8 ms·

I think the non server Linux community needs a reference device. Basically, you develop against that device, and it's upto hardware manufacturers to try and ma

I think the non server Linux community needs a reference device. Basically, you develop against that device, and it's upto hardware manufacturers to try and match the reference device to make their laptops/desktops compatible. If you could get a couple of distro owners such as Red Hat, Ubuntu, Arch, etc. to agree upon such a device it would go a long way to resolving a lot of the issues that the desktop community faces. Disclaimer: I have no expertise in this on either the hardware or software end so this idea might be completely nonsensical for all I know.

Kalium 6y ago
That's a good idea! What do you think would convince hardware vendors to match a reference device?
- dylan604 6y ago
  A large number of sales of said device. That's pretty much what drives any manufacturer.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    In consumer space it’s probably 1 sale for every 100 Windows. If you’re constrained on engineering resources guess which one you won’t care about ?
    - zaat 6y ago
      1 to 100 in the consumer space seems to me extremely optimistic, not sure if I'm betting that it's a 2 or 3 orders of magnitude miss.
      - yissp 6y ago
        I know it's not representative of the consumer space as a whole, but Linux users apparently make up about 1% of the Steam userbase fwiw https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Linux-May-2020 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Li...
        sdenton4 6y ago
        Yeah, but that 1% can choose either the Linux reference hardware or keep buying some other random laptop and throwing Linux on it. So, the market is really rather less than that 1%...
        zaat 6y ago
        Well, since Steam is the only gaming platform available on Linux, and since Steam is sold as a system based on linux with its own Linux distribution, SteamOS, and since Steam have its own version of Wine that magically runs Windows games on Linux, I would say that this statistic says nothing at all.
- addicted 6y ago
  It would be difficult to get the mainstream vendors to match this initially, but I suspect the Linux focused vendors like Pine and System76 would do so fairly rapidly. The way to convince the mainstream vendors would be what's attracting them to release Linux support right now. The popularity of Linux devices for people who want to work on the same machines they run their servers on. Like I said though, I'm not sure whether this idea is workable or even makes sense.
  - remexre 6y ago
    I mean, Pine's and System76's laptops don't even use the same CPU architecture as each other currently...
- jlg23 6y ago
  Some certification of genericity required for all future device purchases by publicly funded institutions, for example.
  - takeda 6y ago
    That's what Microsoft did. Initially there were a lot of issues and also things like hibernation didn't always work right. Linux needs to have similar certification. The rest would be to have customers look for it and prefer hardware that's certified.
    - zaat 6y ago
      You mean something like this: https://certification.ubuntu.com/make/Lenovo https://certification.ubuntu.com/make/Lenovo Or this: https://support.lenovo.com/il/en/solutions/pd031426-linux-for-personal-systems https://support.lenovo.com/il/en/solutions/pd031426-linux-fo... It's all really very nice, but even on certified machines, some hardware parts are not working on Linux (X1 fingerprint reader, for example).
      - takeda 6y ago
        > It's all really very nice, but even on certified machines, some hardware parts are not working on Linux (X1 fingerprint reader, for example). But then I guess they aren't really doing their job when certifying things that don't work.
- zsmi 6y ago
  HW vendors that want to race to the bottom, sure. But if I want to differentiate, commanding a higher price, then I'll probably be different.
dylan604 6y ago
>If you could get a couple of distro owners such as Red Hat, Ubuntu, Arch, etc. to agree upon such a device I think I would rather (it'd be easier) to wrangle cats.
- Pokepokalypse 6y ago
  yeah. RedHat (owned by IBM) will surely step up to the plate here. . .
  - dylan604 6y ago
    I feel like there's a punchline coming, then realized that was the joke
remexre 6y ago
Back in the day, this was basically how Thinkpads were, right?
- riffic 6y ago
  I'd suggest today, raspberry is filling that role.
  - packetlost 6y ago
    Sort of, but that's not a laptop.
- Zak 6y ago
  My recent-ish Thinkpad (T470) didn't give me much, if any trouble with hibernation on Linux. I can reliably use it to switch operating systems (dual-boot with Windows 10) without losing the state of either OS. I've had rare occasions where the presence of certain USB devices caused it to resume unexpectedly, but that's the only issue.
techrat 6y ago
>I think the non server Linux community needs a reference device. Currently, as it stands, you'd need 10,000+ 'reference' devices to match what's in use and to wait several years for them to fall out of use if you want that to be a lower number. Even Chromebooks, which are largely based on specific boards for several models, have a few hundred reference boards that would need to be specifically supported.
woah 6y ago
Apple computers might actually be a good device for that role. Enough variability to cover most pricepoints, high quality build, consistent components.
