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> The worst part is: how do I put my money where my mouth is? ..., debugging wifi drivers and tirelessly trying to make resume-from-suspend work? Coincidentall

> The worst part is: how do I put my money where my mouth is? ..., debugging wifi drivers and tirelessly trying to make resume-from-suspend work? Coincidentally, this is actually a good idea. Apart from using supported hardware (that others have checked actually works), contributing fixes for hardware that's not officially supported yet and hasn't been tested would benefit everyone in the future! I remember having to dig through GitHub to find a repository that had the network drivers for my off-brand Chinese/Polish netbook (i'm somewhat poor and/or frugal) and they actually worked and turned a system that would otherwise not have any network connectivity into my daily driver for note taking. Now, the fact that i couldn't automate this lookup process and that there's nothing out there that lets you check for these drivers more easily (think something along the lines of https://appdb.winehq.org/ https://appdb.winehq.org/ but for drivers) or maybe try multiple ones in a row, was disappointing because things felt needlessly hard. However, actually contributing or using the work of others isn't that much of a problem. And, since the whole ecosystem is pretty much open, there's nothing actually keeping one from at least trying to address these problems for their particular configuration, apart from needing to learn how to do so. In a sense, working on open source is exactly putting your money where your mouth is, even if it's just alternative costs.

FourthProtocol 5y ago
Yeah... when you have a home-built PC with *nix unsupported hardware and invested lots of $$ you're still looking for a hard time. First, there's the hardware cost. I'm not throwing my Surface out, and I'm not throwing out my perfectly working desktop components either. But that aside... Every time I read how the great unwashed should just contribute fixes already to benefit everyone, I despair. I write code. I build my own PCs and I have a rather good knowledge of how to debug, fix, optimise and otherwise maintain all my software and hardware. I happen to also LIKE my software and hardware. If I were to start digging through Github repositories and... whatever other unknown resources I don't know the search terms to even search for I'd probably shoot myself. The point isn't that Windows is good. The point is that *nix assumes everyone's a *nix rocket surgeon and has nothing else in the world to do than spend days getting the blasted thing to deliver an equivalent level of productivity I get from my Microsoft setup. As much as I acknowledge everyone's right to like what they like, and agree that *nix might offer one or two better things than Windoze there's just no way...
- danhor 5y ago
  For Linux there is supported hardware from Vendors like system76 or similar. You don't expect to run Windows on Chromebooks, Android Smartphones or M1 Macbooks without issues, because these vendors only optimize & test for linux. But since linux is such an open platform, you have a large grey area "vendor didn't test it, ymmv". It may work fine, but you never know if the vendor decided to e.g. ignore standards for reboots and only react to the exact things that Windows does (This also applies to macos running on other devices, but way worse). Most devices have an entry in e.g. the arch wiki describing if they work OOTB, with hacks or some parts just don't. There are devices where the vendor tries to support linux, e.g. Thinkpads, but if you're using Nvidia it's still a pile of hacks in the background. I haven't needed to contribute any code myself nor use non-upstream drivers, but the process to use non-upstream drivers is usually pretty streamlined in arch (packaged in the aur). And since we're in hacker news: Programming things close to the hardware can be a great learning experience, maybe not when done under pressure.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    That was why I bought an Asus 1215B Netbook with GNU/Linux support out of the box, an Ubuntu distrubution actually. First the wlan stopped working, because Canonical decided to replace the proprietary driver wih the open source one, however since it was still work in progress, dozen of us had to suck it up with LAN until the open source driver got feature parity. Then my GPGPU experience got degraded from OpenGL 4.1/hardware video decoding to OpenGL 3.3 with the replacement of the AMD driver (fxgr) with the open source radeon one. So in the end, it doesn't matter that much buying supposedly supported hardware.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  What kind of hardware are we talking about here for a self-built PC which isn't supported by Linux?
  - FourthProtocol 5y ago
    ● Intel Core i9 with 64Gb RAM ● Samsung 500 GB 2.5" SSD ● 2 x Western Digital 4TB mirrored disks ● NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 ● Sharkoon 600 Watt power supply ● 2 x Samsung U28R55 28" 4k IPS panels ● Das Keyboard 4 Professional ● S.M.S.L M6 Hifi Audio USB DAC with headphone amplifier ● 2 x Behringer MS40 digital 40-watt stereo near-field monitors ● Sennheiser HD 650 Open back headphones ● ELP 1080P wide angle webcam ● MANLI omnidirectional condenser microphone

FourthProtocol 5y ago

Yeah... when you have a home-built PC with *nix unsupported hardware and invested lots of $$ you're still looking for a hard time. First, there's the hardware cost. I'm not throwing my Surface out, and I'm not throwing out my perfectly working desktop components either. But that aside... Every time I read how the great unwashed should just contribute fixes already to benefit everyone, I despair. I write code. I build my own PCs and I have a rather good knowledge of how to debug, fix, optimise and otherwise maintain all my software and hardware. I happen to also LIKE my software and hardware. If I were to start digging through Github repositories and... whatever other unknown resources I don't know the search terms to even search for I'd probably shoot myself. The point isn't that Windows is good. The point is that *nix assumes everyone's a *nix rocket surgeon and has nothing else in the world to do than spend days getting the blasted thing to deliver an equivalent level of productivity I get from my Microsoft setup. As much as I acknowledge everyone's right to like what they like, and agree that *nix might offer one or two better things than Windoze there's just no way...

danhor 5y ago
For Linux there is supported hardware from Vendors like system76 or similar. You don't expect to run Windows on Chromebooks, Android Smartphones or M1 Macbooks without issues, because these vendors only optimize & test for linux. But since linux is such an open platform, you have a large grey area "vendor didn't test it, ymmv". It may work fine, but you never know if the vendor decided to e.g. ignore standards for reboots and only react to the exact things that Windows does (This also applies to macos running on other devices, but way worse). Most devices have an entry in e.g. the arch wiki describing if they work OOTB, with hacks or some parts just don't. There are devices where the vendor tries to support linux, e.g. Thinkpads, but if you're using Nvidia it's still a pile of hacks in the background. I haven't needed to contribute any code myself nor use non-upstream drivers, but the process to use non-upstream drivers is usually pretty streamlined in arch (packaged in the aur). And since we're in hacker news: Programming things close to the hardware can be a great learning experience, maybe not when done under pressure.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  That was why I bought an Asus 1215B Netbook with GNU/Linux support out of the box, an Ubuntu distrubution actually. First the wlan stopped working, because Canonical decided to replace the proprietary driver wih the open source one, however since it was still work in progress, dozen of us had to suck it up with LAN until the open source driver got feature parity. Then my GPGPU experience got degraded from OpenGL 4.1/hardware video decoding to OpenGL 3.3 with the replacement of the AMD driver (fxgr) with the open source radeon one. So in the end, it doesn't matter that much buying supposedly supported hardware.
formerly_proven 5y ago
What kind of hardware are we talking about here for a self-built PC which isn't supported by Linux?
- FourthProtocol 5y ago
  ● Intel Core i9 with 64Gb RAM ● Samsung 500 GB 2.5" SSD ● 2 x Western Digital 4TB mirrored disks ● NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 ● Sharkoon 600 Watt power supply ● 2 x Samsung U28R55 28" 4k IPS panels ● Das Keyboard 4 Professional ● S.M.S.L M6 Hifi Audio USB DAC with headphone amplifier ● 2 x Behringer MS40 digital 40-watt stereo near-field monitors ● Sennheiser HD 650 Open back headphones ● ELP 1080P wide angle webcam ● MANLI omnidirectional condenser microphone