4 ms·

What is sad is that even though Linux now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows, we've exchanged one problem with another, because nowadays most o

What is sad is that even though Linux now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows, we've exchanged one problem with another, because nowadays most of the hardware I see is only supported on Linux and nothing else. Even on PCs, latest generation AMD graphics cards (already >1yr old) are not supported in _anything_ other than Linux (and Windows). This is just sad.

craftkiller 6mo ago
FreeBSD uses a compatibility layer to run the Linux graphics drivers, though it lags behind Linux. So if FreeBSD currently does not support the graphics cards, it will soon. It looks like they are currently porting over 6.11: https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/41 https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/41
- AshamedCaptain 6mo ago
  It is the _only_ OSS operating system that supports AMD cards from this decade, and it does so by having to emulate the Linux kernel API, and yet _still_ it lags years behind Linux itself. I've chosen this example for a reason -- this is exactly what I'm sad about.
  - 0x457 6mo ago
    That and WiFi being stuck at 802.11g is what made me switch. It was a very sad day for me when I uninstalled FreeBSD from all of non-server machines.
    - craftkiller 6mo ago
      That certainly _used_ to be the case, but it looks like 802.11ac is supported in iwlwifi since FreeBSD 14.3: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwlwifi&sektion=4&format=html https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwlwifi&sektion=4&... And it looks like they're adding 802.11ac support to some realtek drivers too: https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2025-10-2025-12/#_linuxkpi_802_11_and_native_wireless_update https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2025-10-2025-12/#_linu...
      - 0x457 6mo ago
        Not to sound like goal post mover, but once you tried 802.11be @ 6GHz, you never go back (assuming what your AP connected to can handle it). That's my problem with FreeBSD on non-servers - eventually it's supported, usually via Linux shim, but it's too late. By the time FreeBSD started to support (on CURRENT) GPU that forced me to switch, I already upgraded twice. Glad it's getting better.
        skydhash 6mo ago
        I wouldn’t mind faster wifi speed, but reverse engineering stuff has always been slow (i.e Asahi Linux, and they only have a few device to investigate)
        craftkiller 6mo ago
        eh I've got 802.11be @ 6ghz at home (u7 pro AP and QCNCM865 client) and it is truly impressive, but I only notice the difference once every 1-2 years when I'm transferring a full-disk image over the network for backup. We've long passed the point where the speed improvements matter for daily usage (browsing the web, streaming video, remote desktop, installing updates). For those use cases, you wouldn't notice a slowdown on 802.11ac and I'd argue even 802.11n would be fine. The one exception I can think of would be video content creators since they end up with large amounts of raw video that would benefit from transferring at much-faster-than-streaming speeds. And I guess steam downloads if you don't plan ahead at all, but if I'm planning to play a game later, I'll tell steam to install it hours or days in advance.
        0x457 6mo ago
        I often have to transfer large files in LAN. 802.11ac and 802.11n definitely enough for most of the time. I often have to transfer large files between machines in LAN, with 802.11ac makes you remember that it's wireless, while 802.11be makes you forget. I have the same setup for a framework main board next to the AP, and it's reliably faster than using their usb-c ethernet extension card.
    - rjsw 6mo ago
      Ethernet works fine for me at home, only use WiFi when travelling.
delta_p_delta_x 6mo ago
> now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows [X] doubt.
- jasonjayr 6mo ago
  Windows is cleaning up a lot of legacy drivers. A bunch of printers (+ scanners) that predate updates to the printer driver framework in recent versions of windows just don't have functioning drivers anymore, despite being perfectly functional. All these devices work out of the box on linux, more or less.
  - bluebarbet 6mo ago
    Most devices that you can buy for under $400 now run on ARM chips (frequently Mediatek). We're talking tablets (with keyboards), convertibles, even outright laptops (i.e. "netbooks"). These things qualify as computers. They are replacing traditional laptops, just as those replaced desktops. And they do not run Linux out of the box.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
      If we're looking at sub-$400 computers, especially on ARM, it seems like we have to include the large segment of ChromeOS devices that only run Linux out of the box (or at all, generally).
      - bluebarbet 6mo ago
        Referring to Intel Chromebooks (i.e. laptops), that segment is now dwindling in size much as its predecessor (Intel Windows netbooks) did a few years ago. Most low-end ChromeOS devices now run on ARM. And Android is nipping at their heels.
        yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
        Sure. And all of those devices run Linux. Some of them even run other Linux OSs decently; one of my daily drivers is an ARM Chromebook running postmarketos.
ux266478 6mo ago
Why do you think so?
- cevn 6mo ago
  It's sad because it removes choice from users over what OS to run. People that only use windows are going and throwing their old computers away.
  - ux266478 6mo ago
    I think of it more in the reverse, the choice being removed is the hardware you can use. It has been the case from the dawn of computing that you start from a usecase (which correlates to software, which maps to an operating system) and then look at your options for hardware. The more specific your usecase, the more specific your software, which correlates to a specific choice of hardware. There is no, and can be no, "have it all". It's a fundamental principle of mathematics, the postulates you choose radically change the set of proofs you have access to, and the set of proofs you choose entail the axioms and structures you can take. Now it can be better or worse, and right now it's never been better. There was a time when your language, your shell and your operating system were specific to the exact model of computer (not just a patched kernel, everything was fully bespoke) and you have a very limited set of peripherals. That we suffer from more esoteric operating systems lagging behind the bleeding edge of extremely complicated peripherals is a very good place to be in. That there's always room for improvement shouldn't be cause for sadness.
    - AshamedCaptain 6mo ago
      > Now it can be better or worse, and right now it's never been better. There was a time when your language, your shell and your operating system were specific to the exact model of comput No, it is not. There was a small period of time between the 90s and the 2010s where you could grab almost every 386 OS and have your hardware mostly decently run for it, and if not, drivers would be easily written from manufacturer specifications. That time was definitely better then than what we have today, or what we had before then. I am writing this as someone who was written serial port controller drivers for the BeOS. > That we suffer from more esoteric operating systems lagging behind the bleeding edge of extremely complicated peripherals is a very good place to be in. This is the wrong logic, because operating systems become esoteric since they can't support the hardware, and hardware becomes complicated and under-specified because there's basically only one operating system to take care of. You may _think_ you have no reason to be sad if you're a user of Windows or Linux, but you have plenty anyway.

