[lostmsu]

IMHO, Linux is failing us, end users.

It works great for servers, I can give it that. There it mostly runs on a very narrow set of hardware, or just VMs. It is stable and performant, and customizable.

But not on consumer devices. I'd like to use it eventually, but the state of driver support is still abysmal. Android phones lose support after a couple of years, and on desktop/laptops there are numerous problems too. I think that situation is caused by the lack of stable driver API.

Now that's what I'll be looking forward to for 6.0.

[c256]

I don’t know if you realize it, but your complaint is “hardware vendors change things too frequently”. Kernel hackers don’t make up the need to do extra work for hardware support just for kicks. Yes, the hits everyone: Windows loses support for old hardware much faster than it used to. Even the closed-ecosystem of OSX/macosx/macOS leaves hardware behind these days. Mobile phone hardware changes so frequently that you can’t even be sure that the same make & model of handset will use the same hardware. In many ways, it’s both a sign of progress and the baseline cost of doing business.

[lostmsu]

Why do you think it has anything to do with the hardware vendors? They don't want to spend resources upstreaming their changes, but do something else, that's all.

Did not we just see a fight last year, between, I think, AMD and Linux, where AMD, instead of the common practice to drop a blob and be done with it, tried to actually upstream some drivers, but they were not up to Linux's coding standards, so got rejected.

I am not saying AMD is in right here. Maybe nobody is, given the current state of affairs. But it is end users who are suffering from the conflict of interest between Linux community, who doesn't want to maintain cheaply written code, and hardware companies, who can't make great open source drivers for the same money they can make an OK-ishly made closed source blob, that only supports 2yo LTS.

That decision, that I can't have the latest Linux and 5yo drivers that work is simply bad for me as a consumer. Heck, if Linux had stable driver API, somebody could easily go and fix that just slightly buggy AMD driver to be compatible with the latest kernel without much fuss, and without the need to upstream it. And I could use my laptop with the supported kernel again.

I think stable driver API for Linux would do a great good to billions of people. Would let them not to spend money every 3 years on a new phone, and let Microsoft to let Windows 10 go, finally bringing proper privacy to the common folk.

[lostmsu]

Final point. A bit of a parallel/analogue.

The binary compatibility came, and package maintainers rejoiced. Finally, they did not have to make a package for each distribution separately, and could get to actually improving the contents of the packages themselves.

The docker came, and the ops and admins rejoiced. Finally, they are able to build a giant web app, and deploy it anywhere with that tiny container daemon, even on Windows. So they can actually focus on improving their web apps instead of wasting Saturday nights tweaking configurations.

When the stable driver API comes, the driver developers will rejoice.

[lostmsu]

Then again, how is the need to upstream drivers affecting small businesses doing hardware? Forget AMD, they might (arguably) find resources to do the clean-up. But mom, who learned a bit of programming to make a driver for Mom&Pop's Pool Acidity Sensor will never be able to upstream.

So small business needs it even more. Don't you think that is a good reason on its own?

[maxnoe]

Then, is getting a driver upstreamed for linux really harder than getting it trusted/signed for Windows or macOS?

[lostmsu]

If you are mom&pop's, you can live with unsigned driver.

Anyway, you don't have to be a professional developer to sign it. Just buy a certificate, then it is just a couple of commands.

[imtringued]

Why should vendors care? Even Qualcomm outright admitted that they prefer to "ship it and drop it" rather than keep supporting old devices.

[lostmsu]

Have you replied to a wrong comment?