Gregory's Server
 80 comments
@steinarb sure, there are more hardware, but drivers will be an issue as long as it's not a first class priority by vendors. I just bought two devices in order to improve the driver situation after being shamed when it didn't work just plugging in. This was during a job interview which made it especially bad. Drivers keep being an achilles heel. @steinarb 6.11.6 and 6.11.7 don't work for me. The wifi won't wake from sleep with a timeout message. Every device under the sun has Windows support, but Linux support is an afterthought if it exists at all. Many times it's reverse engineered by volunteers. At least drivers are one of my biggest issues. All too easy getting a device without working drivers.  @simendsjo Yeah, maybe I was just lucky. But it has been two years now of trouble free operation, with daily use, where everything I've tried on the laptop works: video, sound, wifi, bluetooth (MX master mouse in daily usage, Jabra Solemate mini almost daily, streaming music). So I have basically forgotten that issues might exist... sorry about that! ("works on my machine!", as the saying goes...) @steinarb my Lenovo laptops has also been working great, but it has all been Intel wireless, and I have never tested all hardware features (e.g. infrared camera or fingerprint reader.) But I agree it's a lot better than it used to be. I think my latest issue was DisplayLink in a meeting room, which only has vendor drivers packaged for Ubuntu. So I need to add support for my distro. @snaggen (well... truth to tell that was exactly me back in the summer of 2022, when I was buying a new laptop... but as the blog post referred to otherwise in the thread my fear were put to shame. But I guess I was just lucky, maybe...?)  @andrewt This has never been a worry I’ve had in almost 30 years of using Linux personally and professionally. Is this something about gamers and not people using computers for productivity?  @andrewt @sjuvonen For gaming there might be issues on nvidia but amd has been great to use with the open source amdgpu drivers for over a decade at least. Once something is working, it'll almost always work forever on Linux. Gaming using Proton via steam is seamless. Heroic launcher for GOG and Epic games is a community effort to create a similar experience for those platforms. Use gamemode (for example set launch option "gamemoderun %command" on steam) to have better graphics performance.  @cohentheblue @andrewt @sjuvonen i honestly prefer the nvidia drivers over the amdgpu now on the more recent versions >< (amd has been annoying me with its HDMI problems)  @sjuvonen @andrewt actually. We at work had some "problems" with the drivers for the thinkpad usb-c dockingstations. With my nvidia card I don't have any problems. But I'm not a gamer so maybe I just don't see the problems.  @sjuvonen @andrewt I was using Linux around the same time and I had tons of issues with drivers. I was able to solve almost all of them, but it was often non-trivial. A good portion of sound cards of that era for example were hard to get working--driver issues AND PnP issues. Hell, just getting online was a thing. I remember calling up my dial-in ISP to say their modem connection chat was sending html instead of login prompt and they all just drunkenly laughed. no this is more like "damn I need to get WiFi on this somehow, hm, let's go the quick route for now and get a dongle" you then proceed to plug it in and are greeted with an old and obscure realtek chipset that doesn't have drivers that work on any modern version of the Linux kernel True for cyclists, other drivers... and Windows users, these days. Linux, not so much. Linux problems tend to be along the line of "new computer, why won't you sleep?". So Linux users and new parents, I guess? @dashdsrdash the thing is I've got a nice framework Linux computer and it actually sleeps more reliably then my work macbook 🙃  @dashdsrdash @andrewt unless you have an Nvidia card or a network adapter that the kernel doesn't support, which apparently is most of them available in countries like Brazil, according to a Brazilian friend o.o  @andrewt drivers: constant anxiety about when a cyclist will run a red light directly infront of you or swerving in and out of traffic erradically. There is no if, only when. @samofhearts so to be clear your complaint is that sometimes when you are crossing a road, a cyclist will also cross the road? @andrewt My concern is they have a complete disregard for any law or rule of the road. If they want to be on the road or bike lanes. Sweet, follow the same laws and rules cars have to follow so that everything is predictable. @samofhearts Why does that concern you? If cyclists are actually endangering anyone then *that* should be your concern. If they're just ignoring rules that patently don't matter then why do you care?  @andrewt I want to thank you for this subthread, as it identified @samofhearts@infosec.exchange as a really good candidate for a block.  @samofhearts @andrewt Yeah, but nah. Your little nugget of insight about cyclists doesn't match the facts. Cyclists are actually more likely to obey road rules than car drivers. So maybe consider, I don't know, shutting the fuck up? @andrewt i thought it was windows that had to deal with drivers not linux ? or is it something else There are no drivers in Linux they're called modules and someone who rides the wrong way in a bike lane is a salmon. @freeplay@wetdry.world @andrewt@mathstodon.xyz idk, the only drivers I’ve had to worry about on Linux so far are NVIDIA drivers because NVIDIA sucks    @andrewt I love my Windows PC. I know people like other OS options but I am not brave enough.  @andrewt I have literally never worried about drivers on Linux but I did worry about them sometimes on Windows @andrewt I'm not a gamer and I don't have any Nvidia hardware, but another concern we've had is the migration to Wayland. I just did a one year stint using Fedora 40 with the KDE Plasma desktop, and it was really a breath of fresh air with Plasma 6. At the moment, I'm back to Linux Mint because it's simply easier to get things done when you don't have to screw around. They do a wonderful job taking Canonical's already amazing job and focusing it for traditional desktop users.  @andrewt I was thinking about buying an electric mtb the other day and a question came up: Is it going to be compatible with Linux?  @andrewt Finding drivers for Windows is much more of a problem nowadays. Even for many rather rare and outdated pieces of hardware, drivers are quite often part of the regular vanilla Linux kernel, while it is near impossible to find any Windows 10 or 11 drivers for a 15 year old printer or scanner which otherwise still works perfectly.    @andrewt Like when Fedora has to recompile my NVIDIA driver for the umpteenth time during boot because either kernel or the driver received a minor update. That's 45 seconds of my life staring at the boot splash I'll never get back! I could have used those to mindlessly scroll through Instagram Reels!  @andrewt The only time I had to worry about drivers with Linux was when I had a laptop with an NVIDIA GPU. All other times the kernel had already all the drivers I may need. Windows gave me more headaches  @andrewt cyclist kernel developers be like :blob_cat_oh_no: :blob_cat_oh_no: :blob_cat_oh_no: :blob_cat_oh_no: |
Funny!
(but not strictly true anymore for linux users...)
(probably still true for cyclists, though...)