• NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    197·
    10 months ago

    Way back in the olde tymes, I was having trouble with the NIC driver in my Linux install. I posted a question about it on USENET, and got a reply from the guy who wrote the drivers. He asked for some info about the card, then updated the driver to support it.

      • XTL@sopuli.xyz
        32·
        10 months ago

        There used to be a lot of cards based on same or similar chips, but with small differences. That made little changes to drivers common. It’s a bit like LCD modules or audio chipset quirks. One driver with tons of little differences depending on what each manufacturer decided to do differently.

        • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
          10·
          10 months ago

          Yeah, I know, that’s why the kernel with the drivers is not more than 150MB. Otherwise, you’d have the Windows situation where driverpacks compressed with 7z (LZMA2, solid archive, 273 word dictionary size and 2GB decompression memory, which requires about 128GB of RAM to compress) take about 30GB.

          You have to pack the driver from each manufacturer bescuse of signatures, even though they might even be the same with other drivers in the pack… but, REV differs and oh well, the driver installer doesn’t recognize that driver as a valid one for that device.

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
            1·
            10 months ago

            Of course, the kernel drivers are now commonly signed. The real problem is catering to manufacturers demanding to have their own bespoke driver pack, often including some stupid branded management application, when it’s just the same as the other dozen manufacturers packaging of the same product. Then you end up with bloated “driver packs” and a system tray of a half dozen vendors screaming for you to pay attention to them and know that they are somehow contributing to your experience.

            In Linux, you have a kernel driver and a myriad of vendor’s pci ids mixed together and the vendors just have to deal with it. As a side effect, a USB to serial dongle is about 99% likely to work in Linux, and in my experience 90% unlikely to work in Windows (can’t find the driver for it, or in one very prominent case Microsoft bans drivers of counterfeit chips that function fine, but violate IP rights). Punishing the counterfeiters may have been understandable, but ultimately the unwitting customers paid rather than the counterfeiters (they still sold their devices, but the users that were oblivious suffered).

            • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
              1·
              10 months ago

              The real problem is catering to manufacturers demanding to have their own bespoke driver pack, often including some stupid branded management application, when it’s just the same as the other dozen manufacturers packaging of the same product. Then you end up with bloated “driver packs” and a system tray of a half dozen vendors screaming for you to pay attention to them and know that they are somehow contributing to your experience.

              This is exactly why I use driverpacks in Windows (3rd party, like SDI). If the drivers are not in the pack, I download them from the manufacturer and if they’re packed with an app, I just extract the whole thing and point Windows (through manual driver update) to search for the drivers in that location. It will install only what it needs to work, nothing else.

              they still sold their devices, but the users that were oblivious suffered

              Or they did know, but the copy was a lot cheaper than the real thing. Hell, I’ve done it. If it does the same thing, why buy the more expensive thingie. I get IP rights and all that, but seriously, in the end, you just have to deal with these things. Unless you’re Intel, you should expect your device/chip to end up being copied. China doesn’t enforce western world IP laws, so it’s a “free for all” kind of a thing there. If you plan on doing this (making your own device/chip), your device/chip better be niche enough so it’s not viable to actually copy the design. Otherwise, copies will pop up left and right.

    • qjkxbmwvz@lemmy.sdf.org
      2·
      10 months ago

      Back in the day I was running GLTron on an Athlon 1800+ w/Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (I think?) and I was running dual monitors. GLTron didn’t like using both screens since it presented as a peculiar resolution. So I emailed the GLTron dude and he quickly emailed me a patch that let me run the game across both monitors (bezels not an issue because I was doing multiplayer split screen).

      What a great game.

        • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          47·
          10 months ago

          Break away fasteners are a thing now. Line it with some Kevlar fibre and some good thermal insulation/fire resistance and you have an amazing utility device.

          In public, it billows behind you, making you look dashing and heroic. When the shit hits the fan, instant bullet resistant cover for civilians. A way to shield them from the heat of a fire, or a small explosion. You could even use it offensively to tangle or deceive an opponent!

          • Liz@midwest.socialEnglish
            271·
            10 months ago

            There is absolutely no way in hell a bullet-proof cape is billowing in the wind.

            • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              10 months ago

              It won’t stop a direct shot, but it would help against ricochet and shrapnel.

