6 ms·

Open source drivers are rare on Windows because manufacturers almost always ship proprietary drivers that are good enough, and Windows users clearly have no iss

Open source drivers are rare on Windows because manufacturers almost always ship proprietary drivers that are good enough, and Windows users clearly have no issues running closed-source software. Proprietary drivers on Linux are often crap, if they even exist at all.

squarefoot 7y ago
Windows users should push for FOSS drivers as well also when the proprietary ones run perfectly. Privacy and security issues aside, being forced to depend on a closed driver means that the manufacturer can make the product obsolete just by stopping support on newer Windows versions, therefore turning the product essentially into trash, thus forcing the user to buy a new one.
- jfim 7y ago
  The vast majority of Windows users don't really care about that though. In the 90s, software modems ("winmodems", see [0]) were popular because they were cheaper than using dedicated hardware for generating and decoding the audio signals sent over the phone line. Those would break if the manufacturer didn't upgrade their driver for newer versions of Windows, since they're completely software driven. I'd be very surprised if things have changed since then, and I bet that the majority of consumers would just pick the cheapest option at the big box store. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    I remember getting PCI based Winmodems working on my old machines back in the late 90s/early 2000s. A lot of people bought ISA modems or physical COM port models so they wouldn't have to deal with that bullshit. Now most Linux distributions are littered with binary blobs in linux-firmware that have to be loaded for everything from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth. We've gone the total opposite direction of where we should be .. except for like .. amdgpu.
  - rhizome 7y ago
    Winmodems were not popular with anybody except manufacturers, and exponentially increased the support issues with modems as an entire technology. Read: people had more problems with Winmodems than they did before.
    - dotancohen 7y ago
      Not true in all locales. In 2001 I bought a computer locally (Haifa, Israel) with a winmodem. I installed Red Hat on it, so obviously the winmodem would not work. I could not find a hardware modem locally. The only solution that I had was to go with an ADSL line (250k up, 750k down) which cost a fortune but whose modem would plug into the network card. It would be a full two years before I would see any other home users on anything other than dialup. 750k down in 2001 was so impressive, you could start listening to songs on Kazaa as soon as the download started!
- egdod 7y ago
  That’s true, but... that culture isn’t there for Windows users the way it is for Linux users.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  My bf got given a wacom tablet for free because the wacom windows drivers no longer support it but it works perfectly fine on Linux.
- lmm 7y ago
  The windows approach to driver certification makes this really difficult. Microsoft virtually requires every driver maintainer to pay $100-odd every couple of years for a signing certificate (and ironically enough this is done in the name of improving driver quality). For a corporation that's nothing, but it's a pretty steep ask for the hobbyist maintainers that OSS drivers tend to rely on.
stefan_ 7y ago
There is also the little matter of Windows (since 7 I think?) requiring kernel drivers to be code signed, unless you want to run your system with a permanent "Development mode" text overlay, not to mention the arcane procedure required to activate that in the first place. (You can't add another cert to the trusted set, either.) So that puts a little damper on the whole "open source" thing. Of course it is also not effective at all, Stuxnet was famously signed by Realtek.
- swiley 7y ago
  That’s trivially easy to get around by installing you’re own CA cert when you install the driver. This is arguably worse security wise but it makes the driver install process identical to the way it used to be as far as the average consumer can tell. This is why (IMO) free software is so important, to the point where I’ve begun to agree with the radicals and think it should be mandatory.
  - stefan_ 7y ago
    No, that's exactly not how it works. You can not change the set of root certificates.
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      How does Zadig work, then?
      - bri3d 7y ago
        There are two separate authentication processes for drivers on Windows: Authenticode, which is used for the kernel-mode driver (.sys) and is strictly enforced, and driver package signing (.cat/.inf installation packages), which has a mutable root storage called Trusted Publisher system store. Zadig works by adding its own certificate root to the Trusted Publisher system store and self-signing the installation packages, but the three possible installed drivers (WinUSB, libusb0, and libusbK) were all still signed by Authenticode.
shrimp_emoji 7y ago
>Proprietary drivers on Linux are often crap, if they even exist at all. Not so with Nvidia GPUs. The open drivers are awful; the proprietary drivers are good. (But IS the case with AMD GPUs, to the point where the proprietary driver seems to perform worse[0] and everyone pretends it doesn't even exist, which is upside down unintuitive coming from A.) Windows and B.) Nvidia.) 0: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-amd-tday2016&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-a...
- OvermindDL1 7y ago
  As a developer however, nvidia's closed source drivers are buggy as hell. The amount of issues and times they break the spec is astounding and a constant annoyance. AMD and Intel via the open Mesa drivers are blissful in comparison, plus the amazing debuggability.
- axegon_ 7y ago
  I have to use their proprietary drivers and I beg to differ. Nvidia drivers are still crap, given all the pain you have to endure to get them running. Yes, nvidia has managed to sneak into the linux world through cuda but as far as ease of use, they are still nothing short of crap. Not to mention if you want to use anything other than ubuntu.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- babypuncher 7y ago
  I would argue that Nouveau is bad purely because of poor performance, and the proprietary drivers are tolerable but perform well once you have them working. One thing I can say for Nouveau over the proprietary drivers is that they actually work without any real fuss. I've run into numerous instances where the proprietary drivers would prevent the system from booting. And I've yet to get them to work at all with any realtime kernel in Manjaro. And then we get into the nightmare that is any laptop with an integrated Intel GPU and a dedicated Nvidia GPU...
Polylactic_acid 7y ago
Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. The kernel offers no stable binary interface so drivers become broken every single time linux updates unless the drivers get compiled as part of the kernel. This forces manufacturers to either decide that they will open source the drivers, not have any at all or put in the work to keep them up to date every release. It seems like forcing the all or nothing choice made a lot of OEMs open source their drivers or provide none which lead to the community making them.
- catalogia 7y ago
  > Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. As the situation on windows shows us, the alternative is drivers that are crap for other reasons. If Linux offered a stable binary interface for drivers, we'd have proprietary drivers that "worked" but were nevertheless still crap insofar as they were essentially malware, as is the case with this wacom driver.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    A standardized ABI does not inevitably lead to malware closed drivers. That's a ridiculous assertion. Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      > Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI. From what I've seen, facilitating proprietary drivers seems like the motivation of most people lamenting the lack of a stable ABI. An example of this being the comment I responded to; "Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. [...]" Discounting proprietary drivers under the assumption that they wouldn't be written anyway, what does a stable ABI afford us? Out-of-tree FOSS drivers? In other words, drivers that aren't good enough to be accepted into the kernel?
      - Polylactic_acid 7y ago

