Eero Ahonen wrote:
> To exactly how many pieces of hardware have you lost the support on
> Linux while upgrading to a newer version of Linux? 

That's a very good point.

The webcam is the only one I can think of. (See 
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3729 not that it affected me personally)

(I resist the urge to be snarky and talk about losing hardware to new 
drivers. 
http://fixunix.com/linux/539688-linux-will-destroy-your-hardware.html
Pretty funky story there.   ;-)

I also wonder about the people who use the closed-source video drivers - 
do they really keep working with new kernels and ABIs and all? Or does 
ATI release a new driver periodically? I honestly don't know, so I'm 
honestly asking.

As well, going from 98 to an NT-based kernel killed a lot of software 
that bypassed the OS and (for example) frobbed the serial ports 
directly. And I wouldn't bet that every video and sound card worked 
smoothly on every upgrade of OS, even from 2000 to XP. One of the nice 
things about Matrox video cards is they (at least used to - haven't 
checked lately) would release drivers for new cards and old OSes, and 
for old cards and new OSes.

> If your hw works with Linux now, it'll work for the number of years,
> even if you do update your software. As far as I've understood, if your
> hw works with 2k or XP, you can't be sure it'll still work with Vista.

I'm not sure about Vista 32-bit, but Vista 64-bit requires signed 
drivers that have passed MS's testing, because MS was tired of taking 
the flack for crappy drivers taking out the OS. If the HW vendor wanted 
you to buy a new card rather than keep the one you have, you're pretty 
SOL. :-)

Again, sure, your hardware may continue to be supported, but that's 
because the drivers are open-source. They don't "keep working" for new 
releases, they "get fixed" for new releases. If someone doesn't fix it, 
it won't work after they change the ABI again.

The closed-source nature of Windows drivers means there's a much smaller 
group of people who can fix drivers for the hardware, and they usually 
don't have too much incentive to do so.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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