a piece of hardware that is intended to be used by business’s you might even have an official driver released by the manufacturer as Linux is somewhat popular with big business. And there are a handful of commercial games available for Linux that are natively supported. None the less, official hardware and game support is far and between, but luckily home grown support is as big as ever.

In my case my troubles began with my Bluetooth mouse. It’s not like I can go on Toshiba’s website and download the latest Linux driver for my computer; although to be fair Toshiba doesn’t have a Vista driver either. Along comes Charles Schwieters to the rescue, a lone man that has single handedly reverse engineered Toshiba’s ACPI giving me access to my computer’s proprietary hardware including my Bluetooth module. This as is the case with most Linux driver’s are coded by a single person. The significance of this is that if you have a new piece of hardware you might have to wait some time for a proper driver to come. None the less, back to my mouse. I discovered that yes, the driver was included with Ubuntu, but enabling the Bluetooth required a little work. In Windows a hardware fix usually just requires you to double-click on a file and pressing next a few times. In Linux it means editing files and using a whole bunch of esoteric commands. It’s not a difficult process, but you do need guidance in most cases. In my case I was lucky and I had someone give me step-by-step instructions. The significance of this is that the Linux community is amazing and it will in most cases give you better technical support than Microsoft. Unfortunately I was not lucky with my next piece of hardware – my scanner.

Apparently there are no drivers for my scanner as no one has figured out how to reverse engineer them, so in actuality I wasn’t telling the whole truth in my previous post. Everything worked out of the box that was essential, unfortunately my scanner did not, but it is still here and I still use it. When ever I need to scan something I select Windows XP when I initially start my computer and scan from within Windows. Ubuntu automatically installs a boot manager when you have another OS installed already thus giving you the ability to boot Linux on the same machine letting you enjoy the luxuries of Windows when needed.

If all else fails there’s one last thing that you can do to get your hardware working in Linux – install Windows, but this time in Linux. Using applications like VMware or Virtual Box allows you to use Windows in Linux via process called virtualization. I have only tried Virtual Box, and let me to tell you it works as promised. To my amazement I did not have to install one driver for any of my hardware in Windows and my wireless connections was perfectly working. The only problem I had was with my Windows license, I had to validate it again as Microsoft saw that the hardware configuration was different. Now keep in mind that I’m only mentioning the negative aspects of Linux in this post. I could of course tell you how fantastic the printing system is and how it automatically sets up your printer without you touching one setting, but I won’t, as this post is about the negative aspects of Linux. Now I will talk to you about what it takes to play Windows games on Linux.

Setting up a game to work in Linux can be a nightmare as now the game needs 3D acceleration for a game that is looking for Windows drivers based around DirectX in Linux. The answer to this problem is Wine, a program that allows you to run Windows software in Linux; even Microsoft Office. The Wine developers have somehow reverse engineered most of the technology in Windows giving Linux users a compatibility layer for DirectX and other libraries. At this moment the truth of the matter is that most games take a performance hit under Wine and to get a game working you will have to play around with Wine’s and the game’s configuration, making Wine a poor competitor. To make things simpler, Cedega (Wine based) came along and pre-configured all the games for you at a price. For $5/month you can play the most popular games on Linux without going through the agony of trying every setting out there to get the perfect configuration. Then there’s Crossover Office (Wine based) which specializes with the installation of Windows based business applications and a few games. None the less, things are getting better for Linux gamers as ATI and Nvidia both have opened up their source and they have started to provide some great drivers.

Just so this post is not filled with only negative points, let add a little bit more meaning to Linux’s flexibility and stability with this – Microsoft server’s use Linux. Did I just say flexibility? Yes, flexibility is Linux’s biggest strength as anyone can modify Linux any which way they want to do anything they want. You can even modify Linux to get it on your iPod and well, anything with microchip in it. The flexibility is solely thanks to the open source nature of Linux, meaning that all the code is accessible to everybody giving interested programmers the resources and freedom to create anything that they would like.

In summary, Linux does have flaws but there almost always is a work around. And the important thing is not to get discouraged when you don’t find an instant fix. Just go on one of the many Linux forums and ask in the appropriate sub-forum while giving as much relevant information as possible. Linux has a big future and all of these problems will eventually overcome.