squarefoot 7y ago

Windows users should push for FOSS drivers as well also when the proprietary ones run perfectly. Privacy and security issues aside, being forced to depend on a closed driver means that the manufacturer can make the product obsolete just by stopping support on newer Windows versions, therefore turning the product essentially into trash, thus forcing the user to buy a new one.

jfim 7y ago
The vast majority of Windows users don't really care about that though. In the 90s, software modems ("winmodems", see [0]) were popular because they were cheaper than using dedicated hardware for generating and decoding the audio signals sent over the phone line. Those would break if the manufacturer didn't upgrade their driver for newer versions of Windows, since they're completely software driven. I'd be very surprised if things have changed since then, and I bet that the majority of consumers would just pick the cheapest option at the big box store. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I remember getting PCI based Winmodems working on my old machines back in the late 90s/early 2000s. A lot of people bought ISA modems or physical COM port models so they wouldn't have to deal with that bullshit. Now most Linux distributions are littered with binary blobs in linux-firmware that have to be loaded for everything from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth. We've gone the total opposite direction of where we should be .. except for like .. amdgpu.
- rhizome 7y ago
  Winmodems were not popular with anybody except manufacturers, and exponentially increased the support issues with modems as an entire technology. Read: people had more problems with Winmodems than they did before.
  - dotancohen 7y ago
    Not true in all locales. In 2001 I bought a computer locally (Haifa, Israel) with a winmodem. I installed Red Hat on it, so obviously the winmodem would not work. I could not find a hardware modem locally. The only solution that I had was to go with an ADSL line (250k up, 750k down) which cost a fortune but whose modem would plug into the network card. It would be a full two years before I would see any other home users on anything other than dialup. 750k down in 2001 was so impressive, you could start listening to songs on Kazaa as soon as the download started!
egdod 7y ago
That’s true, but... that culture isn’t there for Windows users the way it is for Linux users.
Polylactic_acid 7y ago
My bf got given a wacom tablet for free because the wacom windows drivers no longer support it but it works perfectly fine on Linux.
lmm 7y ago
The windows approach to driver certification makes this really difficult. Microsoft virtually requires every driver maintainer to pay $100-odd every couple of years for a signing certificate (and ironically enough this is done in the name of improving driver quality). For a corporation that's nothing, but it's a pretty steep ask for the hobbyist maintainers that OSS drivers tend to rely on.