              Back during the Napoleonic wars, silk underlayers were highly sought after. They could limit the damage a musket ball could do.

              A spider silk based cape could definitely help projectile damage, while still being able to billow. The challenge would be making it fire and heat proof as well.

          • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
            5·
            10 months ago

            That works but the fastener can’t be metal. Come across somebody with magnetic powers or for some reason the metal gets heated up and welds to itself… Bad times. But I think you’re onto something.

            • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              10 months ago

              Agreed on the metal clips. Getting garrotted by your own safety system would be extremely detrimental in a fight. Though saying that, if you’re in a fight with a metal telekinetic, you’re either screwed, or strong enough to not care about the clip.

      • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18·
        10 months ago

        I’d settle for a cloak. A nice leather, or heavy woollen cloak would be amazing for being outside on cold evenings.

        Unfortunately, they are still seen as dark and ‘edgy’. Moreso even than a trenchcoat. ☹️

          • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            Unfortunately, it would likely be detrimental to my ongoing work situation.

            Though saying that, the BBC had a guy who would turn up to work dressed as a wizard (think harry potter style). He was the reason Teletext continued for so long. He was the last one left on the team. They retired Teletext the day after he retired himself.

            I’m still not sure I have the force of personality to not just look like an idiot try hard however. 🤷‍♂️

          • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            Tempting… Unfortunately, I don’t think I could pull it off. You need a certain… force of personality to pull off something like that. I’m just not outgoing (or skilled!) enough to pull off a full Thom Merrilin look.

        • Superwidget@lemmy.world
          2·
          10 months ago

          Went camping at a festival my band was playing at. I had a woolen cloak as part of my costume. Everyone was shivering. I was loving life.

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        10 months ago

        I remember early 2020, there was a small push to bring capes back, before something else took over every discussion. Something about blue jays or crows or something

        • Caesium@lemmy.world
          1·
          10 months ago

          yes, I remember the Cape Revolution. I actually did buy a cloak! it took me like a year to wear it though. finding more to purchase is not easy

    • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
      22·
      10 months ago

      Some dude wrote a driver for the temp sensors on my motherboard… Then quit maintining it because people were being shitty

      https://github.com/a1wong/it87

      DRIVER REMOVAL NOTICE ===================== I have been unable to meet support demands for this driver, resulting in unpleasant experience and frustration for everyone involved. Consequently, the driver will be removed from github, effective August 1, 2018. Interested parties are encouraged to clone the driver before that time and to start maintaining it on their own.

    • umbrella@lemmy.ml
      51·
      10 months ago

      Software discoverability on linux sucks so much omg. I was looking for something like coolercontrol for almost forever and I find it now that I dont need it anymore.

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
        41·
        10 months ago

        Uh, really? I find it to be much easier. apt contains almost everything, and for a niche thing like yours, a Google for aio fans linux came back with the first result of a reddit thread including the above software, and liquidctl which it uses and is all over the place. I have way more trouble finding things for Windows, but maybe that’s because 98℅ of my use case isn’t gaming.

        • umbrella@lemmy.ml
          4·
          10 months ago

          i searched it at the time and all i could ever find was fancontrol.

          which is fine and solved my problem, but 99% of niche linux software i use was found through forums like lemmy, on recommendation of other nerds. hardly a good way to find it quick.

          ideally searching a distros app store should find almost everything, more or less like android can do today.

          • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            While I agree with the sentiment, you’re comparing a mobile OS, built that way from the ground up, to a desktop OS. The same problem exists in Windows and MacOS.

            • umbrella@lemmy.ml
              1·
              10 months ago

              it does, and we ain’t in the ideal world! heres the thing, on one hand they got more media covering them, but on the other they use an universal kind of installer.

              worse, some devs will spin .exes and .dmgs but on linux they wont even bother giving you an install script sometimes, let alone using flatpak which is a solution that fixes most of those problems.

  • dan@upvote.au
    69·
    10 months ago

    A lot of Linux drivers are like this - just one or two people maintaining them. They usually eventually mainline the driver rather than having a separate Git repo though.

    • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      38·
      10 months ago

      It’s mind boggling just thinking that things like this depend on the effort of one or two guys… while on the other hand, it’s not so uncommon that a team of engineers and developers fails to deliver a working (mostly) bugfree product.

