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Great. So if I interpret this correctly, when companies go out of business (or drop support for product lines), your perfectly functional hardware will now ine

Great. So if I interpret this correctly, when companies go out of business (or drop support for product lines), your perfectly functional hardware will now inevitably stop working (or not be installable after you reformat your OS). Welcome another step down the path toward a world where you don't really own your hardware and your vendor dictates how, when and what you can use ("we control the horizontal, we control the vertical"). There are already some great comments in that thread, like this thoughtful one: While having a well organized and updated driver catalog is undoubtedly a good thing, please spare a thought for curators of vintage PC collections. The Windows Update Driver catalog is a near unrivaled resource on the internet for known good drivers, and is a great source for drivers where the original manufactures have either removed the drivers from their own websites, or they no longer exist. Personally I always hated the idea of using Windows Update as your warehouse for drivers in the first place. Much better to keep your own collection. (Yes, it takes some work to curate and periodically update).

neilv 1y ago
Here's a PC driver bundle that runs great, without artificially forced obsolescence: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/ https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/
- DougN7 1y ago
  Just curious if Linux includes drivers for 20 year old hardware and if there is some guarantee somewhere that old drivers will be available forever.
  - jpgvm 1y ago
    Yes and no. There is plenty of 20 year old HW that has drivers in Linux but their continued existence in the tree is predicated on them being maintained.
  - alyandon 1y ago
    Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. If the maintainer for a driver stops maintaining it and no one else steps in to pick up the work then eventually it'll get removed if it isn't widely used.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      The source will always be available, though, so a motivated person could bring it back to life. Not so in the Windows world. Or the Mac[1] world either, to be fair. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353595
      - alyandon 1y ago
        Oh sure - you could also just run an older kernel that still supports it and take precautions. Linux being open source completely enables that possibility where otherwise you'd be screwed.
        perching_aix 1y ago
        What exactly prevents someone from installing an old version of Windows and then the necessary legacy drivers, taking those same precautions? Nothing. Nothing does.
        alyandon 1y ago
        Installing old versions of Windows doesn't mean you can still access the drivers that were available when the OS was still supported. If you still have the drivers handy - sure. I personally would trust older versions of Linux more than older versions of Windows though. And I say that as someone that is also typing this comment from a Windows desktop.
        rkagerer 1y ago
        Really old versions, sure. Newer old versions rely on Microsoft to activate them. Given the trajectory the indistry is moving toward, I don't have a lot of confidence that will last indefinitely. More and more features these days are getting inextricably tied to the cloud, and it's becoming trickier to create offline installation media even for the ones that aren't.
  - zokier 1y ago
    GPL guarantees you rights to make the old drivers available forever. Of course it is the nature of FOSS that ultimately you are responsible for your own systems and their maintenance.
  - ehutch79 1y ago
    No, in fact Linux recently decided to screw over the two hobbyists running itanium systems by not maintaining full feature compatibility in new kernels, for that architecture.
    - sidewndr46 1y ago
      I can't tell if this is a joke or satire. Itanium is a microarchitecture which was dead before it was ever implemented in silicon. It only existed because HP was paying Intel to create it, HP doesn't exactly have the reputation of a company with good decision making.
  - neilv 1y ago
    Debian is very good about preserving old distributions and packages. But realistically, unless you're doing serious retrocomputing, it might never come up. I think most 20yo laptops, for example, will simply work with the latest Debian. (I'm typing this on a 13yo laptop, because real keyboard, and everything works perfectly.)
  - ryao 1y ago
    Just recently, bugs in drivers for 30 year old Soundblaster ISA cards received fixes: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32 There is no strict guarantee of indefinite support, but that is often what happens.
  - Twirrim 1y ago
    Yes, but there are no guarantees. In fact, they do quite routinely remove drivers for old hardware, if there is no one willing to maintain them. They removed support for several pieces of hardware in the last release, in fact, including some particular drivers for an IBM Cell system, and for IBM CAPI flash drives (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=772ba9b5bd2701a9967c084b66ff1daaee0367eb https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...) and so on
- Nullabillity 1y ago
  That wouldn't help retrocomputing users at all, who are specifically trying to reproduce specific software/hardware combinations. If that old setup required Windows, well.. guess they need Windows and those specific drivers.
  - leeter 1y ago
    There is already a project to handle this because this has already happened to so much hardware https://theretroweb.com/ https://theretroweb.com/
thrownaway561 1y ago
Nothing is stopping for from making your own and gifting it to the world. You can't support old things forever. Eventually you have to move forward as the cost for maintaining things just doesn't support the effort (or the juice isn't worth the squeeze).
perching_aix 1y ago
OK, I'll bite. Software is a liability. Especially the typical kind, that one normally runs into, which are not formally verified. And even if they were, the human understanding of what constitutes a vulnerability is in perpetual flux, as that is a human-level semantic concept. This is why active maintenance is a necessary property. If a software is not actively maintained, it can and will accumulate vulnerability discoveries, putting the entire security boundary it resides in and all the data going through it into jeopardy. To potentially autonomously distribute knowingly unmaintained software borders on malicious. It sucks that your legacy devices will no longer have their device drivers neatly auto-installed, yes, but it's not some grand conspiracy, it's bottom of the barrel bare minimum safety consciousness. If what you propose is that manual install specifically should still be possible from Windows Update, I can support that, but I think this entire announcement is such an obvious thing, I'm surprised it hasn't been this way before. > Personally I always hated the idea of using Windows Update as your warehouse for drivers in the first place. Much better to keep your own collection. (Yes, it takes some work to curate and periodically update). And most every other person hates dealing with drivers instead, hence why they started distributing them through it.
mslansn 1y ago
Errrr, you can install drivers outside of windows update. Your hardware will continue working fine. Just that you will have to install the driver manually.
- maltris 1y ago
  Good luck finding them still. If they are not on archive.org, you are out of luck. And if that ceases to exist, even more.
immibis 1y ago
It's not a step towards that world. We're already in that world. Have been for at least half a decade.

