Linux first to support USB 3.0

USB 3.0 is supposed to be the next big thing for wires out the back of PCs and hardware manufactures are falling all over themselves to make stuff for them. However so far there has been no operating system that supports the new standard.

Microsoft and Apple are not including the new standard in the Windows 7 or Snow Leopard operating systems. But it looks like Intel's open source community is rushing to fill the gap.

Sarah Sharp, a self-styled "geekess" and Linux developer at Intel's Open Source Technology Centre has been working on the Linux USB subsystem.

Writing in her blog, Sharp writes that the xHCI (USB 3.0) host controller driver and initial support for USB 3.0 devices is now publicly available on her kernel.org git tree.

She said that this means that Linux will be the first operating system with official USB 3.0 support and she is working with Keve Gabbert, who is the OSV bloke at Intel, to make sure that Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Red Hat pick up the xHCI driver.

Sharp hopes that USB 3.0 vendors who have prototypes will test with her driver and get the standard out there, er... quickly.