[wellylug] DSE & Linux

[Pizbit]

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A couple of months ago I bought a tv card from DSE, a Flyview3000 or something
(I know it by the chipset saa7134) on the website was a link to bytesex.org  I
went there and looked around then did a bit of quick googleing to see what
others had to say about it, saw people had got it working and I bought it.

It came with a cd that had the windows and linux drivers and tv players, for
windows it was something that is obviously more bloat than windows could ever be
and didn't work very well as crashed too much, although I'm told an updated
version of the software works much better or something along those lines. For a
linux tv player xawtv was packaged.

I was running mandrake 9.1 at the time and I believe I managed to get it working
within an hour or so by just read the documentation that came with it.Compiling
and installing the driver provided. Well actually I lie, I went to the site
mentioned by DSE and downloaded the lastest xawtv and driver but there you go.

Bit of a false start though, xawtv wouldn't save the settings unless you created
a blank ~/.xawtv file for it to save them too.

The card also has FM radio which various programs could play, didn't touch it
much then but now that I'm running Debian Sarge with 2.6.0 using the driver in
the kernel they work better, just, erm, they can turn the radio on, but not off,
hrm! :D Simple fix, load a tv player app and then close it.

Recently I installed tvtime and xmltv and I now have nice high quality tv on the
channels where I have reception, and on screen display of the current program
playing, small description of it and the name of the one following.

I'm not sure if it's just the guy at bytesex.org or if the manufacturer is
involved, but I believe that there was enough on the cd to install it fine and
with it in the 2.6 kernel you shouldn't need to worry about it.

So while as you said in your story you found what you bought to be rather
under-supported DSE is selling at least one item that is well supported.:)

Richard Hector wrote:
| I hope I'm not commenting on the wrong things here ...
|
| On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 06:27:53PM -0700, Wood Brent wrote:
|
|>DSE is pretty well committed (due to new licencing issues with an alternative
|>OS) to using Linux & supporting it's use, and will be promoting it as a viable
|>alternative. Hopefully WLUG will be able to be involved in this in the Wgtn
|>region.
|>
|>This stance from a retailer like DSE could have a major impact on the way the
|>general public perceive Linux, and it's viability/credibility.
|>
|>Any comments?
|
|
| I like the fact that DSE is doing something about Linux.
|
| However, there are very different levels of support possible.
|
| What I've seen so far is an attempt to gather up some drivers, probably
| test them a bit, and bung them on a CD with Openoffice.org, and stick a
| penguin on the box.
|
| This, IMHO, leads to disappointment. I have 2 cases in mind:
|
| I bought a Terminator PC for my grandmother. I blew away Mandrake and
| installed Debian (because it's what I'm familiar with), and went through
| some hassle getting the Intel HaM modem (mentioned in another thread) going
| with a custom kernel. That was survivable, though someone with less
| knowledge than me would no doubt have had problems, and possibly given
| up (as I was tempted to do). However, it appears that this modem won't
| work at all with kernel 2.6. That's the sort of thing I was trying to
| get away from when I decided to forget about Windows.
|
| The other thing I bought was their PCI 802.11b card - again with the
| penguin on the box. It turns out to have binary modules as well. After
| struggling to get in working in Debian, I downloaded and installed
| Redhat 9.2 (from memory) - the latest version mentioned in the docs on
| the CD. Even then, I couldn't get it going - though of course I'm not
| that familiar with RedHat. Again, even If I was able to make it work (as
| people obviously have), I think I'd be out of luck with a newer kernel.
|
| To me, labelling such hardware as 'Linux compatible' is bogus.
|
| At the very least, I'd like to see fully open source drivers,
| preferably with assistance from the hardware manufacturer (rather than
| relying on reverse engineering); much better is to pick the hardware for
| which the drivers are in the standard kernel tree. That way, I'm pretty
| much guaranteed that I can get it going in any distro with any kernel,
| now or in the future. Obviously that's not practical for brand new
| leading edge stuff; I'm guessing most drivers don't get written before
| the hardware is released the way they are for Windows (though that'd be
| nice).
|
| But for relatively mature hardware, I feel that DSE must have the buying
| power to specify a decent well supported chipset, given that they're
| getting stuff branded for them anyway.
|
| Assuming that they can't do that for everything, they could at least
| specify what level of support a given item has, ranging from binary
| module for a specific kernel through to fully integrated. A simple
| unqualified penguin on the box is not enough.
|
| That, IMHO, is what we need when it comes to supporting linux.
|
| Richard
|
| PS: of course this all applies to any other retailer too.
|
|

- --
(Leo/Pizbit)
I don't kill flies, but I like to mess with their minds.  I hold them above
globes.  They freak out and yell "Whooa, I'm *way* too high."
~                -- Bruce Baum
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