4 ms·

It also really amazes me how vendors make crappy drivers for linux compared to windows

by hadrianoliveira 12y ago

ckaygusu 12y ago
Seconded. I wonder if Microsoft aggresively pays people to not to develop drivers for other operating systems.
- kcbanner 12y ago
  I think that would be pretty anticompetitive.
  - _broody 12y ago
    Then again, the big tech players are hardly good sports.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    They do have a bit of history with "anticompetitive".
Alupis 12y ago
This is not really true anymore. About 99% of all devices "just work" out of the box, the other 1% either are very obscure/specialty hardware, or are new hardware. Linux doesn't need a vendor to support Linux like it used to... most generic drivers are built in and work OK (just like the generic drivers built into Windows now-a-days).
- adamors 12y ago
  > About 99% of all devices "just work" out of the box, the other 1% either are very obscure/specialty hardware, or are new hardware Well if you count most GPUs under speciality hardware then I guess you're right, but most people don't. And most linux GPU drivers still pale in comparison to their Windows versions.
  - eslaught 12y ago
    Actually I would think GPUs are one of the biggest counterexamples where driver support has been noticeably improving recently (mostly thanks to Valve and Steam). Even the open source drivers work well enough to let you get work done (although the performance might not be where you want it to be). Compare that to driver support for things like the fingerprint reader in a Lenovo Thinkpad. I wouldn't want to bet on getting that working at all, unless Lenovo had preinstalled Linux for you. And unlike GPUs, this is likely to be all or nothing, so if you don't get the drivers you can't use that hardware feature at all.
    - jnbiche 12y ago
      Actually, there are both closed and open source drivers for Thinkpad fingerprint readers. The open source ones are even well-maintained: https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint/+archive/fingerprint-gui https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint/+archive/fingerprint-gui
      - eslaught 12y ago
        Aha! Good to be proven wrong there.
- millstone 12y ago
  I was given a free Chromebox (Samsung "Series 3"), and I tried to install Linux on it. It didn't work at all, apparently because the Chromebox doesn't support "legacy boot," whatever that is. I tried Crouton and Chrubuntu in turn, and found that sound didn't work in the first case, and that the kernel was not upgradeable. I gave up and I bought a PC (Intel NUC). I was able to install Linux on it, but it failed to boot. I then found a BIOS update, and managed to get it installed (not a trivial task). After that my NUC worked well, except for the IR port, which required additional driver hunting. Sadly, we're still a long ways from "it just works." The NUC didn't support Linux out of the box, even though it ships without an OS!
  - jyu78 12y ago
    You are describing customized devices which are build for a specific OS. Windows and MacOS don't work well on Chromeboxs either. Also to my knowledge all modern Chrome devices have Coreboot support which enable "legacy" bootloaders and will boot any distro like a normal laptop. Older models like the C710 have unofficial Coreboot builds which allow the same (and linux driver support on modern distros).
- jeangenie 12y ago
  For some users, of course, that 1% is all that matters (see Chromebook complaints). I don't find that a very compelling reason to seek out patent encumbered OSes but to each their own.
- metaobject 12y ago
