5 ms·

I'm not surprised. Any time you talk about how terrible the Linux desktop experience is, you'll get people saying shit like "Why do you need that feature? Linux

by NavinF 4y ago

I'm not surprised. Any time you talk about how terrible the Linux desktop experience is, you'll get people saying shit like "Why do you need that feature? Linux works just fine on my machine". Marcan really pissed off that crowd when he acknowledged the feature disparity between Linux and the preinstalled OS on prebuilts: "I just realized that one of the things that bugs me is people equating stereotypical Linux problems on Asahi with other platforms, because it's not the same, because we actually care. Suspend not working, audio not working, display tearing issues, power management being bad... all those things are Linux on $random_platform support memes. And they're memes because they never get fixed, because nobody cares."

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pas 4y ago
It's a simple logical fallacy. Yes, the memes are true, but the explanation is false. Many many many people care. It's evident if one looks at endless bug reports, mailing list discussions. Many users and maintainers care. But even though they do, the bugs are not trivial. Many strange bugs are a consequence of subpar software architecture. One example that comes in mind is a bug about the xfce(?) lockscreen and laptop lid closing, that only activates when the lid opens. So for a time the desktop is visible. (There's also one bug where the password input field is invisible in some cases, etc.) It seems security and UX critical functionality is broken. But the truth of the matter is that it's also broken on many Windows setups too, just in other ways. Eg. complete freeze on restore. Or look at the GitHub issues for WSL, there are a lot of strange bugs, like DNS stops working and only reboot solves it. And those Microsoft engineers care even less than some open source maintainers. (For example the TypeScript maintainers are very responsive, even though that repo also has a lot of bug reports.)
- pooper 4y ago
  It isn't always even bugs. There are features I'd GNU+Linux to get rid of most notably the two clipboards. Screw that noise. We only need one clipboard. However, what we get is more code to keep the clipboards in sync. https://codeyarns.com/tech/2017-01-18-the-two-clipboards-in-linux.html https://codeyarns.com/tech/2017-01-18-the-two-clipboards-in-...
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Oh gawd is THAT what that is?? I spend my days in aix and my evenings in windows. Every time I use Linux though, I get frustrated at seemingly completely unpredictable behaviour of clipboard! Now I at least have a basic understanding of the model - thx!
  - rascul 4y ago
    Don't touch my two clipboards. I use them both often and love it. (There is actually more than two)
- paulmd 4y ago
  > Many users and maintainers care. But even though they do, the bugs are not trivial. Hector's point is also that the ability to fix the bugs is diffuse: to fix a problem with the SSD you ultimately need to get the SSD maker to care. To fix a bug with the sound, you need to get the sound chipset maker to care. And actually to get a broadly good user-experience such that it works good not just on your system but every possible system, you need to get an awful lot of people to care. As ever, one of the plusses of the Apple platform is the absolutely fixed set of hardware it needs to target. There is only one wireless chipset that Asahi needs to get working, for example. There is only one sound chipset they need to get working. When it's working, it's working for everyone, and if there's bugs they're bugs that affect everyone and aren't a result of some obscure combination of drivers interacting in unexpected ways. Also, Apple actually internalized a lot of control in ways that really piss people off when they want to upgrade hardware, but it also means the SOC has a lot of power to just do things right in the first place since it's all software-driven anyway. You don't have to worry about the NVMe controller doing something weird because... the NVMe controller lives on the SOC (might even be fully software-defined?) and just talks to some flash chips sitting on a card. It's completely different from how the rest of the market does it, and it's undoubtedly more work to get it going, but it also (paradoxically) means they don't have to worry as much about hardware quirks, because there's less hardware in the middle to begin with. It's undoubtedly a reason they've been able to make such great progress - not that the dev team isn't extremely extremely talented anyway. But they don't have to solve the general Linux problem of getting 10 billion possible permutations of hardware to behave together. They just have to solve one platform with one set of peripherals.
  - philistine 4y ago
    It's the Asahi team using Apple's own cultural proclivities for their benefit. All the single chipsets, and merged functionnality into the SOC are things Apple wants for themselves. I can't begin to imagine how cost-effective it must be to skip the NVMe controller chips in all their hardware.
  - pas 4y ago
    Yea, Apple's vertical integration and absolute homogeneity are definitely big factors here. Also size of userbase, and the expectations of said users. (As someone already mentioned folks buy Pine64 SBCs for 20-50 bucks for fun, to tinker, to run their hobby projects, but almost nobody buys an M1/M2 chipped device for thousands of dollars "for this funny little project".) But what I find very frustrating is that many software projects - especially open source ones - don't really think about the end-to-end user experience and don't have "interfaces" to help manage the UX, as in signal that the device is not respecting some standard/protocol/API/whatever. At best there's some obscure error message. Assertion failed. Blahblah. I mean ... I know there were latops with Ubuntu stickers, but it's just not a big thing - as far as I know. Sometimes niche manufacturers with some newsworthy feature (FOSS firmware, drivers, etc) get into the news, but that's why it's news, because there's just no run-of-the-mill boring supplier...