- barkingcat 6y ago
  Good luck trying to get specs out of Apple. Apple computers are some of the worst documented computers out there. Also, niche components, one-off chips, secret registers and unidentifiable chips on the logic board, the T2 chip alone is a nightmare for linux (and the T2 is on every Apple laptop since 2018). The M1 isn't even minimally documented yet, and reverse engineering it will probably take a decade.
ducttapecrown 6y ago
https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
gh-throw 6y ago
Red Hat would never participate. Their current (and for like the last decade or more) strategy seems to be to run toward various goals in convoluted and incompatible ways such that they're always "ahead" of everyone else, using their weight and the combined power of several projects they head to force the rest to burn resources playing catch-up with their meandering path to sub-optimal-but-sufficient solutions.
- satellite2 6y ago
  Never heard that Do you have any source? (Even if those are opinion based)
  - gh-throw 6y ago
    Gnome, systemd and its increasingly-tight integration with same, plus its eating everything in sight, wayland conveniently leaving everything up to the DE/WM (but gnome works, so why don’t you just use gnome?). Ubuntu also tried to do a bunch of their own stuff, but not very well and without this apparent overall strategy that Red Hat has. They seemed to just be trying to differentiate themselves, not to also drive everyone else nuts as they’re forced to try to keep up.
    - zaat 6y ago
      Is Gnome driven by Red Hat? According to the project site the board and the advisory boards are not controlled by Red Hat employees, the Gnome foundation president isn't from Red Hat either, and the project is a GNU project. Same question regarding to Wayland, from a shorter check I see that it is developed by the freedesktop.org which was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat 21 years ago but it is seems that it isn't really under Red Hat control nowadays.
      - silly-silly 6y ago
        You're bringing logic into this, please stop. The propaganda narrative is to just bash Red Hat for any work done. Of course the company that employs many opensource people across the world is going to have some effect on the ecosystem. The really funny part is that people think there is some metaphorical gun to developers heads to use this technology. There is a choice, there always has been.
ben0x539 6y ago
Sounds like a great idea. I suggest that as a reference device we use this device sold by my company. :)
- lmm 6y ago
  Honestly if your company made a firm commitment to publishing the necessary specs, fixing reported bugs, and maintaining that stance going forward, then that would probably be a deal many open-source people would take.
floatingatoll 6y ago
ARM9 SystemReady is designed to offer manufacturers of devices a way to target a "reference platform", where all compliant devices can be booted from a single kernel/os image. I detailed this out in a comment earlier this week, with PDF links, if you'd like to read more. I think they're specifically thinking of mobile phones and servers (and the Server spec is its own standalone thing, which is smart). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26694321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26694321
brudgers 6y ago
Any hardware manufacturer deciding hibernation for Linux was worth doing would have done it already.
pfranz 6y ago
Maybe not a single reference device, but there are fairly standard devices that are advertised, ship with, and offer support for Linux. The HP Z8 claims "Ubuntu. Certified and pre-installed." I've always run RHEL or CentOS on them and the company I worked for paid Red Hat for kernel customizations...so I figured there was comparable support. Yes, these are workstations, but HP says the same thing about their zbook. I've just never used those. System76 manufactures computers exclusively for Linux. Dell XPS laptops are also pretty popular with Linux users. Thinkpads were historically, as well. I would think you could get financial support for a few base models and enough widespread support for at least half a dozen hardware configurations. https://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z8.html https://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z8.html
kbumsik 6y ago
> I think the non server Linux community needs a reference device. The question is, who is going to make this reference device? Intel? AMD? ARM?
dirkt 6y ago
> and it's upto hardware manufacturers to try and match the reference device to make their laptops/desktops compatible. Good luck with that. On most hardware I buy, I can read "compatible with Mac and Windows" on the package, but nobody seems to bother if it's compatible with Linux or not ...
- infogulch 6y ago
  Maybe because "being compatible with Linux" doesn't mean anything specific. There's no spec so nobody can follow it... which is what GP is saying I suppose: Define a bar so people can try to aim for it.
  - minkiu 6y ago
    Wouldn't "Compatible with Kernel 5.11" be a pretty good/accurate bar? That is if they upstream their drivers or develop their closed sourced ones against certain kernel?
    - dolmen 6y ago
      Except that when you get the device in your hands, the kernel version advertised is in the very best case one year old. So irrelevant.
jimmont 6y ago
imo they already have them--they're all the unsupported macbooks