  I still can't fully utilize the nvidia Optimus gfx card under Linux. I've tried the bumblebee project and other suggestions I've found through google, but I'm still stuck with minimal capability. I hear that the latest stable release of ubuntu (14.04?) has added more support for it, so maybe that will work for me.
  - kiram9 12y ago
    my optimus card in my w520 works perfectly in 14.04 - and there are task bar widgets for switching now (logout required). After installing 14.04 my external monitors and display switching work perfectly! I was really happy as I was stuck with a non functional gfx card in linux for a few years and now it finally works.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  I upgraded to ubuntu 14.04 on my reasonably late-model desktop from a major name and now my nvidia graphics card doesn't cause the x server to segfault and send me back to a login prompt when rendering certain fonts, but now my keyboard stops working after screen lock about 10% of the time and sometimes half the usb ports will shut down for no reason at all. This is a little better then when I was hand-editing x configs back in the 90s but overall I'm disappointed.
  - girvo 12y ago
    Gosh, I see so many people having issues like this... and get really confused, because I've ran Linux on my laptops for the past 4 years, and they've all worked completely out of the box with whatever version of Ubuntu was the latest at the time! And I don't go out of my way to pick a laptop that supports Linux, I just buy whichever fit my requirements the best. Of course, now I'm just using a rMBP, but yeah, I wonder if I've just been very lucky?
- pizza234 12y ago
  While to say that all Linux drivers are crappy is false, it's as much as false the (almost) opposite. In Linux, I always have problems with devices, in one way or another (specifically Ubuntu, but I think it's fairly representing the concept), both for new things, old things, not-so-new things, obscure things, etc. etc. To complicate the problem, drivers fit in stacks that may interact in unexpectedly broken ways. This means that say, a wireless audio adapter, may work only 50% of the times it's connected. I was using Windows long ago, and I don't remember this category of things happening (I guess because there are only a few Windows). So, certainly they work "OK", but one needs to be quite flexible on what OK means. I've got two machines which are not so arcane, and I have at least 4, hardware-related (not stack-related), open bugs.
  - hereonbusiness 12y ago
    That is true in my experience, sooner or later you are going to run into a silly driver related problem with linux. Right now I'm having problems with the integrated Intel soundcard in my laptop. Using Xubuntu 10.10/Fedora 16 there never was any problem with it, ever since then it sometimes won't output to the speakers but I always get sound on the headphone jack. But it's mostly those peripheral things at least for me, the system as whole usually works pretty well. Thing is, Linux is much more enjoyable to use for software development and deployment, development on Windows makes me feel like a second class citizen, the OS to me feels much more oriented towards the exclusive consumer, especially now with the new (metro) tablet like user interface.
- sp332 12y ago
  About 99% of all devices "just work" out of the box This high number is due to kernel programmers writing device drivers, since not so many manufacturers write linux drivers themselves.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
alephnil 12y ago
That is not really the case for supercomputers though. Here Linux drivers obviously have first priority. If you are thinking of video driver it is a totally different story.

