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Comment by shermantanktop | Hacker News Reader

The great thing about open source is that there’s always at least one person who can take on the job of fixing your obscure hardware problem…you.

The terrible thing is that you are probably unqualified to do driver surgery without taking on more work than the problem is worth to you to fix.

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Yeah, with two small kids, the last thing I want to spend my spare time doing is playing with drivers. I want things that just work.

Another aspect to "just work" is it'd be great if component vendors mentioned the state of linux support. For example with motherboards it's expected that there will be windows drivers and tools there for all the functionality, but while the source of software support is different under linux from looking at a random product page it's a big question mark on which one is wise to buy to get the best experience or if full/partial support is available now or soon. Even for Asus gear which I'm aware has efforts going on for linux (or just their laptops? just their ROG branded laptops?) there's precious little mention of it on product pages to confirm the status.

The last thing anyone would want to spend their spare time is fixing your problems with drivers.

Being able to do it yourself is truly the only liberating thing out there, since paying someone else to do it does not seem to actually work these days (or ever).

Its not about "you must fix your own software", but that "you CAN fix your own software".

Closed source OSes like MS Windows and OSX dont permit you to see, let alone fix things internally.

Sure. But for most people (even fairly technical people!), that doesn't actually provide any advantage. If one lacks the skills to fix the software, the fact that they have the ability to do so doesn't give them any benefit.

You can fix your own software but it is not at all guaranteed that there is anyone else interested in fixing your particular problem to anything like the level of closed-source OSs.

The great thing about open source is that there's a whole ecosystem of developers that you can pay to fix your obscure hardware problem. Self-reliance is great, but field servicability without being beholden to the trade secrets of a single monopolist is a much better deal for society.

How common is that? Are there a lot of bounties on defects that actually get paid out?

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