News Firewire refuses to die, but needs help — as hardware becomes rarer, maintainer seeks volunteers for device testing

[Admin]

The Linux OS Firewire Maintainer is looking for help from testers still using the ancient hardware. Takashi Sakamoto has made it his quest to keep Firewire (IEEE 1394) support going on Linux systems until 2029. However, with such hardware use increasingly rare, he is looking for more input from the user base.

Firewire refuses to die, but needs help — as hardware becomes rarer, maintainer seeks volunteers for device testing : Read more

 

[dimar]

Firewire cards Windows drivers work fine in Windows 11 and 10. I believe Microsoft discontinued Windows apps support for built in video capture ability. Also hardware is not rare, there's plenty selling on Amazon.

 

[erazog]

It is still possible to use a Firewire to Thunerbolt adapter on modern Mac's for transferring camera DV footage so its not quiet dead on the MacOS side yet at least.

Not all Firewire cards do work fine in Windows 10/11, many are very broken the only MS OS that is really fully compatible is Windows 7.

 

[decembermouse]

Firewire cards Windows drivers work fine in Windows 11 and 10. I believe Microsoft discontinued Windows apps support for built in video capture ability. Also hardware is not rare, there's plenty selling on Amazon.

Yup. In lieu of any security concerns, of which if they exist I'm unaware, there's no reason to specifically disable the capability. Not actively maintaining the software for future Windows builds makes sense, as no new hardware will be forthcoming, but there's no reason to completely remove support for older devices. We can still use Zip drives, floppy drives, serial devices, and SCSI devices in Win10/11, with not too much effort. Microsoft isn't on the war path against old hardware.