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Linux is a shit show because there is no driver standard among other reasons

smitty1e 2y ago
This gets at the heart of The Famous Article: my pet project vs. corporate-grade stuff. The individual vs. the group. Where I agree with the author is the need to keep individual tinkering possible. However, generalizing anyone's idiosyncratic tastes is impossible.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Is that a real article? Do you have a reference for it?
  - smitty1e 2y ago
    TFA is the linked article that was posted to HN.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
It has no driver standard on purpose with the intention of getting drivers into the mainline kernel tree. If drivers are "standard" then low quality drivers full of bugs and security vulnerabilities proliferate and only the OEM can fix them because they're closed source, but they don't care to as long as the driver meets a minimum threshold of not losing them too many sales, and they don't care about legacy hardware at all or by then have ceased to exist, even if people are still using the hardware. If there is no driver standard then maintaining a driver outside the kernel tree is a pain and more companies get their drivers into the kernel tree so the kernel maintainers will deal with updating them when the driver interface changes, which in turn provides other people with access to fix their heinous bugs.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  How is this philosophy working for the end user? How is a similar problem working out for Android phones getting updates?
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    The drivers for most PC hardware are in the kernel tree. That part is working pretty well. It's clear that something more aggressive needs to be done on the mobile side to get the drivers into the kernel tree because the vendors there are more intransigent. Possibly something like right to repair laws that e.g. require ten years of support and funds in escrow to provide it upon bankruptcy for any device whose supporting software doesn't have published source code, providing a stronger incentive to publish the code to avoid the first party support requirement. Or greater antitrust enforcement against e.g. Qualcomm, since they're a primary offender and lack of competition is a major impediment to making it happen. If Google wanted to stop being evil for a minute they could also exert some pressure on the OEMs. The real problem is that the kernel can't easily be relicensed to directly require it, so we're stuck with indirect methods, but that's hardly any reason to give up.
    - pm215 2y ago
      I don't think I'd put the difference between the pc and server markets vs mobile down to vendor "intransigence". Rather, I would say it's a result of the market incentives. For PCs and especially for servers, customers insist that they can install an already released OS and it Just Works. This means that vendors are strongly incentivised to create and follow standards, not to do odd things, and to upstream early. On the other hand in mobile and embedded there is basically no customer demand to be able to run preexisting distro releases, and so vendors feel very little pressure to put in the extra work to get support upstream or to avoid deviating from common practice. On the contrary they may see their custom deviations as important parts of what makes their product better or more feature rich than the competition. Right to repair laws as you suggest might do something to shift the incentives of vendors in these markets; I don't think they're ever going to "see the light" and suddenly decide they've been doing it wrong all these years (because measured in commercial consequences, they haven't)...
- phendrenad2 2y ago
  It's absolutely on purpose. But the tradeoff is Linux has become a really great server OS (because the kernel team can quickly refactor flawed code), but a poor desktop OS (because drivers are harder to ship than on Windows). This tradeoff isn't really well-known or debated in the Linux community, it just kind of exists.

This gets at the heart of The Famous Article: my pet project vs. corporate-grade stuff. The individual vs. the group. Where I agree with the author is the need to keep individual tinkering possible. However, generalizing anyone's idiosyncratic tastes is impossible.

scarface_74 2y ago
Is that a real article? Do you have a reference for it?
- smitty1e 2y ago
  TFA is the linked article that was posted to HN.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

It has no driver standard on purpose with the intention of getting drivers into the mainline kernel tree. If drivers are "standard" then low quality drivers full of bugs and security vulnerabilities proliferate and only the OEM can fix them because they're closed source, but they don't care to as long as the driver meets a minimum threshold of not losing them too many sales, and they don't care about legacy hardware at all or by then have ceased to exist, even if people are still using the hardware. If there is no driver standard then maintaining a driver outside the kernel tree is a pain and more companies get their drivers into the kernel tree so the kernel maintainers will deal with updating them when the driver interface changes, which in turn provides other people with access to fix their heinous bugs.

scarface_74 2y ago
How is this philosophy working for the end user? How is a similar problem working out for Android phones getting updates?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The drivers for most PC hardware are in the kernel tree. That part is working pretty well. It's clear that something more aggressive needs to be done on the mobile side to get the drivers into the kernel tree because the vendors there are more intransigent. Possibly something like right to repair laws that e.g. require ten years of support and funds in escrow to provide it upon bankruptcy for any device whose supporting software doesn't have published source code, providing a stronger incentive to publish the code to avoid the first party support requirement. Or greater antitrust enforcement against e.g. Qualcomm, since they're a primary offender and lack of competition is a major impediment to making it happen. If Google wanted to stop being evil for a minute they could also exert some pressure on the OEMs. The real problem is that the kernel can't easily be relicensed to directly require it, so we're stuck with indirect methods, but that's hardly any reason to give up.
  - pm215 2y ago
    I don't think I'd put the difference between the pc and server markets vs mobile down to vendor "intransigence". Rather, I would say it's a result of the market incentives. For PCs and especially for servers, customers insist that they can install an already released OS and it Just Works. This means that vendors are strongly incentivised to create and follow standards, not to do odd things, and to upstream early. On the other hand in mobile and embedded there is basically no customer demand to be able to run preexisting distro releases, and so vendors feel very little pressure to put in the extra work to get support upstream or to avoid deviating from common practice. On the contrary they may see their custom deviations as important parts of what makes their product better or more feature rich than the competition. Right to repair laws as you suggest might do something to shift the incentives of vendors in these markets; I don't think they're ever going to "see the light" and suddenly decide they've been doing it wrong all these years (because measured in commercial consequences, they haven't)...
phendrenad2 2y ago
It's absolutely on purpose. But the tradeoff is Linux has become a really great server OS (because the kernel team can quickly refactor flawed code), but a poor desktop OS (because drivers are harder to ship than on Windows). This tradeoff isn't really well-known or debated in the Linux community, it just kind of exists.