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Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work

arstechnica.com

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Re: Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work

#31

Post by haneefmubarak »

dang wrote: post #17
kapilvt wrote: post #5

Arstechnica has a solid write up. He did a lot of work making linux wifi and driver ecosystem significantly better. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/larry-finger-linux-w... I remember cursing ndis wrappers and Broadcom wifi ecosystem a long time ago, Larry helped fixed that, and mentored many others along the way. quote from the arstechnica article "In a 2023 Quora response to someone asking if someone without…

(This was originally from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40770724 but we merged those comments hither)

dang, could this merit a black bar in remembrance and honor?

Re: Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work

#32

Post by exe34 »

freedomben wrote: post #30
exe34 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even just keeping the driver compilable with each kernel release often took some non-trivial refactoring, I realise that the kernel contributors themselves are mostly volunteers and as such can just do what they want, and writers of non-upstreamed drivers will need to get used to chasing trunk, but to me this sort of thing seems like a waste of human talent. once something works, it should never not work again. it…

I've struggled philosophically with that very question as well (especially having to update my own WORKING code just to conform to API changes), and I'm very torn on it. I just don't think there's a good point to pick at which to "freeze" the API and say no more changes are allowed. It would greatly hamper innovation and IMHO ultimately lead the Linux kernel having major forks or being displaced by something more ada…

I've always wondered about how versioning could help. i don't think it would work with a monolithic kernel, but a microkernel might allow you to run multiple versions of different things, and they would still work.

I've also fantasised about the same thing in application programming languages - e.g. the way racket runs loads of different dialects, you could also have versioning for different things running at the same time.

Re: Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work

#33

Post by nanna »

maCDzP wrote: post #24
freedomben wrote: post #11

Wow, this is sad news indeed for the world at large, but also me personally. I'm suddenly in deep regret for having procrastinated reaching out the thank him. He doesn't know this, but he was somewhat of a mentor for me. In the early 00s I bought a laptop that had an RTL 8188 CE card in it that ran awful under Linux. I forked his driver and made a number of changes to it and eventually got my wifi working really well…

This is what makes me come to HN every single day.

This is what makes me come here every single minute my anti-procastination setting allows me to.

Re: Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work

#34

Post by Aerbil313 »

freedomben wrote: post #30
exe34 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even just keeping the driver compilable with each kernel release often took some non-trivial refactoring, I realise that the kernel contributors themselves are mostly volunteers and as such can just do what they want, and writers of non-upstreamed drivers will need to get used to chasing trunk, but to me this sort of thing seems like a waste of human talent. once something works, it should never not work again. it…

I've struggled philosophically with that very question as well (especially having to update my own WORKING code just to conform to API changes), and I'm very torn on it. I just don't think there's a good point to pick at which to "freeze" the API and say no more changes are allowed. It would greatly hamper innovation and IMHO ultimately lead the Linux kernel having major forks or being displaced by something more ada…

Just accept the fact that software does age with time. If it didn't change a literal bit, the real world in runs for and the software ecosystem it runs on did. Any software older than 10 years should be rewritten from absolute scratch, not be kept on life support at ever increasing expense.

Re: Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work

#35

Post by AndrewKemendo »

smlavine wrote: post #19
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #18

[flagged]

Your comment is rude and unhelpful.

I thought I wrote it nicely but I guess not

I can’t think of a more powerful engineering endorsement than saying he did a Herculean effort to manually keep it all working

Basically we’re all screwed now cause he was holding the whole thing up

Re: Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work

#36

Post by JohnMakin »

exe34 wrote: post #29
freedomben wrote: post #11

Wow, this is sad news indeed for the world at large, but also me personally. I'm suddenly in deep regret for having procrastinated reaching out the thank him. He doesn't know this, but he was somewhat of a mentor for me. In the early 00s I bought a laptop that had an RTL 8188 CE card in it that ran awful under Linux. I forked his driver and made a number of changes to it and eventually got my wifi working really well…

> Even just keeping the driver compilable with each kernel release often took some non-trivial refactoring, I realise that the kernel contributors themselves are mostly volunteers and as such can just do what they want, and writers of non-upstreamed drivers will need to get used to chasing trunk, but to me this sort of thing seems like a waste of human talent. once something works, it should never not work again. it…

Much of windows OS weirdness can be attributed to the fact they have a relentless dedication to backwards compatibility.

Re: Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work

#40

Post by exe34 »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #34
freedomben wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've struggled philosophically with that very question as well (especially having to update my own WORKING code just to conform to API changes), and I'm very torn on it. I just don't think there's a good point to pick at which to "freeze" the API and say no more changes are allowed. It would greatly hamper innovation and IMHO ultimately lead the Linux kernel having major forks or being displaced by something more ada…

Just accept the fact that software does age with time. If it didn't change a literal bit, the real world in runs for and the software ecosystem it runs on did. Any software older than 10 years should be rewritten from absolute scratch, not be kept on life support at ever increasing expense.

virtual machines exist, and it might be easier to run something in them than to port them every two years.
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