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Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

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Re: Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

#101

Post by binarycrusader »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #97
binarycrusader wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your anecdotes do not constitute facts or objectivity. More importantly, I'm not the person you would have to convince, and the people who would need to be convinced consider this argument over and done with long ago. Then why are you still arguing it? Why are your anecdotes somehow superior to mine (if you want to call an entire mainstream market "anecdotal" evidence)? By accumulating a massive amount of cruft t…

> Then why are you still arguing it? Why are your anecdotes somehow superior to mine (if you want to call an entire mainstream market "anecdotal" evidence)? I'm giving the stated reasons for why Linux intentionally has no stable in-kernel ABI, and what some of the downsides of having one are. That's not an anecdote, that's a description of the stated design philosophy (see also https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentatio…

  So yeah, it's possible to build a kernel that provides
  interfaces that drivers can rely on across many versions.
  Not without a cost, though.
Software engineering is all about tradeoffs and making the right ones, I feel the Linux kernel community has made the wrong one by forcing those costs onto users instead of helping absorb some of that themselves.

I never said it was free or that there wasn't a cost; I just said that usability is important and have implied the Linux kernel developers should care more than they do now.

Re: Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

#102

Post by JoshTriplett »

binarycrusader wrote: post #101
JoshTriplett wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then why are you still arguing it? Why are your anecdotes somehow superior to mine (if you want to call an entire mainstream market "anecdotal" evidence)? I'm giving the stated reasons for why Linux intentionally has no stable in-kernel ABI, and what some of the downsides of having one are. That's not an anecdote, that's a description of the stated design philosophy (see also https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentatio…

So yeah, it's possible to build a kernel that provides interfaces that drivers can rely on across many versions. Not without a cost, though. Software engineering is all about tradeoffs and making the right ones, I feel the Linux kernel community has made the wrong one by forcing those costs onto users instead of helping absorb some of that themselves. I never said it was free or that there wasn't a cost; I just said…

That was why I brought up RHEL: they're not pushing it on users, they're pushing it on distros whose users care about binary driver compatibility.

Re: Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

#103

Post by binarycrusader »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #102
binarycrusader wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So yeah, it's possible to build a kernel that provides interfaces that drivers can rely on across many versions. Not without a cost, though. Software engineering is all about tradeoffs and making the right ones, I feel the Linux kernel community has made the wrong one by forcing those costs onto users instead of helping absorb some of that themselves. I never said it was free or that there wasn't a cost; I just said…

That was why I brought up RHEL: they're not pushing it on users, they're pushing it on distros whose users care about binary driver compatibility.

It's sort of silly to imply that only RedHat users care or that only RedHat users should benefit. All users need and benefit from stability.

Re: Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

#104

Post by JoshTriplett »

binarycrusader wrote: post #103
JoshTriplett wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was why I brought up RHEL: they're not pushing it on users, they're pushing it on distros whose users care about binary driver compatibility.

It's sort of silly to imply that only RedHat users care or that only RedHat users should benefit. All users need and benefit from stability.

Only people running long-term-stable distributions care, and those distributions provide the level of ABI stability their users want. I'm simply saying that it makes more sense for downstream distributions to handle rather than the upstream Linux kernel.

On the flip side, users running up-to-the-minute distributions don't necessarily care, and in fact care more about some of the properties that a stable upstream kernel ABI would trade away.

More importantly, if a stable ABI does not exist upstream, a downstream distro can add it. But if a stable ABI exists upstream, a downstream distro can't get the traded-away benefits back.

Re: Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

#105

Post by the_why_of_y »

binarycrusader wrote: post #101
JoshTriplett wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then why are you still arguing it? Why are your anecdotes somehow superior to mine (if you want to call an entire mainstream market "anecdotal" evidence)? I'm giving the stated reasons for why Linux intentionally has no stable in-kernel ABI, and what some of the downsides of having one are. That's not an anecdote, that's a description of the stated design philosophy (see also https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentatio…

So yeah, it's possible to build a kernel that provides interfaces that drivers can rely on across many versions. Not without a cost, though. Software engineering is all about tradeoffs and making the right ones, I feel the Linux kernel community has made the wrong one by forcing those costs onto users instead of helping absorb some of that themselves. I never said it was free or that there wasn't a cost; I just said…

There are significant benefits that Linux has derived from its lack of a stable driver ABI.

For one example, adopting the AMD64 architecture proceeded significantly faster on Linux systems because nobody had to wait for binary drivers to become available, thus enabling end users to use their shiny new hardware to the fullest extent.

