

Perhaps the Linux community could learn a trick or two from Microsoft? They came from well behind in the spreadsheet market to dominate it with Excel by removing the barriers for people to move both back *and* forth between 123 and Excel:

If not then eventually there will be enough demand for them to consider making a native driver. If it’s brilliant, then there’s no need for a native driver (why would a manufacturer want two separate codebases to maintain?). But either way it will enable more people to readily migrate to using Linux as their primary OS.

A compatability layer like this will either be *so* good that there will be no need for native drivers, or (more likely) will be somewhat inefficient. Demand will only come from a lot more people using Linux and asking for native drivers, either because they cant get them or because the ones that other people have coded arent up to scratch.ģ. As much as we would like otherwise, most hardware manufacturers will only develop native drivers for Linux if they have an economic incentive to – if there is enough demand to warrant their expenditure on coding and maintaining them.Ģ.