Kalium 6y ago

That's a good idea! What do you think would convince hardware vendors to match a reference device?

dylan604 6y ago
A large number of sales of said device. That's pretty much what drives any manufacturer.
- kortilla 6y ago
  In consumer space it’s probably 1 sale for every 100 Windows. If you’re constrained on engineering resources guess which one you won’t care about ?
  - zaat 6y ago
    1 to 100 in the consumer space seems to me extremely optimistic, not sure if I'm betting that it's a 2 or 3 orders of magnitude miss.
    - yissp 6y ago
      I know it's not representative of the consumer space as a whole, but Linux users apparently make up about 1% of the Steam userbase fwiw https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Linux-May-2020 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Li...
      - sdenton4 6y ago
        Yeah, but that 1% can choose either the Linux reference hardware or keep buying some other random laptop and throwing Linux on it. So, the market is really rather less than that 1%...
      - zaat 6y ago
        Well, since Steam is the only gaming platform available on Linux, and since Steam is sold as a system based on linux with its own Linux distribution, SteamOS, and since Steam have its own version of Wine that magically runs Windows games on Linux, I would say that this statistic says nothing at all.
addicted 6y ago
It would be difficult to get the mainstream vendors to match this initially, but I suspect the Linux focused vendors like Pine and System76 would do so fairly rapidly. The way to convince the mainstream vendors would be what's attracting them to release Linux support right now. The popularity of Linux devices for people who want to work on the same machines they run their servers on. Like I said though, I'm not sure whether this idea is workable or even makes sense.
- remexre 6y ago
  I mean, Pine's and System76's laptops don't even use the same CPU architecture as each other currently...
jlg23 6y ago
Some certification of genericity required for all future device purchases by publicly funded institutions, for example.
- takeda 6y ago
  That's what Microsoft did. Initially there were a lot of issues and also things like hibernation didn't always work right. Linux needs to have similar certification. The rest would be to have customers look for it and prefer hardware that's certified.
  - zaat 6y ago
    You mean something like this: https://certification.ubuntu.com/make/Lenovo https://certification.ubuntu.com/make/Lenovo Or this: https://support.lenovo.com/il/en/solutions/pd031426-linux-for-personal-systems https://support.lenovo.com/il/en/solutions/pd031426-linux-fo... It's all really very nice, but even on certified machines, some hardware parts are not working on Linux (X1 fingerprint reader, for example).
    - takeda 6y ago
      > It's all really very nice, but even on certified machines, some hardware parts are not working on Linux (X1 fingerprint reader, for example). But then I guess they aren't really doing their job when certifying things that don't work.
zsmi 6y ago
HW vendors that want to race to the bottom, sure. But if I want to differentiate, commanding a higher price, then I'll probably be different.

dylan604 6y ago

>If you could get a couple of distro owners such as Red Hat, Ubuntu, Arch, etc. to agree upon such a device I think I would rather (it'd be easier) to wrangle cats.

Pokepokalypse 6y ago
yeah. RedHat (owned by IBM) will surely step up to the plate here. . .
- dylan604 6y ago
  I feel like there's a punchline coming, then realized that was the joke

remexre 6y ago

Back in the day, this was basically how Thinkpads were, right?

riffic 6y ago
I'd suggest today, raspberry is filling that role.
- packetlost 6y ago
  Sort of, but that's not a laptop.
Zak 6y ago
My recent-ish Thinkpad (T470) didn't give me much, if any trouble with hibernation on Linux. I can reliably use it to switch operating systems (dual-boot with Windows 10) without losing the state of either OS. I've had rare occasions where the presence of certain USB devices caused it to resume unexpectedly, but that's the only issue.

techrat 6y ago

>I think the non server Linux community needs a reference device. Currently, as it stands, you'd need 10,000+ 'reference' devices to match what's in use and to wait several years for them to fall out of use if you want that to be a lower number. Even Chromebooks, which are largely based on specific boards for several models, have a few hundred reference boards that would need to be specifically supported.

woah 6y ago

Apple computers might actually be a good device for that role. Enough variability to cover most pricepoints, high quality build, consistent components.

