Lost in Flash Drive PCI USB SCSI hotplug, etc.

[Walt Pawley]

On 8/7/04 4:00 PM -0300, Marcelo Giles wrote on Re: Lost in Flash Drive PCI
USB SCSI hotplug, etc.

>Unfortunately, Linux for PPC is at a rather early level of maturity,
>i.e., compared to that of Linux for x86...

That seems a bit curious as almost all of *nix's are C code.

>... One of the major
>obstacles to the improvement of Linux on the PPC platform is the ad-hoc
>closed, proprietary nature of the Macintosh hardware.

Definitely NOT a mute point.

> Developers of
>Linux distributions (YDL, Debian, Gentoo, etc), have to put up with the
>sudden changes of specifications that so often come from Apple.

Developers of practically anything do with Apple have such troubles. Even
worse than sudden changes of simple specifications are the complete
reversal of direction of major Apple developments midstream. Alas Apple is
not alone with such behavior. It's one of the reasons I believe the design,
details, source code, etc. of EVERY abandoned hardware and software item
made available to the general public should be required to pass in to the
public domain the day the company that produced it decides to no longer
fully support it. If nothing else, it'd make them all think about what
they're doing a bit more carefully before doing it.

>... they have to resort to reverse-engineer Mac OS code to be able to
>learn how to interface with a particular piece of hardware (graphics,
>sound, modem, network, etc).

Indeed.

>Whereas on a PC box (branded or not) Linux (particularly with kernels
>2.4 and 2.6), has truly became "plug'n play". It REALLY works. You just
>insert CD 1, select a few options and you're done. The only thing you
>have to do after that is insert the rest of the CDs. Some distributions
>even come on a DVD, so you insert it, click, click and that's all.

Theoretically, that's the way it works with YDL, for example. My experience
on PCs with FreeBSD, which I actually like a bit more than Linux if only
because I'm a bit more familiar with some of its oddities, has not been any
better. It, too, is supposed to just work. I imagine that it has for
someone. It just never seems to be me.

>.... The only exceptions being from time to time some graphics
>cards from ATI and Envidia or some of the more bleeding-edge hardware.

Actually, I suspect you could fill warehouses with stuff that doesn't work
on PC Linux, or FreeBSD or even Windoze of various and sundry stripes.

>As for documentation, this is one of the factors that contributes
>heavily to the price of software. It demands too many man-hours and it
>is obsoleted very quickly.

On the contrary, the man hours wasted dealing with crappy documentation FAR
exceeds the paltry time it takes to do a decent job of documentation.
Moreover, poorly designed software is what gets obsoleted quickly. If it's
sound it sticks around. IMHO, one of the major problems with documenting
software is that the lessons of Perl and good Forth code are not even
touched on in the lives of most programmers. Perl is easy to write with
it's documentation embedded. So it Forth, not that any one but a few
bizarre thinkers care.

>But Linux has its wealth of free and well-written documentation.
>Check-out, for instance, the set of Red Hat manuals at
>www.redhat.com/docs. ... Each of them from 100 to more than 300
>pages long.

Actually, bulk of documentation is a real problem. 1200 pages is TOO much
to deal with. It's not quantity that's the problem. It's having what's
available be meaningful. IMHO, there are gobs and gobs of gobs and very
little really good reading.

>Regarding the HFS+ issue, I understand that support for this file
>system comes in the latest 2.4 kernels and, of course, in 2.6.
>Probably, you're using an earlier version.

I believe YDL 3.0.1 comes with 2.4.22-f, as I recall. For me the point is
that the data that's installed with the OS says that HFS and HFS+ should be
mountable. Perhaps they are. Perhaps I'm just not reading the right bit of
canabula to figure out how, despite seeing direct examples of what to type.

>Finally, I'll look for some documentation that explains the issue of
>usb-to-scsi mapping and (if I find something decent), I'll forward it
>to you (in case you're still interested, of course).

I'd post it here (assuming it's a URL, rather than the data itself, or just
not so much stuff that it would be no burden) so we could all see about it.
Or, is this another one of those deals where it's "just me"?   ;-)

>And Walt, please, don't be discouraged. You know that you can count on
>the fine people that makes this mailing list what it is, a friendly and
>cooperative place in which you'll always find good advise.

I'm sure I'll remain discouraged and enthralled all at that same time. The
world's just too complex a place to be as simplistic as I prefer. It's the
hill billy in me.

-- 
Walter M. Pawley <walt@wump.org>
Wump Research & Company
676 River Bend Road, Roseburg, OR 97470
         541-672-8975