What exactly does "supports Linux" mean?

Dear all,

I recently came across a very annoying question regarding Linux compatibility. It rises a fundamental question which should be discussed, IMHO. Facts are:
I bought a card from some vendor, claiming "support for Linux". I tried to make it work in a configuration with a standard 2.4.20 kernel from kernel.org. The drivers (kernel modules) are binary-only. They did not load because of a version mismatch. Asking for versions loadable with standard kernels, I got the response that they only support kernels from Red Hat and SuSE, but no standard kernels.
This leads to my simple question: how can one claim his product supports linux, if it does not work with a kernel.org kernel? Is there any paper or open statement from big L (hello btw ;-) available what you have to do to call yourself "supporting linux"?
I know that the technical background is ridiculous, because it should very well be possible to recompile their drivers under stock 2.4.20, but it looks like they don't want to, simply.
I am in fact a bit worried about this behaviour, because I take it as a first step to a general market split up already known to *nix.
My general conclusion would be that something not working with a standard kernel cannot be called "supporting linux", no matter what distros ever are supported. You may call me purist...
Any ideas?

Regards,
Stephan

What about the following: a vendor provides linux drivers for one of its products (thanks!). These drivers simply do not work with some of its other products (all variants of the same basic product). There are no linux drivers for these other products. All the products claim to be supported under linux. This "linux support" is explicitly stated on each product's web-page whether it is really supported or not.

Duncan.

So send it back and consult local trading standards rules.

Linus owns the trademark for the USA certainly.

If you really want it to work, try insmod -f modulename.o. See of it works. RedHat supplies kernels with "intermediate" version numbers like linux-2.4.18-24. A perfectly-good module from linux-2.4.18 may fail to load without the '-f' option, even though it is probably compatible. Try it, it may work fine. You can modify /etc/rc.d/rc.local to insert the module during startup so you don't have to muck with /etc/modules.conf (and having other startup-code change it when it "finds" new hardware.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips). Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.

Of course, don't do this unless you can live with the following :

1/ nobody will support you in this configuration.
2/ you have zero guarantee that your hardware will be supported in the future (what will happen when you upgrade to a new kernel with different interfaces and the vendor marketing folks decide that Linux support isn't a good thing anymore ?).

[snip]

Any ideas who (if anyone) owns it in the UK? Is there anywhere to go to find this out, perhaps for other countries too?

jc