Linux and the 'clssic' computing world

[Kenneth Gober]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 11:18 AM Alan Perry via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> > On Sep 27, 2021, at 07:07, Joshua Rice via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Obviously, there's more hardware platforms that support Linux (like the
> RPi and other ARM boards)
>

> Doesn’t this have the relationship between the OS and the hardware
> platform backwards?
>

When there is no relationship between the hardware and OS teams (i.e. the
OS team chooses to
adopt the hardware on their own) you can say the OS is adding support for
that hardware platform.

But more often than not, OS support is a big part of selling hardware.  You
seriously reduce your
potential sales if your hardware doesn't run a popular operating system,
and to ensure that your
operating system(s) of choice will run on your hardware, you pay your own
developers to do the
port(s).  At that point, it is very much a case of the hardware platforms
supporting an OS.  This is
especially true when other operating system developers find themselves
unable to support your
hardware because the needed documentation isn't available.

The situation is similar with add-on hardware that requires device
drivers.  If the documentation
needed to write a device driver is unavailable, and the only available
drivers came from the
hardware maker, then it is definitely a case of the hardware maker
supporting the OS.

-ken