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Compared to the amount of bullshit we had to to deal with in the 90s and 00s getting Linux running on a laptop, it's a walk in the park. Often it was a choice b

Compared to the amount of bullshit we had to to deal with in the 90s and 00s getting Linux running on a laptop, it's a walk in the park. Often it was a choice between mediocre FLOSS drivers or binary blobs from 2-3 private parties... when things even had drivers at all. It's been a while, but how many laptops lack wifi support or require proprietary drivers to work now? Are the FLOSS drivers for Nvidia's cards great now? How many years have people been hacking on that project to make them work as well as they do? What people are describing as "Open" is actually an enormous amount of work on the part of developers and the grudging support of hardware vendors after decades of struggle.

ekianjo 6y ago
> It's been a while, but how many laptops lack wifi support or require proprietary drivers to work now? Very few actually. > Are the FLOSS drivers for Nvidia's cards great now? Don't shift goalposts, we are talking about CPU support, not GPUs... GPU support on ARM is anyway not that great to begin with. > What people are describing as "Open" is actually an enormous amount of work on the part of developers and the grudging support of hardware vendors after decades of struggle. Intel has Linux dedicated teams at least, pushing FOSS code every single day. Most ARM licensees could not care one bit about FOSS.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > Don't shift goalposts, we are talking about CPU support Linux already supports ARM CPUs and has for some time. The challenge is drivers. Getting video/ wifi/ etc running is the part that makes devices actually useful. The Broadcom Blob the poster I replied to was referring to is not for supporting ARM. Very similar to the Nvidia blob many people install (often unknowingly) when they install Linux on a system with Nvidia. > Intel has Linux dedicated teams at least, pushing FOSS code every single day. Most ARM licensees could not care one bit about FOSS. Intel didn't give a shit about Linux for how many years? Companies don't care about FOSS until it has potential to affect their bottom line. It was only after Linux servers were running half the Internet, that Intel stepped up and started supporting Linux. I'm guessing you missed the first couple decades of Linux adoption. Linux on ARM is just a fast motion repeat of the early days of Linux on x86.

ekianjo 6y ago

> It's been a while, but how many laptops lack wifi support or require proprietary drivers to work now? Very few actually. > Are the FLOSS drivers for Nvidia's cards great now? Don't shift goalposts, we are talking about CPU support, not GPUs... GPU support on ARM is anyway not that great to begin with. > What people are describing as "Open" is actually an enormous amount of work on the part of developers and the grudging support of hardware vendors after decades of struggle. Intel has Linux dedicated teams at least, pushing FOSS code every single day. Most ARM licensees could not care one bit about FOSS.

ogre_codes 6y ago
> Don't shift goalposts, we are talking about CPU support Linux already supports ARM CPUs and has for some time. The challenge is drivers. Getting video/ wifi/ etc running is the part that makes devices actually useful. The Broadcom Blob the poster I replied to was referring to is not for supporting ARM. Very similar to the Nvidia blob many people install (often unknowingly) when they install Linux on a system with Nvidia. > Intel has Linux dedicated teams at least, pushing FOSS code every single day. Most ARM licensees could not care one bit about FOSS. Intel didn't give a shit about Linux for how many years? Companies don't care about FOSS until it has potential to affect their bottom line. It was only after Linux servers were running half the Internet, that Intel stepped up and started supporting Linux. I'm guessing you missed the first couple decades of Linux adoption. Linux on ARM is just a fast motion repeat of the early days of Linux on x86.