      I think management is who is responsible for the shitty desigions, as always… and, in general, just holding the team back.

            • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
              2·
              10 months ago

              Oh, OK, I think I get it, we have a place like that in jokes over here as well, except it’s made up 😂.

                • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
                  2·
                  10 months ago

                  No, a bit more south 😂.

                  Germans have that as well 😂? Wow, didn’t know that. Ours is called “Sviripichino”, it litelarly means “the place where you blow (play 🤔… like an instrument) on the pussy” 🤣🤣🤣.

      • dan@upvote.au
        9·
        10 months ago

        The thing with drivers is that the hardware they’re written for doesn’t really change. A particular network card is always going to behave the same way. Once the driver works well, it’s pretty much complete, and the only changes that are needed are bug fixes, updates to handle new firmware, or adjustments if the kernel changes some implementation detail of how drivers are used. There could be months or years between updates to the driver.

        Some manufacturers have great first-party Linux support. Intel is a good example - they contribute a lot of code to the kernel, and their drivers are maintained by employees.

        • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
          2·
          10 months ago

          There could be months or years between updates to the driver.

          Yes, but someone still has to implement that “a thing or two” in it every few years.

          Some manufacturers have great first-party Linux support. Intel is a good example - they contribute a lot of code to the kernel, and their drivers are maintained by employees.

          Agreed. But, to be honest, most aren’t. Just take a look at Realtek. There’s bound to be at least one chip made by them on your board (in most cases, two, LAN and audio, two very crucial pieces of hardware).

  • Hjalmar@feddit.nu
    64·
    10 months ago

    There’s such a lot of those heroes! I have some weird USB WiFi thing and there’s someone maintaining a driver for it!

    • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      35·
      10 months ago

      To be honest, yes. In general, not just tech or Linux related stuff. You look at humanity and what it has come down to, and then you notice these people… and hope fills your heart again.

      • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        20·
        10 months ago

        The vast majority of my open source projects, I’m the only user. I release it open source because back in the day, GitHub only allowed open source projects if you want to use it.

        But another reason is the hope that someone will find it helpful. If not the project itself but maybe the code.

        I have one project that has a significant following and honestly it’s sometimes very scary because I might not want to keep it updated because of my own interests changing.

        • hangonasecond@lemmy.world
          4·
          10 months ago

          That’s the great thing about open source though. Sure, you might drop off the face of the earth tomorrow. But if you do, the code is there, and maybe someone who was using it clones the repo and carries on that work.

    • dumpsterlid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      The astounding thing is history is full of these types of people when you peel back the “couple great men” narrative of history and actually look at how good things happened, it is kind of bewildering.

  • blackjam_alex@lemmy.world
    46·
    3 months ago

    This is the link to the GitHub repository h̶t̶t̶p̶s̶:̶/̶/̶g̶i̶t̶h̶u̶b̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/̶m̶o̶r̶r̶o̶w̶n̶r̶/̶8̶8̶1̶2̶a̶u̶-̶2̶0̶2̶1̶0̶6̶2̶9̶ Give them a star.

    (I also looked for a donation link, but couldn’t find one.)

    Edit: https://github.com/morrownr

  • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
    45·
    10 months ago

    Had some problems while trying to compile and install a WiFi driver for the first time. Managed to find the email of the driver’s creator and sent them a message. They responded a few hours later with incredibly helpful guidance, walking me through the process and enabling me to get it working, all while gaining valuable insights…

    • SirNuke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      22·
      10 months ago

      Send your thanks directly to the maintainer (preferably email/mastadon/twitter/etc, not a ticket)! Open source maintainers don’t get a lot of positive direct feedback.

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
        13·
        10 months ago

        And if you have some coins to spare, don’t hesitate to donate 😊 it’s hard spending time for no money in this world right now.

  • cogman@lemmy.world
    33·
    10 months ago

    One of the best parts about Linux. So much is open source which means your 20 year old hardware still likely has support.

    • bjorney@lemmy.ca
      12·
      10 months ago

      Unfortunately, the RTL8812AU isn’t 20 year old hardware (then it might get a pass) - it’s current gen stuff