6 ms·

"They" is really Red Hat, who are the ones pushing libinput and Wayland in the first place; and I imagine they would have no problem fixing this quickly if they

by acabal 6y ago

"They" is really Red Hat, who are the ones pushing libinput and Wayland in the first place; and I imagine they would have no problem fixing this quickly if they hired more than one person to work on it.

IceWreck 6y ago
Why does the Linux community as a whole rely on one company to fix a lot of their problems ?
- pabs3 6y ago
  Which other companies do you think should be pitching in but aren't?
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    Don’t other large companies issue Linux laptops to their employees? I’d think somewhere like Google or Amazon would find it worthwhile to devote some funds to improving desktop Linux.
    - thrwo42343 6y ago
      Google employees mostly use Macs AFAICT.
    - pabs3 6y ago
      Google does have their own desktop Debian derivative called gLinux, but I haven't heard anything about Amazon having one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLinux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLinux
- new_realist 6y ago
  Because beggars can’t be choosers.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  Because there are very, very few companies actually depending on Linux touchpad drivers in any meaningful way, and of those, most of those few are happy to take what they get for free and if they contribute at all (tiny tiny minority already), they'll rather do that with a more visible core component that actually powers their business. Likewise, there's no established, dependable, working-at-all way to sell something like this. You can sell things like BetterTouchTool on macOS (a small utility that makes the Touchbar more configurable), because closed-source is fine on mac and people are ready to open their wallets in exchange for a better UX. That's simply not possible on Linux, everything meaningful must be open source and free as in beer (and, for drivers, probably free in all other ways, too), or it either can't work structurally or won't because the philosophy behind Linux and its ecosystem is incompatible with that sort of thing. Hence, it won't happen unless someone really enjoys doing this, or does it for their own needs and gives it away and maybe even supports it long-term despite of the negative experience that can be (entitled people etc.) As for companies with employees using Linux, I guess quite a few shops would probably be kinda happy if the UX got so crappy it became unusable, because office IT for an an all-Windows shop is easier and cheaper to run – network printing just works for everyone, ActiveDirectory works for everyone out of the box, IT can ensure everyone is on the latest Windows update, security solutions run everywhere, everyone can use all productivity tools you could ever buy and you can roll them out easily using policies, no weird graphics issues that prevent people from presenting, no expensive "exactly this laptop with exactly that configuration" hardware purchases, one-size-fits-all tech support, etc. pp. This is also one of the reasons why WSL2 is such a clever move – make Windows the best (corporate) Linux around and get another large swath of developers to use Windows. It's also probably going to solve a lot of the Linux UX issues, but not in a way that benefits Linux in the least.
- smcl 6y ago
  When you say it like that it sounds like people are begging RedHat to step in and do their tech support for them. When in actual fact in the case of things like libinput and systemd they were developed at RedHat and I imagine that they also exerted some influence to increase their adoption. In these specific cases (high profile projects with a few noticeable issues) it makes sense to go back to the people who developed and maintain them to say "Can you please fix these issues"
- bregma 6y ago
  Canonical used to have an entire team dedicated to touch input. Their contributions were rejected by the Linux community because he was already working on his own solution.
Liskni_si 6y ago
I don't think this is as much about Red Hat not caring as it is people in general not caring. This issue is affecting many ThinkPads. I've seen it on T25, T470 and T440p, which happens to be the most popular laptop of /r/thinkpad these days as it's easy to take apart and switch components, and as we've seen in this thread it affects many other ThinkPads as well. So we're talking about thousands, possibly tens of thousands of hackers having a suboptimal touchpad experience, every one of them being able to fix it in a day of coding. No one did yet. Why? My best guess is that it just isn't annoying enough to most people. Another way to understand this is to imagine what happens when you put someone with bad visual acuity in charge of font rendering: they'll think it's good enough, and you can't blame them. It _is_ good enough, as far as they can see (pun intended).
- tsss 6y ago
  I would fix it if I knew how. Commenting out that line sounds like a bandaid to me. I don't know enough about the input stack to tell.
  - Liskni_si 6y ago
    There are some suggestions here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/286#note_158783 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/28...
- acabal 6y ago
  Personally, I see my laptop as a tool, and I have a day job. I don't want to spend my precious spare time fixing my tools, which for something as basic and ubiquitous as a trackpad should just work already. For how many decades have trackpads existed? Why are we still shipping broken trackpad experiences, and why is it me, the end user, who is being told that if I don't fix it myself then I don't care enough? In any case, a non-kernel developer fixing it in a day of coding is IMHO wildly unrealistic. While I have 20 years of programming experience, I have zero experience with kernel development--which some of the most complex software in existence--let alone input stack development. I don't even have the domain vocabulary to describe the problem. A lumberjack might know how to cut wood, but that doesn't automatically make him a carpenter.

