[LAU] The pain of Firewire audio hardware

[Clemens Ladisch]

Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
> it feels frustrating, evangelising linux, showing it how great it is
> for audio, but then... there you go a simple polite question and this
> bitter feeling you can't really help him much...

You cannot show that Linux is great for audio when it is _not_ actually
great for audio.

> I'm no low-level dirver programming expert, but my feeling is that in
> some cases doing a binary version of their drivers wouldn't be so much
> effort.

I am, and a binary driver would require much more effort to make it
compatible with all the various kernel versions.


The reasons that manufacturers don't help much is that the Linux market
isn't big enough to justify the cost of supporting driver development.
(There are some manufacturers that do give out information, but this is
possible only for those that actually have documentation.)  Furthermore,
without anybody sponsoring the actual development, there is no guarantee
that a complete driver will ever be written.  (There are currently no
Linux FireWire developers who have much free time.)


Regards,
Clemens