barkingcat 6y ago
Good luck trying to get specs out of Apple. Apple computers are some of the worst documented computers out there. Also, niche components, one-off chips, secret registers and unidentifiable chips on the logic board, the T2 chip alone is a nightmare for linux (and the T2 is on every Apple laptop since 2018). The M1 isn't even minimally documented yet, and reverse engineering it will probably take a decade.

ducttapecrown 6y ago

https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

gh-throw 6y ago

Red Hat would never participate. Their current (and for like the last decade or more) strategy seems to be to run toward various goals in convoluted and incompatible ways such that they're always "ahead" of everyone else, using their weight and the combined power of several projects they head to force the rest to burn resources playing catch-up with their meandering path to sub-optimal-but-sufficient solutions.

satellite2 6y ago
Never heard that Do you have any source? (Even if those are opinion based)
- gh-throw 6y ago
  Gnome, systemd and its increasingly-tight integration with same, plus its eating everything in sight, wayland conveniently leaving everything up to the DE/WM (but gnome works, so why don’t you just use gnome?). Ubuntu also tried to do a bunch of their own stuff, but not very well and without this apparent overall strategy that Red Hat has. They seemed to just be trying to differentiate themselves, not to also drive everyone else nuts as they’re forced to try to keep up.
  - zaat 6y ago
    Is Gnome driven by Red Hat? According to the project site the board and the advisory boards are not controlled by Red Hat employees, the Gnome foundation president isn't from Red Hat either, and the project is a GNU project. Same question regarding to Wayland, from a shorter check I see that it is developed by the freedesktop.org which was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat 21 years ago but it is seems that it isn't really under Red Hat control nowadays.
    - silly-silly 6y ago
      You're bringing logic into this, please stop. The propaganda narrative is to just bash Red Hat for any work done. Of course the company that employs many opensource people across the world is going to have some effect on the ecosystem. The really funny part is that people think there is some metaphorical gun to developers heads to use this technology. There is a choice, there always has been.

ben0x539 6y ago

Sounds like a great idea. I suggest that as a reference device we use this device sold by my company. :)

lmm 6y ago
Honestly if your company made a firm commitment to publishing the necessary specs, fixing reported bugs, and maintaining that stance going forward, then that would probably be a deal many open-source people would take.

floatingatoll 6y ago

ARM9 SystemReady is designed to offer manufacturers of devices a way to target a "reference platform", where all compliant devices can be booted from a single kernel/os image. I detailed this out in a comment earlier this week, with PDF links, if you'd like to read more. I think they're specifically thinking of mobile phones and servers (and the Server spec is its own standalone thing, which is smart). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26694321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26694321

brudgers 6y ago

Any hardware manufacturer deciding hibernation for Linux was worth doing would have done it already.

pfranz 6y ago

Maybe not a single reference device, but there are fairly standard devices that are advertised, ship with, and offer support for Linux. The HP Z8 claims "Ubuntu. Certified and pre-installed." I've always run RHEL or CentOS on them and the company I worked for paid Red Hat for kernel customizations...so I figured there was comparable support. Yes, these are workstations, but HP says the same thing about their zbook. I've just never used those. System76 manufactures computers exclusively for Linux. Dell XPS laptops are also pretty popular with Linux users. Thinkpads were historically, as well. I would think you could get financial support for a few base models and enough widespread support for at least half a dozen hardware configurations. https://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z8.html https://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z8.html

kbumsik 6y ago

> I think the non server Linux community needs a reference device. The question is, who is going to make this reference device? Intel? AMD? ARM?

dirkt 6y ago

> and it's upto hardware manufacturers to try and match the reference device to make their laptops/desktops compatible. Good luck with that. On most hardware I buy, I can read "compatible with Mac and Windows" on the package, but nobody seems to bother if it's compatible with Linux or not ...

infogulch 6y ago
Maybe because "being compatible with Linux" doesn't mean anything specific. There's no spec so nobody can follow it... which is what GP is saying I suppose: Define a bar so people can try to aim for it.
- minkiu 6y ago
  Wouldn't "Compatible with Kernel 5.11" be a pretty good/accurate bar? That is if they upstream their drivers or develop their closed sourced ones against certain kernel?
  - dolmen 6y ago
    Except that when you get the device in your hands, the kernel version advertised is in the very best case one year old. So irrelevant.

jimmont 6y ago

imo they already have them--they're all the unsupported macbooks