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Why did the new kernel break the drivers when every release is supposed to be (usually) non-backward's breaking?

by jadbox 3y ago

senkora 3y ago
The Linux userland interface is stable but the Linux driver interface is unstable.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  The switch from one mutex back in the day broke so many drivers... we had one expensive pci card that was niche enough and old enough no one would be fixing it, but they had provided the source for the module and it wasn't that bad a fix.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
The kernel promises not to break any drivers in the kernel. But right now there's just some hacky out of kernel drivers for the no-longer-even-recent Intel IPU6 camera controller, which is on a lot of laptops. Intel's been slowly working on this. Here's an update from May: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing . Fedora has this out of kernel tree in driver. But it's been like this for a long time. Here's a well known kernel maintainer warning people off last August: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop Honestly I'm shocked Intel has been this dodgy for this long. I feel like overall Intel today huegly gets it. They have enormous dedication to getting drivers out there & making systems work well, in a way very few companies compare against. But they are hit or miss across different divisions. I'm not sure what the IPU6 folks see as their path to getting upstreamed, or whether they intend to keep just floating along out of kernel for a bit. It does look like there is support for pretty modern kernels out-of-tree, & there is a repo with binary firmware, so I wouldn't be shocked to hear that XPS13s and most IPU6 systems work pretty ok.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  I don't get it. A webcam driver should be dead-simple. Why is it taking such a huge effort to get it upstreamed?

Why did the new kernel break the drivers when every release is supposed to be (usually) non-backward's breaking?

by jadbox 3y ago

Why did the new kernel break the drivers when every release is supposed to be (usually) non-backward's breaking?

senkora 3y ago

The Linux userland interface is stable but the Linux driver interface is unstable.

galangalalgol 3y ago
The switch from one mutex back in the day broke so many drivers... we had one expensive pci card that was niche enough and old enough no one would be fixing it, but they had provided the source for the module and it wasn't that bad a fix.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

The kernel promises not to break any drivers in the kernel. But right now there's just some hacky out of kernel drivers for the no-longer-even-recent Intel IPU6 camera controller, which is on a lot of laptops. Intel's been slowly working on this. Here's an update from May: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing . Fedora has this out of kernel tree in driver. But it's been like this for a long time. Here's a well known kernel maintainer warning people off last August: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop Honestly I'm shocked Intel has been this dodgy for this long. I feel like overall Intel today huegly gets it. They have enormous dedication to getting drivers out there & making systems work well, in a way very few companies compare against. But they are hit or miss across different divisions. I'm not sure what the IPU6 folks see as their path to getting upstreamed, or whether they intend to keep just floating along out of kernel for a bit. It does look like there is support for pretty modern kernels out-of-tree, & there is a repo with binary firmware, so I wouldn't be shocked to hear that XPS13s and most IPU6 systems work pretty ok.

phendrenad2 3y ago
I don't get it. A webcam driver should be dead-simple. Why is it taking such a huge effort to get it upstreamed?