[Wine] For what reason the "official" Wine does not support USB ?

James Mckenzie jjmckenzie51 at earthlink.net
Thu Jul 15 10:32:34 CDT 2010


Martin Gregorie <martin at gregorie.org> wrote:
>
>On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 07:34 -0700, James Mckenzie wrote:
>> This has got to be a Linux issue.  I use a Passport drive on my Mac
>> without issue.  
>> 
>
>Both 'just work' and, because I'm not using vfat, the file permissions
>don't get messed up and the file ownership isn't lost.
>
This is how it should be.  Security software should also be 'transparent', but it isn't.  Hopefully, WD will release a Linux version (if they have not already done so) of the software that locks their Passport drives.  This is a well-known security problem with removable devices (USB flash/hard drives.)  The do have software for the Mac that works with both Intel and PowerPC systems.  Maybe a few Linux users 'prodding' them to produce a Linux version might be enough to get them to do so.

However, the problem is not that Linux/UNIX/Wine does not support hard drives and flash drives, it is the 'other' USB devices, like pluggable phones (I had a Samsung one and I could NEVER acces the internal storage on it.)  Things like this are keeping folks from fully adopting Linux/Wine as an alternative to Windows (not a replacement, we have a long way to go before that can be considered) and to see migrations from Windows to Linux.

We do have folks working, independent of each other, to create USB solution(s).  A concentrated effort could bring USB devices as another supported feature to Wine without the driver mess that Windows creates.

Just a thought.

James McKenzie

>  
>Martin
>
>
>




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