stefan_ 7y ago

There is also the little matter of Windows (since 7 I think?) requiring kernel drivers to be code signed, unless you want to run your system with a permanent "Development mode" text overlay, not to mention the arcane procedure required to activate that in the first place. (You can't add another cert to the trusted set, either.) So that puts a little damper on the whole "open source" thing. Of course it is also not effective at all, Stuxnet was famously signed by Realtek.

swiley 7y ago
That’s trivially easy to get around by installing you’re own CA cert when you install the driver. This is arguably worse security wise but it makes the driver install process identical to the way it used to be as far as the average consumer can tell. This is why (IMO) free software is so important, to the point where I’ve begun to agree with the radicals and think it should be mandatory.
- stefan_ 7y ago
  No, that's exactly not how it works. You can not change the set of root certificates.
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    How does Zadig work, then?
    - bri3d 7y ago
      There are two separate authentication processes for drivers on Windows: Authenticode, which is used for the kernel-mode driver (.sys) and is strictly enforced, and driver package signing (.cat/.inf installation packages), which has a mutable root storage called Trusted Publisher system store. Zadig works by adding its own certificate root to the Trusted Publisher system store and self-signing the installation packages, but the three possible installed drivers (WinUSB, libusb0, and libusbK) were all still signed by Authenticode.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago

>Proprietary drivers on Linux are often crap, if they even exist at all. Not so with Nvidia GPUs. The open drivers are awful; the proprietary drivers are good. (But IS the case with AMD GPUs, to the point where the proprietary driver seems to perform worse[0] and everyone pretends it doesn't even exist, which is upside down unintuitive coming from A.) Windows and B.) Nvidia.) 0: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-amd-tday2016&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-a...

OvermindDL1 7y ago
As a developer however, nvidia's closed source drivers are buggy as hell. The amount of issues and times they break the spec is astounding and a constant annoyance. AMD and Intel via the open Mesa drivers are blissful in comparison, plus the amazing debuggability.
axegon_ 7y ago
I have to use their proprietary drivers and I beg to differ. Nvidia drivers are still crap, given all the pain you have to endure to get them running. Yes, nvidia has managed to sneak into the linux world through cuda but as far as ease of use, they are still nothing short of crap. Not to mention if you want to use anything other than ubuntu.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
babypuncher 7y ago
I would argue that Nouveau is bad purely because of poor performance, and the proprietary drivers are tolerable but perform well once you have them working. One thing I can say for Nouveau over the proprietary drivers is that they actually work without any real fuss. I've run into numerous instances where the proprietary drivers would prevent the system from booting. And I've yet to get them to work at all with any realtime kernel in Manjaro. And then we get into the nightmare that is any laptop with an integrated Intel GPU and a dedicated Nvidia GPU...

Polylactic_acid 7y ago

Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. The kernel offers no stable binary interface so drivers become broken every single time linux updates unless the drivers get compiled as part of the kernel. This forces manufacturers to either decide that they will open source the drivers, not have any at all or put in the work to keep them up to date every release. It seems like forcing the all or nothing choice made a lot of OEMs open source their drivers or provide none which lead to the community making them.

catalogia 7y ago
> Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. As the situation on windows shows us, the alternative is drivers that are crap for other reasons. If Linux offered a stable binary interface for drivers, we'd have proprietary drivers that "worked" but were nevertheless still crap insofar as they were essentially malware, as is the case with this wacom driver.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  A standardized ABI does not inevitably lead to malware closed drivers. That's a ridiculous assertion. Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    > Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI. From what I've seen, facilitating proprietary drivers seems like the motivation of most people lamenting the lack of a stable ABI. An example of this being the comment I responded to; "Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. [...]" Discounting proprietary drivers under the assumption that they wouldn't be written anyway, what does a stable ABI afford us? Out-of-tree FOSS drivers? In other words, drivers that aren't good enough to be accepted into the kernel?
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago