Linux users of Sony Z1 series

[Luc Saillard <>]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 12:28:00PM -0500, Greg FABRE wrote:
> They are some very good closed softwares, with weird licenses, as vmware 
> for exemple. But I cannot understand why they want to sell a support for 
> an old hardware on a free and open platform. Everybody reported that 
> connexant drivers are great, but it is not enough to justify the act of 
> selling. 10 bucks is not expensive and I don't think that this software 
> is very reliable and interresting according to a production spirit.

But, are you agree about that ?
 I've the source code of the windows driver, I ports the source code (ie i
just define some macros, change some variables, but keep horrible coding
style of the windows platform), and sell it ? Sorry but i don't think this is
good solution. This why the alcatel modem usb, or the eagle usb adsl modem is
not in the kernel for a long time because, they didn't respect Linux coding
style. And for connexant driver, i've tested several times, and i've crash of
my laptop. So ... it works for me(tm) is not a good solutions. i've seen
several compagny that ported code from windows to linux platforms and don't
see 1° the respect of the GPL, 2° the respect of the linux platform. Each
time i try to play sound, do several ssh, many connections in http, and my
laptop crash. So perhaps it's works with only regular user ... not for me.
Now i try to choose a hotel with a wifi connection, to not use the modem.
But this is my opinion, perhaps i'm upset about linuxant, but i don't like
these people that try to do this sort of business (for more details, see the
Linux Kernel Archive (2004-04))

> Smartlink driver is on a weird license too but it's _opensource_ and 
> free. This driver has always been reported as a non working one :) but 

smartlink is not opensource, the last time, i've look into it, they a have a
binary object in it .o. But it's a user space program. So if the ppp stack
crash, you don't need to reboot your computer, lost files, ... If linuxant
provides (as smartlink do) a userspace driver, it's fine. It's like to choose
to run opera, ... but in kernel i want ONLY opensource driver.
> It seems that this soft is very close to a working thing. So hang on or 
> code :)

This is normal that the driver doesn't works on a vaio because we don't have
a smartlink chip but a connexant chip. The signal for the dsp is not
compatible. Intel only provides (or via, ...) provides just a gateway to
communicates with the chips.

> if I haven't any adsl/cable/fiber connection, I usually use a bluetooth 
> modem over a gsm phone or an old serial rtc modem over an usb-serial 
> adaptator. It's a boring way to solve the problem :)

So the phone bill with your gsm must be pretty high :-)

Luc