It also really amazes me how vendors make crappy drivers for linux compared to windows

ckaygusu 12y ago

Seconded. I wonder if Microsoft aggresively pays people to not to develop drivers for other operating systems.

kcbanner 12y ago
I think that would be pretty anticompetitive.
- _broody 12y ago
  Then again, the big tech players are hardly good sports.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nitrogen 12y ago
  They do have a bit of history with "anticompetitive".

Alupis 12y ago

This is not really true anymore. About 99% of all devices "just work" out of the box, the other 1% either are very obscure/specialty hardware, or are new hardware. Linux doesn't need a vendor to support Linux like it used to... most generic drivers are built in and work OK (just like the generic drivers built into Windows now-a-days).

adamors 12y ago
> About 99% of all devices "just work" out of the box, the other 1% either are very obscure/specialty hardware, or are new hardware Well if you count most GPUs under speciality hardware then I guess you're right, but most people don't. And most linux GPU drivers still pale in comparison to their Windows versions.
- eslaught 12y ago
  Actually I would think GPUs are one of the biggest counterexamples where driver support has been noticeably improving recently (mostly thanks to Valve and Steam). Even the open source drivers work well enough to let you get work done (although the performance might not be where you want it to be). Compare that to driver support for things like the fingerprint reader in a Lenovo Thinkpad. I wouldn't want to bet on getting that working at all, unless Lenovo had preinstalled Linux for you. And unlike GPUs, this is likely to be all or nothing, so if you don't get the drivers you can't use that hardware feature at all.
  - jnbiche 12y ago
    Actually, there are both closed and open source drivers for Thinkpad fingerprint readers. The open source ones are even well-maintained: https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint/+archive/fingerprint-gui https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint/+archive/fingerprint-gui
    - eslaught 12y ago
      Aha! Good to be proven wrong there.
millstone 12y ago
I was given a free Chromebox (Samsung "Series 3"), and I tried to install Linux on it. It didn't work at all, apparently because the Chromebox doesn't support "legacy boot," whatever that is. I tried Crouton and Chrubuntu in turn, and found that sound didn't work in the first case, and that the kernel was not upgradeable. I gave up and I bought a PC (Intel NUC). I was able to install Linux on it, but it failed to boot. I then found a BIOS update, and managed to get it installed (not a trivial task). After that my NUC worked well, except for the IR port, which required additional driver hunting. Sadly, we're still a long ways from "it just works." The NUC didn't support Linux out of the box, even though it ships without an OS!
- jyu78 12y ago
  You are describing customized devices which are build for a specific OS. Windows and MacOS don't work well on Chromeboxs either. Also to my knowledge all modern Chrome devices have Coreboot support which enable "legacy" bootloaders and will boot any distro like a normal laptop. Older models like the C710 have unofficial Coreboot builds which allow the same (and linux driver support on modern distros).
jeangenie 12y ago
For some users, of course, that 1% is all that matters (see Chromebook complaints). I don't find that a very compelling reason to seek out patent encumbered OSes but to each their own.
metaobject 12y ago
I still can't fully utilize the nvidia Optimus gfx card under Linux. I've tried the bumblebee project and other suggestions I've found through google, but I'm still stuck with minimal capability. I hear that the latest stable release of ubuntu (14.04?) has added more support for it, so maybe that will work for me.
- kiram9 12y ago
  my optimus card in my w520 works perfectly in 14.04 - and there are task bar widgets for switching now (logout required). After installing 14.04 my external monitors and display switching work perfectly! I was really happy as I was stuck with a non functional gfx card in linux for a few years and now it finally works.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
I upgraded to ubuntu 14.04 on my reasonably late-model desktop from a major name and now my nvidia graphics card doesn't cause the x server to segfault and send me back to a login prompt when rendering certain fonts, but now my keyboard stops working after screen lock about 10% of the time and sometimes half the usb ports will shut down for no reason at all. This is a little better then when I was hand-editing x configs back in the 90s but overall I'm disappointed.
- girvo 12y ago
  Gosh, I see so many people having issues like this... and get really confused, because I've ran Linux on my laptops for the past 4 years, and they've all worked completely out of the box with whatever version of Ubuntu was the latest at the time! And I don't go out of my way to pick a laptop that supports Linux, I just buy whichever fit my requirements the best. Of course, now I'm just using a rMBP, but yeah, I wonder if I've just been very lucky?
pizza234 12y ago
While to say that all Linux drivers are crappy is false, it's as much as false the (almost) opposite. In Linux, I always have problems with devices, in one way or another (specifically Ubuntu, but I think it's fairly representing the concept), both for new things, old things, not-so-new things, obscure things, etc. etc. To complicate the problem, drivers fit in stacks that may interact in unexpectedly broken ways. This means that say, a wireless audio adapter, may work only 50% of the times it's connected. I was using Windows long ago, and I don't remember this category of things happening (I guess because there are only a few Windows). So, certainly they work "OK", but one needs to be quite flexible on what OK means. I've got two machines which are not so arcane, and I have at least 4, hardware-related (not stack-related), open bugs.
- hereonbusiness 12y ago
  That is true in my experience, sooner or later you are going to run into a silly driver related problem with linux. Right now I'm having problems with the integrated Intel soundcard in my laptop. Using Xubuntu 10.10/Fedora 16 there never was any problem with it, ever since then it sometimes won't output to the speakers but I always get sound on the headphone jack. But it's mostly those peripheral things at least for me, the system as whole usually works pretty well. Thing is, Linux is much more enjoyable to use for software development and deployment, development on Windows makes me feel like a second class citizen, the OS to me feels much more oriented towards the exclusive consumer, especially now with the new (metro) tablet like user interface.
sp332 12y ago
About 99% of all devices "just work" out of the box This high number is due to kernel programmers writing device drivers, since not so many manufacturers write linux drivers themselves.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

alephnil 12y ago

That is not really the case for supercomputers though. Here Linux drivers obviously have first priority. If you are thinking of video driver it is a totally different story.