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Comment by slgeorge | Hacker News Reader

Yes, you MUST buy certified hardware [0], preferably with it pre-loaded with Linux [1].

Ultimately, Linux didn't make enough of a dent in the desktop hardware space in the 90's/00's. The level of interest from hardware vendors (ODM/OEM/component manufacturers) has gone down - that's why things are worse.

If you don't use non-preloaded hardware you are NOT signalling to anyone that desktop Linux is important. This reduces overall interest - vendors think that no-one uses Linux - over the long run this reduces the amount of work done.

The take-away is please buy a DELL Sputnik with support - you are signalling to the market you want desktop Linux - and if it breaks you can complain!

I confess I only partially practise what I preach - I'm on a thinkpad =-)

[0] https://certification.ubuntu.com/ and there are other sites [1] https://www.dell.com/support/article/uk/en/ukbsdt1/sln310507...

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Well, I'll definitely keep an eye on that piece of hardware. I do intend that the next system I buy can run Linux well. I mean I'm going to stick with it, even if it is bad.

That said.. even though I'm pointing out hardware issues I don't think the free software world should get a pass on these things. I get that a lack of corporate sponsorship can make things hard, BUT, a lot of the issues I'm running into are things that are just about having decent project maintenance.

Like, if my touchpad stops working after I close the screen, clearly they had enough info to actually make a working touchpad driver, but not enough to actually, uh, make it reliable. In most companies you have the concept of "alpha" or "beta" level of software, and I feel like EVERY component in Linux is alpha level. As long as you're 100% on the happy path your experience will be perfectly mediocre, and otherwise it's going bad VERY fast. Like I mean, it's pretty sad that the login screen is broken. I can't be the first person that plugged their laptop into a monitor! And it recognizes the monitor and works fine with it! So it's just an issue of kdm (or whatever the hell it is now) not actually being able to handle a multi monitor setup in... 2020? This shit has been old hat for 15 YEARS.

I don't know what it will take for free software to produce a decent desktop system, but I think blaming it on 3rd party companies is off the table at this point, there's obviously something not quite working with this model when it comes to producing software people can use.

It's not "open source" that's in question here, it is "work done for free without commercially paid developers".

A bunch of work happens for things like wifi and cpu because of Android and ChromeOS.

But, the number of professional paid developers doing "desktop Linux" drivers is probably fewer than 10 right now [0].

The number of full-time paid developers on "desktop Linux" itself is probably under 100? ... probably more like 50 honestly.

Drivers are of alpha quality (using your definition) because they are not written by the manufacturer. The reliability of drivers is down to the lack of availability of information. The bottom line is that the lack of access to information about how the hardware works means it's hard to make reliable drivers.

Your trackpad example is perfect because AFAIK synaptics had to reverse engineered.

Microsoft doesn't write drivers, the hardware vendors does. And Microsoft runs a test, if the hardware works then it passes the test and gets a sticker on it's butt. HP can only ship hardware that has the sticker. This outsources the cost to the manufacturer and the testing to the OEM.

Whereas, in Linux land those economics don't apply.

I get your points but if you actually want to use desktop Linux then this is one area where you have to go with the grain - buy a PRELOADED certified system because that's going to be built from the smallest set of hardware that the vendor knows is compatible.

[0] meaning there is no-one paid to work on monitors, there is no-one paid to work on that trackpad. What is being paid for is so that Android or ChromeOS can work.

So honestly, if the answer is "buy special hardware to use this thing"... I'm probably not going to use the thing.

I support desktop linux up to the point where I'm willing to use it, and contribute if I am using, but, I'm not replacing everything I own for an experience that's already proven to be bad. I'm not really convinced the problem is hardware, I think there are cultural/organization/design problems here. It shouldn't be hard to have multi-monitor support for a login screen 15 years after it's been a common setup. I shouldn't be battling with ACPI issues when ACPI is a standard that's been around since like 1996. I'm willing to be forgiving about things like graphics drivers or other things that are on the cutting edge with manufacturers that are mostly indifferent, but we're talking basic functionality. Even though I'm sympathetic to the manpower issues it doesn't change the fact that it's not really usable and telling people to buy new computers isn't a good solution.

I think you just have to accept that desktop Linux has a different set of tradeoffs. It's not right for everyone but you were driven here because you couldn't stand Windows but you're already dismissing the alternative as 'proven to be bad'.

Also I think you are underestimating how crappy and broken a lot of hardware is. See eg. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/tree/master...

or read some of the comments here, lots are about ACPI https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/pci/q...

Has anyone bought the libinput maintainer your laptop hardware so he can work out why it doesn't work? You can see from the commit log that it's mainly developed by one person, who also developed the previous Linux (synaptics) touchpad driver for years before that.

ACPI is an overcomplicated hostile Microsoft-led standard that has a side effect of creating problems on OSs other than Windows because most hardware manufacturers are only interested enough to test things enough to make sure Windows boots and has no problems. Forget the Halloween documents, this is far more diabolical.

It's an early attack toward making the PC platform move toward ownership and control of Microsoft, well before UEFI or Secure Boot.

Combine this with the modern trend of some hardware manufacturer's refusing to release details needed to create drivers unless NDAs are signed, which wasn't something commonplace in the early 90's when Linux (and Windows NT) was born, and this creates the situation where things don't "just work" on Linux.

With the proper hardware information and without a bad firmware interface like ACPI in the way of the hardware, the only limit is whether someone is willing to write and maintain a driver for it.

>there's obviously something not quite working with this model when it comes to producing software people can use

It might be that the model is never going to provide the financial incentives to work perfectly on every random Windows laptop, which is what you seem to mean by 'producing software people can use'. Meanwhile, plenty of people use it just fine - your laptop not working hardly invalidates the whole desktop Linux concept.

You're missing my point, which is that the problems extend past hardware support. Also it's hardware that frankly should work. MSI GS65. There's nothing weird hardware wise with this laptop.

Linux will always have unstable drivers (with a few exceptions where companies throw money at it) until linux kernel developers acknowledge that a stable driver ABI results in stable drivers.

> The level of interest from hardware vendors (ODM/OEM/component manufacturers) has gone down - that's why things are worse.

I'm sort of surprised the Linux community didn't put more effort into a compatibility layer so that Windows drivers could be used on Linux, or something to make it easy for vendors to quickly port their Windows drivers to Linux.

It's only doable for a small subset from the system side: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDISwrapper

On the other hand, large drivers like NVIDIA use their own blobs which likely share a lot of code between systems.

Right, what I'm saying is that I'm surprised more effort wasn't put into NDIS to make it work with other types of hardware.

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