On Thu, 22 Aug 2002 09:13:10 -0500, Mike Starke wrote:

> I am currently in the market for a digital camera, however
> I want to ensure it works properly with Linux.
> 
> It's my understanding that I can just plug into a
> USB port and I can then mount the device. I have never bothered
> to compile USB into my kernel, for obvious reasons (no USB devices:);
> I am assuming there is support for a variety of cameras out there?
> 
> Any tips or suggestions are welcome.
> 

Get a camera that uses Compact Flash (CF) card.  These are IDE devices.  I
use a PCMCIA adapter to download the files to my Linux laptop, but you can
buy adapters for regular PCs that allow plugging these cards into your
PC's IDE cable (you just can't/shouldn't do hot swapping, aways change
devices on the IDE cable with the power off).  I got my PCMCIA adapter for
free but they're usually about $10.  I also bought a CF IDE adapter for
$20 (including a floppy drive bay mounting bracket, sans face plate).

CF is cheap, and directly connecting them to your computer is much faster
than USB.  When I originally started, I was using a serial link to
download my images, so I had a huge incentive to purchase a laptop for
faster downloads.

The file system of the CF cards is just DOS.

FYI - In the past day or so, I just read on the Linux-Kernel mailinglist
that CF cards on the same cable as HDs are not recognized.  This is a
software limitation and Alan Cox stated that this should be removed.

	-Paul