craftkiller 6mo ago

FreeBSD uses a compatibility layer to run the Linux graphics drivers, though it lags behind Linux. So if FreeBSD currently does not support the graphics cards, it will soon. It looks like they are currently porting over 6.11: https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/41 https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/41

AshamedCaptain 6mo ago
It is the _only_ OSS operating system that supports AMD cards from this decade, and it does so by having to emulate the Linux kernel API, and yet _still_ it lags years behind Linux itself. I've chosen this example for a reason -- this is exactly what I'm sad about.
- 0x457 6mo ago
  That and WiFi being stuck at 802.11g is what made me switch. It was a very sad day for me when I uninstalled FreeBSD from all of non-server machines.
  - craftkiller 6mo ago
    That certainly _used_ to be the case, but it looks like 802.11ac is supported in iwlwifi since FreeBSD 14.3: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwlwifi&sektion=4&format=html https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwlwifi&sektion=4&... And it looks like they're adding 802.11ac support to some realtek drivers too: https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2025-10-2025-12/#_linuxkpi_802_11_and_native_wireless_update https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2025-10-2025-12/#_linu...
    - 0x457 6mo ago
      Not to sound like goal post mover, but once you tried 802.11be @ 6GHz, you never go back (assuming what your AP connected to can handle it). That's my problem with FreeBSD on non-servers - eventually it's supported, usually via Linux shim, but it's too late. By the time FreeBSD started to support (on CURRENT) GPU that forced me to switch, I already upgraded twice. Glad it's getting better.
      - skydhash 6mo ago
        I wouldn’t mind faster wifi speed, but reverse engineering stuff has always been slow (i.e Asahi Linux, and they only have a few device to investigate)
      - craftkiller 6mo ago
        eh I've got 802.11be @ 6ghz at home (u7 pro AP and QCNCM865 client) and it is truly impressive, but I only notice the difference once every 1-2 years when I'm transferring a full-disk image over the network for backup. We've long passed the point where the speed improvements matter for daily usage (browsing the web, streaming video, remote desktop, installing updates). For those use cases, you wouldn't notice a slowdown on 802.11ac and I'd argue even 802.11n would be fine. The one exception I can think of would be video content creators since they end up with large amounts of raw video that would benefit from transferring at much-faster-than-streaming speeds. And I guess steam downloads if you don't plan ahead at all, but if I'm planning to play a game later, I'll tell steam to install it hours or days in advance.
        0x457 6mo ago
        I often have to transfer large files in LAN. 802.11ac and 802.11n definitely enough for most of the time. I often have to transfer large files between machines in LAN, with 802.11ac makes you remember that it's wireless, while 802.11be makes you forget. I have the same setup for a framework main board next to the AP, and it's reliably faster than using their usb-c ethernet extension card.
  - rjsw 6mo ago
    Ethernet works fine for me at home, only use WiFi when travelling.