neilv 1y ago

Here's a PC driver bundle that runs great, without artificially forced obsolescence: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/ https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/

DougN7 1y ago
Just curious if Linux includes drivers for 20 year old hardware and if there is some guarantee somewhere that old drivers will be available forever.
- jpgvm 1y ago
  Yes and no. There is plenty of 20 year old HW that has drivers in Linux but their continued existence in the tree is predicated on them being maintained.
- alyandon 1y ago
  Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. If the maintainer for a driver stops maintaining it and no one else steps in to pick up the work then eventually it'll get removed if it isn't widely used.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    The source will always be available, though, so a motivated person could bring it back to life. Not so in the Windows world. Or the Mac[1] world either, to be fair. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353595
    - alyandon 1y ago
      Oh sure - you could also just run an older kernel that still supports it and take precautions. Linux being open source completely enables that possibility where otherwise you'd be screwed.
      - perching_aix 1y ago
        What exactly prevents someone from installing an old version of Windows and then the necessary legacy drivers, taking those same precautions? Nothing. Nothing does.
        alyandon 1y ago
        Installing old versions of Windows doesn't mean you can still access the drivers that were available when the OS was still supported. If you still have the drivers handy - sure. I personally would trust older versions of Linux more than older versions of Windows though. And I say that as someone that is also typing this comment from a Windows desktop.
        rkagerer 1y ago
        Really old versions, sure. Newer old versions rely on Microsoft to activate them. Given the trajectory the indistry is moving toward, I don't have a lot of confidence that will last indefinitely. More and more features these days are getting inextricably tied to the cloud, and it's becoming trickier to create offline installation media even for the ones that aren't.
- zokier 1y ago
  GPL guarantees you rights to make the old drivers available forever. Of course it is the nature of FOSS that ultimately you are responsible for your own systems and their maintenance.
- ehutch79 1y ago
  No, in fact Linux recently decided to screw over the two hobbyists running itanium systems by not maintaining full feature compatibility in new kernels, for that architecture.
  - sidewndr46 1y ago
    I can't tell if this is a joke or satire. Itanium is a microarchitecture which was dead before it was ever implemented in silicon. It only existed because HP was paying Intel to create it, HP doesn't exactly have the reputation of a company with good decision making.
- neilv 1y ago
  Debian is very good about preserving old distributions and packages. But realistically, unless you're doing serious retrocomputing, it might never come up. I think most 20yo laptops, for example, will simply work with the latest Debian. (I'm typing this on a 13yo laptop, because real keyboard, and everything works perfectly.)
- ryao 1y ago
  Just recently, bugs in drivers for 30 year old Soundblaster ISA cards received fixes: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32 There is no strict guarantee of indefinite support, but that is often what happens.
- Twirrim 1y ago
  Yes, but there are no guarantees. In fact, they do quite routinely remove drivers for old hardware, if there is no one willing to maintain them. They removed support for several pieces of hardware in the last release, in fact, including some particular drivers for an IBM Cell system, and for IBM CAPI flash drives (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=772ba9b5bd2701a9967c084b66ff1daaee0367eb https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...) and so on
Nullabillity 1y ago
That wouldn't help retrocomputing users at all, who are specifically trying to reproduce specific software/hardware combinations. If that old setup required Windows, well.. guess they need Windows and those specific drivers.
- leeter 1y ago
  There is already a project to handle this because this has already happened to so much hardware https://theretroweb.com/ https://theretroweb.com/

thrownaway561 1y ago

Nothing is stopping for from making your own and gifting it to the world. You can't support old things forever. Eventually you have to move forward as the cost for maintaining things just doesn't support the effort (or the juice isn't worth the squeeze).

perching_aix 1y ago

OK, I'll bite. Software is a liability. Especially the typical kind, that one normally runs into, which are not formally verified. And even if they were, the human understanding of what constitutes a vulnerability is in perpetual flux, as that is a human-level semantic concept. This is why active maintenance is a necessary property. If a software is not actively maintained, it can and will accumulate vulnerability discoveries, putting the entire security boundary it resides in and all the data going through it into jeopardy. To potentially autonomously distribute knowingly unmaintained software borders on malicious. It sucks that your legacy devices will no longer have their device drivers neatly auto-installed, yes, but it's not some grand conspiracy, it's bottom of the barrel bare minimum safety consciousness. If what you propose is that manual install specifically should still be possible from Windows Update, I can support that, but I think this entire announcement is such an obvious thing, I'm surprised it hasn't been this way before. > Personally I always hated the idea of using Windows Update as your warehouse for drivers in the first place. Much better to keep your own collection. (Yes, it takes some work to curate and periodically update). And most every other person hates dealing with drivers instead, hence why they started distributing them through it.

mslansn 1y ago

Errrr, you can install drivers outside of windows update. Your hardware will continue working fine. Just that you will have to install the driver manually.

maltris 1y ago
Good luck finding them still. If they are not on archive.org, you are out of luck. And if that ceases to exist, even more.

immibis 1y ago

It's not a step towards that world. We're already in that world. Have been for at least half a decade.