For another, do you believe that the effort to add real-time capabilities to Linux would have any chance at all at succeeding while being constrained by stable internal ABIs?

Basically only GPU drivers are sufficiently complex that the vendors are actually concerned about protecting their IP investment there and release only binary drivers; though AMD has even figured out recently that they can open source the kernel part of their GPU driver since all the interesting stuff is happening in user-space.

Are driver ABIs of other kernels actually stable across major versions, in all cases? Another comment of yours says this is not the case.

One major difference here is that there's a new release of Linux with substantial new features every 3 months, whereas new releases of NT come out every 3-6 years, and the gap is even larger for Solaris.

Another major difference is that the upstream Linux kernel doesn't have paying customers; products like RHEL and SLES do, and maybe that is the level at which things like driver ABI guarantees should be provided, if there is actual demand for it.

Re: Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

#106

Post by binarycrusader »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #104
binarycrusader wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of silly to imply that only RedHat users care or that only RedHat users should benefit. All users need and benefit from stability.

Only people running long-term-stable distributions care, and those distributions provide the level of ABI stability their users want. I'm simply saying that it makes more sense for downstream distributions to handle rather than the upstream Linux kernel. On the flip side, users running up-to-the-minute distributions don't necessarily care, and in fact care more about some of the properties that a stable upstream kern…

So only some distributions get a stable ABI but not others, leaving users of distributions with less support with a less usable system.

I sincerely question the supposed benefits of this tradeoff.

I have yet to see any articulated beyond hypothetical improvements in ease of implementation and zero benefit to the average user.

Re: Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

#107

Post by JoshTriplett »

binarycrusader wrote: post #106
JoshTriplett wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only people running long-term-stable distributions care, and those distributions provide the level of ABI stability their users want. I'm simply saying that it makes more sense for downstream distributions to handle rather than the upstream Linux kernel. On the flip side, users running up-to-the-minute distributions don't necessarily care, and in fact care more about some of the properties that a stable upstream kern…

So only some distributions get a stable ABI but not others, leaving users of distributions with less support with a less usable system. I sincerely question the supposed benefits of this tradeoff. I have yet to see any articulated beyond hypothetical improvements in ease of implementation and zero benefit to the average user.

Distributions whose users want an unchanging ABI get one. Distributions whose users don't care (e.g. those where either the users don't care about proprietary/out-of-tree drivers or the users use the packaged versions of those drivers in the distribution that get rebuilt when the kernel changes) don't bother.

Your arguments assume that everyone obviously wants an unchanging driver ABI. I'd love to see statistics for how many users actually build and run out-of-tree drivers themselves, but I'd bet on it being a small fraction, most of which is the nVidia or ATI proprietary graphics drivers. And again, personally, I don't consider it a feature to cater to proprietary driver vendors.

Beyond that, I've seen several reports regarding some of what binary driver vendors do that goes well beyond the exported driver interface (e.g. searching for core kernel data structures in memory and grubbing around in them), so it's not necessarily obvious that an unchanging driver ABI would actually stop binary drivers from breaking.

In any case, I'm not interested in arguing further about the development practices I've already mentioned and pointed to that depend on the ability to evolve an interface along with all of its users.

Re: Dell’s Linux PC sequel still just works, but adds 4K screen and rough edges

#108

Post by jgrowl »

vladev wrote: post #71
jgrowl wrote: post #16

I received mine a couple of weeks ago and have been pretty happy so far. Everything worked out of the box in ubuntu (camera, multimedia keys, trackpad, touchscreen, bluetooth, wifi, etc). My only complaints are: - The Glossy monitor is incredibly reflective. I wish there was a matte option. - I got the UHD screen option but there are still too many scaling issues in linux. Ubuntu looks fine with some minor tweaks but…

I have another HiDPI laptop with the same wireless card (Intel 7260). I don't think your router is the problem, I'm experiencing the same issues. When I'm not in the same room as the router signal used to drop 50% of the time. Few driver updates later things are much better, but it still freezes sometimes. Consider disabling the power saving options - it does help. It seems Intel totally botched it with this card as…

For posterity's sake... I kept having bad issues with the wifi. The problem seemed to get worse after the computer went to sleep. It would take websites a long time to load and drop out completely sometimes. I ended up getting a new router since I saw on a couple of forums that it helped. Specifically I got a Linksys WRT AC1900. The problems so far seem to have been resolved. Websites load quickly and no cut-outs so far.
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