Shoutout to screenshot tools
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.
Damn… now that’s a wholesome moment 🥹.
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.
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 because 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.
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).
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.
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.
Shoutout to this guy for maintaining my mainboards temperature sensors and pwn fan headers: https://github.com/Fred78290/nct6687d
Without this and https://github.com/codifryed/coolercontrol my PC was either a jet engine from the sounds or a nuclear reactor from heat constipation.
Fred78290 is the man. Much better than Fred78920
Of course he’s better, he’s a whole 630 Freds above the other one.
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.
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.
For all we know, he does wear a cape.
I wish capes were socially acceptable to wear again
And get stuck in turbines and shit?
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!
There is absolutely no way in hell a bullet-proof cape is billowing in the wind.
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.
It’s more of a projectile resistance than full proofing.
Imagine if you suddenly get cornered by a runaway bull. What would you do without a cape?
You should talk to that guy who made bulletproof Kimonos for Steven Seagal
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.
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 decisions, as always… and, in general, just holding the team back.
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.
What’s the deal with Nebraska? Are people from there like really polite and helpful?
There’s nothing to do in Nebraska except drink and maintain Linux drivers
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.)
And shoutout for this one too: https://github.com/tomaspinho/rtl8821ce
Otherwise I wouldn’t have a functional WiFi card either.
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.
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…
This is the way
Its these kind of people that give me hope
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.
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.
One of the best parts about Linux. So much is open source which means your 20 year old hardware still likely has support.
Oh hey I have the same wifi card series (little usb dongle thingy). I use the aircrack drivers when i use it. https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au
Shoutout to whoever maintained my wifi drivers before i switched to ethernet (i forgot who they are lol)
A god among men
There’s such a lot of those heroes! I have some weird USB WiFi thing and there’s someone maintaining a driver for it!