by NavinF 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pas 4y ago

It's a simple logical fallacy. Yes, the memes are true, but the explanation is false. Many many many people care. It's evident if one looks at endless bug reports, mailing list discussions. Many users and maintainers care. But even though they do, the bugs are not trivial. Many strange bugs are a consequence of subpar software architecture. One example that comes in mind is a bug about the xfce(?) lockscreen and laptop lid closing, that only activates when the lid opens. So for a time the desktop is visible. (There's also one bug where the password input field is invisible in some cases, etc.) It seems security and UX critical functionality is broken. But the truth of the matter is that it's also broken on many Windows setups too, just in other ways. Eg. complete freeze on restore. Or look at the GitHub issues for WSL, there are a lot of strange bugs, like DNS stops working and only reboot solves it. And those Microsoft engineers care even less than some open source maintainers. (For example the TypeScript maintainers are very responsive, even though that repo also has a lot of bug reports.)

pooper 4y ago
It isn't always even bugs. There are features I'd GNU+Linux to get rid of most notably the two clipboards. Screw that noise. We only need one clipboard. However, what we get is more code to keep the clipboards in sync. https://codeyarns.com/tech/2017-01-18-the-two-clipboards-in-linux.html https://codeyarns.com/tech/2017-01-18-the-two-clipboards-in-...
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Oh gawd is THAT what that is?? I spend my days in aix and my evenings in windows. Every time I use Linux though, I get frustrated at seemingly completely unpredictable behaviour of clipboard! Now I at least have a basic understanding of the model - thx!
- rascul 4y ago
  Don't touch my two clipboards. I use them both often and love it. (There is actually more than two)
paulmd 4y ago
> Many users and maintainers care. But even though they do, the bugs are not trivial. Hector's point is also that the ability to fix the bugs is diffuse: to fix a problem with the SSD you ultimately need to get the SSD maker to care. To fix a bug with the sound, you need to get the sound chipset maker to care. And actually to get a broadly good user-experience such that it works good not just on your system but every possible system, you need to get an awful lot of people to care. As ever, one of the plusses of the Apple platform is the absolutely fixed set of hardware it needs to target. There is only one wireless chipset that Asahi needs to get working, for example. There is only one sound chipset they need to get working. When it's working, it's working for everyone, and if there's bugs they're bugs that affect everyone and aren't a result of some obscure combination of drivers interacting in unexpected ways. Also, Apple actually internalized a lot of control in ways that really piss people off when they want to upgrade hardware, but it also means the SOC has a lot of power to just do things right in the first place since it's all software-driven anyway. You don't have to worry about the NVMe controller doing something weird because... the NVMe controller lives on the SOC (might even be fully software-defined?) and just talks to some flash chips sitting on a card. It's completely different from how the rest of the market does it, and it's undoubtedly more work to get it going, but it also (paradoxically) means they don't have to worry as much about hardware quirks, because there's less hardware in the middle to begin with. It's undoubtedly a reason they've been able to make such great progress - not that the dev team isn't extremely extremely talented anyway. But they don't have to solve the general Linux problem of getting 10 billion possible permutations of hardware to behave together. They just have to solve one platform with one set of peripherals.
- philistine 4y ago
  It's the Asahi team using Apple's own cultural proclivities for their benefit. All the single chipsets, and merged functionnality into the SOC are things Apple wants for themselves. I can't begin to imagine how cost-effective it must be to skip the NVMe controller chips in all their hardware.
- pas 4y ago
  Yea, Apple's vertical integration and absolute homogeneity are definitely big factors here. Also size of userbase, and the expectations of said users. (As someone already mentioned folks buy Pine64 SBCs for 20-50 bucks for fun, to tinker, to run their hobby projects, but almost nobody buys an M1/M2 chipped device for thousands of dollars "for this funny little project".) But what I find very frustrating is that many software projects - especially open source ones - don't really think about the end-to-end user experience and don't have "interfaces" to help manage the UX, as in signal that the device is not respecting some standard/protocol/API/whatever. At best there's some obscure error message. Assertion failed. Blahblah. I mean ... I know there were latops with Ubuntu stickers, but it's just not a big thing - as far as I know. Sometimes niche manufacturers with some newsworthy feature (FOSS firmware, drivers, etc) get into the news, but that's why it's news, because there's just no run-of-the-mill boring supplier...