Windows driver on linux?

[bluefirelady]

Hey I have a piece of hardware with an windows XP driver, is it possible to getting running in linux (ie. maybe a wine like program that runs a supervisor mode?) Or am I stuck getting/running a virtualbox?

[Kloschüssel]

It strongly depends on the hardware. If it needs to be run in kernelspace it will be troublesome. Maybe you'll find information by reading how ndiswrapper works. That basically takes windows drivers for wireless devices and somehow uses those to run the device in *nix.

[bluefirelady]

ah ok this is a usb adapter called "ems nds adapter" its for backing up Nintendo ds game saves. Its a glorified usb to sd card reader.

[godwater]

The hardwares in virtualbox are dummy, so you cannot use you real driver on them.

[previso]

NDISWRAPPER will load the Windows driver at bootup. Originally for WLAN cards, it now works for all sorts of hardware, i.e., printers, etc.
You will need both the *.inf and *.sys files from the Windows drivers. It will be "tricky" to get the sequence of NDISWRAPPER commands right the first time, but it will work if you are patient.

[dancingdog777]

What happens when you plug it in on Linux? I have found much to my surprise that plenty of hardware items just work.

[Kloschüssel]

This device is officially unsupported (by the vendor) on all machines other than winX and it can be considered as a relict from the old ages which nowadays very few people use.