by acabal 6y ago

IceWreck 6y ago

Why does the Linux community as a whole rely on one company to fix a lot of their problems ?

pabs3 6y ago
Which other companies do you think should be pitching in but aren't?
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Don’t other large companies issue Linux laptops to their employees? I’d think somewhere like Google or Amazon would find it worthwhile to devote some funds to improving desktop Linux.
  - thrwo42343 6y ago
    Google employees mostly use Macs AFAICT.
  - pabs3 6y ago
    Google does have their own desktop Debian derivative called gLinux, but I haven't heard anything about Amazon having one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLinux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLinux
new_realist 6y ago
Because beggars can’t be choosers.
dividedbyzero 6y ago
Because there are very, very few companies actually depending on Linux touchpad drivers in any meaningful way, and of those, most of those few are happy to take what they get for free and if they contribute at all (tiny tiny minority already), they'll rather do that with a more visible core component that actually powers their business. Likewise, there's no established, dependable, working-at-all way to sell something like this. You can sell things like BetterTouchTool on macOS (a small utility that makes the Touchbar more configurable), because closed-source is fine on mac and people are ready to open their wallets in exchange for a better UX. That's simply not possible on Linux, everything meaningful must be open source and free as in beer (and, for drivers, probably free in all other ways, too), or it either can't work structurally or won't because the philosophy behind Linux and its ecosystem is incompatible with that sort of thing. Hence, it won't happen unless someone really enjoys doing this, or does it for their own needs and gives it away and maybe even supports it long-term despite of the negative experience that can be (entitled people etc.) As for companies with employees using Linux, I guess quite a few shops would probably be kinda happy if the UX got so crappy it became unusable, because office IT for an an all-Windows shop is easier and cheaper to run – network printing just works for everyone, ActiveDirectory works for everyone out of the box, IT can ensure everyone is on the latest Windows update, security solutions run everywhere, everyone can use all productivity tools you could ever buy and you can roll them out easily using policies, no weird graphics issues that prevent people from presenting, no expensive "exactly this laptop with exactly that configuration" hardware purchases, one-size-fits-all tech support, etc. pp. This is also one of the reasons why WSL2 is such a clever move – make Windows the best (corporate) Linux around and get another large swath of developers to use Windows. It's also probably going to solve a lot of the Linux UX issues, but not in a way that benefits Linux in the least.
smcl 6y ago
When you say it like that it sounds like people are begging RedHat to step in and do their tech support for them. When in actual fact in the case of things like libinput and systemd they were developed at RedHat and I imagine that they also exerted some influence to increase their adoption. In these specific cases (high profile projects with a few noticeable issues) it makes sense to go back to the people who developed and maintain them to say "Can you please fix these issues"
bregma 6y ago
Canonical used to have an entire team dedicated to touch input. Their contributions were rejected by the Linux community because he was already working on his own solution.

Liskni_si 6y ago

I don't think this is as much about Red Hat not caring as it is people in general not caring. This issue is affecting many ThinkPads. I've seen it on T25, T470 and T440p, which happens to be the most popular laptop of /r/thinkpad these days as it's easy to take apart and switch components, and as we've seen in this thread it affects many other ThinkPads as well. So we're talking about thousands, possibly tens of thousands of hackers having a suboptimal touchpad experience, every one of them being able to fix it in a day of coding. No one did yet. Why? My best guess is that it just isn't annoying enough to most people. Another way to understand this is to imagine what happens when you put someone with bad visual acuity in charge of font rendering: they'll think it's good enough, and you can't blame them. It _is_ good enough, as far as they can see (pun intended).

tsss 6y ago
I would fix it if I knew how. Commenting out that line sounds like a bandaid to me. I don't know enough about the input stack to tell.
- Liskni_si 6y ago
  There are some suggestions here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/286#note_158783 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/28...
acabal 6y ago
Personally, I see my laptop as a tool, and I have a day job. I don't want to spend my precious spare time fixing my tools, which for something as basic and ubiquitous as a trackpad should just work already. For how many decades have trackpads existed? Why are we still shipping broken trackpad experiences, and why is it me, the end user, who is being told that if I don't fix it myself then I don't care enough? In any case, a non-kernel developer fixing it in a day of coding is IMHO wildly unrealistic. While I have 20 years of programming experience, I have zero experience with kernel development--which some of the most complex software in existence--let alone input stack development. I don't even have the domain vocabulary to describe the problem. A lumberjack might know how to cut wood, but that doesn't automatically make him a carpenter.