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0 pointscatalogia6y ago0 comments

> Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap.

As the situation on windows shows us, the alternative is drivers that are crap for other reasons. If Linux offered a stable binary interface for drivers, we'd have proprietary drivers that "worked" but were nevertheless still crap insofar as they were essentially malware, as is the case with this wacom driver.

0 comments

the84726y ago

And yet google is pushing hard to keep ABI stable in the name of extending android support because manufacturers just won't release their SoC drivers.

kick6y ago

Proprietary surveillance company is okay with manufacturers creating proprietary drivers to be used for surveillance. Shocking.

dTal6y ago

Rather cheeky to urge the Linux developers to change their ways so that Google can continue to profit off GPL violations.

MaxBarraclough6y ago

Thanks for mentioning the elephant in the room.

Is there a reason the Linux folks don't do something about this? If I were them I wouldn't be happy seeing my licensing terms treated like a joke.

Polylactic_acid6y ago

Probably because desktop users expect their hardware to continue to work for a long time and to keep up with OS updates. For mobile people have been conditioned to accept throwing away and buying a new device every 2 years.

snvzz6y ago

If this was true, the BSDs would have terrible drivers.

What happens instead is Linux drivers are mostly BSD ports. Go figure.

dredmorbius6y ago

ISTR a discussion some years back over the lagging of drivers on the BSDs relative to Linux.

Not finding that now, though there's a 2014 discussion of a driver wrapper for FreeBSD to access Linux device drivers:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzMjY

Linux of course also makes use of some driver wrappers, the most well-known of which is probably NDISwrapper, supporting wireless networking cards:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

nerdponx6y ago

A standardized ABI does not inevitably lead to malware closed drivers. That's a ridiculous assertion.

Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI.

catalogiaOP6y ago

> Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI.

From what I've seen, facilitating proprietary drivers seems like the motivation of most people lamenting the lack of a stable ABI. An example of this being the comment I responded to; "Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. [...]"

Discounting proprietary drivers under the assumption that they wouldn't be written anyway, what does a stable ABI afford us? Out-of-tree FOSS drivers? In other words, drivers that aren't good enough to be accepted into the kernel?

Polylactic_acid6y ago

Out of tree foss drivers are still not affected since you could most of the time just recompile them to work with the latest kernel.

Also when I said linux made proprietary drivers crap I meant that as a good thing. It lead to open source drivers where there otherwise would not have been. Some OEMs like AMD eventually went open source on linux while remaining proprietary on windows.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

the84726y ago

And yet google is pushing hard to keep ABI stable in the name of extending android support because manufacturers just won't release their SoC drivers.

kick6y ago

Proprietary surveillance company is okay with manufacturers creating proprietary drivers to be used for surveillance. Shocking.

dTal6y ago

Rather cheeky to urge the Linux developers to change their ways so that Google can continue to profit off GPL violations.

MaxBarraclough6y ago

Thanks for mentioning the elephant in the room.

Is there a reason the Linux folks don't do something about this? If I were them I wouldn't be happy seeing my licensing terms treated like a joke.

Polylactic_acid6y ago

snvzz6y ago

If this was true, the BSDs would have terrible drivers.

What happens instead is Linux drivers are mostly BSD ports. Go figure.

dredmorbius6y ago

ISTR a discussion some years back over the lagging of drivers on the BSDs relative to Linux.

Not finding that now, though there's a 2014 discussion of a driver wrapper for FreeBSD to access Linux device drivers:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzMjY

Linux of course also makes use of some driver wrappers, the most well-known of which is probably NDISwrapper, supporting wireless networking cards:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

nerdponx6y ago

A standardized ABI does not inevitably lead to malware closed drivers. That's a ridiculous assertion.

Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI.

catalogiaOP6y ago

> Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI.

Polylactic_acid6y ago

Out of tree foss drivers are still not affected since you could most of the time just recompile them to work with the latest kernel.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse