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"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 28, 2012 21:26 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: "Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." by Cyberax
Parent article: Look and feel lawsuits, the second time around

Maybe in 1995 you had to fool around with modelines, etc. But now Linux tends to Just Work after installation the same as Windows, especially if you use something like Ubuntu.

(I use Debian, not Ubuntu, but I can't recall having to tweak anything in the last 50+ desktop or laptop installs I've done.)


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"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 28, 2012 21:51 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

But it's no longer _enough_ to JustWork(tm). That's a requirement now, not an optional feature.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 28, 2012 22:08 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

So what's your point? Linux meets the requirements. And it has features [Tons of free software; sane upgrade mechanisms; robustness; nice development environment] that are lacking in the alternatives, which is why I select it as my OS.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 29, 2012 7:14 UTC (Wed) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link]

Just works? Considering how broken the 6month upgrade cycle is for users, i doubt it.
'Oh you need spanky new webcam support?' Well you have to a) wait 3 months b) force upgrading everything else. Nice :)

But it's harsh, the model has other advantages but some really crappy downsides for 3rd party developers and hardware makers.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 29, 2012 13:46 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Considering how broken the 6month upgrade cycle is for users, i doubt it.

What 6-month upgrade cycle are you referring to? Debian certainly does not have such a cycle.

Maybe Ubuntu does, but even Ubuntu has LTS releases.

'Oh you need spanky new webcam support?' Well you have to a) wait 3 months b) force upgrading everything else. Nice :)

That's never been an issue for me. It's true that one time I did buy a webcam that needed a newer kernel than what I was running, but it was pretty easy to make a Debian kernel package and upgrading the kernel affected absolutely nothing else on my system. (I'm typing this on a Squeeze box running kernel 3.4.4.)

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 5:50 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

Perhaps amusingly, a 2007 IBM Thinkpad I have, equipped with an ATI 1300, only just got support for hardware GL acceleration in linux v3.4.2. I'm not sure what argument this fact might support.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 31, 2012 22:05 UTC (Fri) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link]

The X1300 (a R500 card) has been supported by Mesa for years, since at least 2008, I think.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Sep 1, 2012 14:38 UTC (Sat) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

Unless it's a (Microsoft-Only-vendor)-specific version of the card. Not that that's ever bit me with my Dell i8600 which had a broken vbios that I had to install Windows XP back on to apply the fix for. Aside from IIRC having slightly different PCI information and a different vbios, I don't know what the various vendor-specific "flavors" of the cards do.

The long-term solution is to stop buying hardware that's designed to only run Windows and tested *just* enough to pass WHQL and instead buy from a Linux vendor so that they can begin to get the ODMs to explicitly support Linux or at least stop producing hardware that breaks so badly.

Yes, your selection is going to be more limited. Does even Apple have the selection of Dell, Lenovo, Sony, HP, etc. put together? No. Instead, help the Linux vendors get a solid support base to begin to push back on the ODMs. You know, like how Apple can get their suppliers to produce hardware that Only Works with Apple. If the Linux vendors have enough customers, they begin to have the power to fix the Linux hardware situation. Until then, they or you have to pick and choose your hardware carefully and try to see if they can fix its brokenness (or work around its brokenness in software, s.a. System76's drivers).

The short-term bonus of buying from a Linux vendor is that they do the picking, choosing, and working around for you instead. So you win long and short-term at the cost of some selection.

I swear, the smartest thing Apple ever did was make OSX only run on Apple hardware. Otherwise, we’d be hearing about how OSX is crap on random Windows consumer hardware because sound is flaky and it can’t suspend and resume right (and sometimes it can’t even turn itself off!) while Apple tries to source hardware from the ODMs with a market share in the single thousands of customers. You know, like e.g. ZaReason and System76 are trying to do it.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 29, 2012 15:30 UTC (Wed) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link]

in parallel linux ( actually mostly KDE ) has aquired some unpleasant bigbrotherknows best -isms.
The number of Don Quixotish windmill fights increases with each interation.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 29, 2012 20:08 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

How come? I am not aware of those.

> in parallel linux ( actually mostly KDE ) has aquired some unpleasant bigbrotherknows best -isms.

Off-topic

Posted Aug 29, 2012 23:39 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Aw, come on. Top posting on LWN? What's next, OMG LOLisms?

Sorry, couldn't resist :)

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 1:46 UTC (Thu) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]

Me neither. The nastiest affront to human dignity and the Unix philosophy on KDE is NetworkManager and that isn't a KDE thing, it's a Redhat abomination.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 2:20 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

Sure, I fondly remember the WiFi and the endless Ethernet reconfiguring on the VAX-11 that was the first machine I admined back in '85...

This whole "Unix philosophy" whining is total nonsense. What was (barely) good enough for bolted-to-the-floor machines, for which any hardware change meant powering down, probably reconfiguring hardware by diving into the inards of the machine and even compiling a new kernel, just isn't enough for today's mobile laptops with hot-plugged hardware.

BTW, I did do my fair share of cursing at NetworkManager in its beginnings, a few iterations (and bugreports) later it Just Works (TM). Try it again some time.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 6:22 UTC (Thu) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]

Try innocently editing an ifcfg-ethX file while Network Manager is running. As soon as you save the file, Network Manager thinks you have deleted it and shuts down the interface. Unusually effective if it is the sole network interface on a colocated server somewhere.

Network Manager isn't just a bad idea on servers, it is hazardous to your health.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 6:58 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

I do that all the time (working with embedded devices that boot over Ethernet from my laptop). Works perfectly OK - NetworkManager doesn't touch manually managed interfaces.

Besides, why are you running it on server?

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 10:14 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> Try innocently editing an ifcfg-ethX file while Network Manager is running.

Why would you do such a thing? You didn't know network-manager was running?

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 17:04 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Because if you're working remotely you quite possibly have no other choice. Your ssh connection comes over that interface, and that's that.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 11:48 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

How exactly do you expect NetworkManager to interact with a distro-specific configuration mechanism? If you insist on usign NM on a server, you should remove the distro-specific stuff entirely. I wouldn't expect this to work any more than I'd expect configuring eth0 in both ifupdown and NM to work; or installing ifupdown on a RedHat machine and configuring eth0 in both ifcfg-eth0 and /etc/network/interfaces!

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 15:13 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

NetworkManager works -- most of the time.

But when it doesn't work, it's next to impossible to fix.

Sure, if I wanted to spend at least six hours on it, I could get into its C code and bend it to my will. But what a waste of time.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 9:53 UTC (Thu) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link]

Things that pulled my tether recently:
network manager
kdewallet interaction with network manager/ wifi connection and where to store the credentials.
switching between dual and single screens.
okular and its handling of forms ( you can check a ckeckbox but this is a oneway street ) . acroread dies unpleasantly when acessing an okular "formfilled" pdf. ( OK, acro* is shit anyway, but the people that get the formfilled pdf use acrobat )

essentially the karmawheel like activities that made me run away from win3.1 to linux have made their way over too.

"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."

Posted Aug 30, 2012 10:20 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> network manager
What happened with network manager?

> kdewallet interaction with network manager/ wifi connection and where to store the credentials.
Ditto. I answered "yes" some years ago about "put wifi connection password in wallet" and it's there to this day...

> switching between dual and single screens.
I use dual screen all the time. Yesterday, I had to exchange one of the monitors, turned it of, yanked it out, KDE asks me politely "do you want to reconfigure?" I answered "not yet", put the other one in, it asks it again, I answer "yes" and it opens the control panel. Where is the friction?

> okular and its handling of forms ( you can check a ckeckbox but this is a oneway street ) . acroread dies unpleasantly when acessing an okular "formfilled" pdf. ( OK, acro* is shit anyway, but the people that get the formfilled pdf use acrobat )
This is a serious problem and I hope it gets resolved soon, but it's not The Problem *for me* (mostly b/c I don't have to fill US IRS forms).

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