delta_p_delta_x 6mo ago

> now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows [X] doubt.

jasonjayr 6mo ago
Windows is cleaning up a lot of legacy drivers. A bunch of printers (+ scanners) that predate updates to the printer driver framework in recent versions of windows just don't have functioning drivers anymore, despite being perfectly functional. All these devices work out of the box on linux, more or less.
- bluebarbet 6mo ago
  Most devices that you can buy for under $400 now run on ARM chips (frequently Mediatek). We're talking tablets (with keyboards), convertibles, even outright laptops (i.e. "netbooks"). These things qualify as computers. They are replacing traditional laptops, just as those replaced desktops. And they do not run Linux out of the box.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
    If we're looking at sub-$400 computers, especially on ARM, it seems like we have to include the large segment of ChromeOS devices that only run Linux out of the box (or at all, generally).
    - bluebarbet 6mo ago
      Referring to Intel Chromebooks (i.e. laptops), that segment is now dwindling in size much as its predecessor (Intel Windows netbooks) did a few years ago. Most low-end ChromeOS devices now run on ARM. And Android is nipping at their heels.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
        Sure. And all of those devices run Linux. Some of them even run other Linux OSs decently; one of my daily drivers is an ARM Chromebook running postmarketos.

ux266478 6mo ago

Why do you think so?

cevn 6mo ago
It's sad because it removes choice from users over what OS to run. People that only use windows are going and throwing their old computers away.
- ux266478 6mo ago
  I think of it more in the reverse, the choice being removed is the hardware you can use. It has been the case from the dawn of computing that you start from a usecase (which correlates to software, which maps to an operating system) and then look at your options for hardware. The more specific your usecase, the more specific your software, which correlates to a specific choice of hardware. There is no, and can be no, "have it all". It's a fundamental principle of mathematics, the postulates you choose radically change the set of proofs you have access to, and the set of proofs you choose entail the axioms and structures you can take. Now it can be better or worse, and right now it's never been better. There was a time when your language, your shell and your operating system were specific to the exact model of computer (not just a patched kernel, everything was fully bespoke) and you have a very limited set of peripherals. That we suffer from more esoteric operating systems lagging behind the bleeding edge of extremely complicated peripherals is a very good place to be in. That there's always room for improvement shouldn't be cause for sadness.
  - AshamedCaptain 6mo ago
    > Now it can be better or worse, and right now it's never been better. There was a time when your language, your shell and your operating system were specific to the exact model of comput No, it is not. There was a small period of time between the 90s and the 2010s where you could grab almost every 386 OS and have your hardware mostly decently run for it, and if not, drivers would be easily written from manufacturer specifications. That time was definitely better then than what we have today, or what we had before then. I am writing this as someone who was written serial port controller drivers for the BeOS. > That we suffer from more esoteric operating systems lagging behind the bleeding edge of extremely complicated peripherals is a very good place to be in. This is the wrong logic, because operating systems become esoteric since they can't support the hardware, and hardware becomes complicated and under-specified because there's basically only one operating system to take care of. You may _think_ you have no reason to be sad if you're a user of Windows or Linux, but you have plenty anyway.