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Software Updates

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Re: Software Updates

#11

Post by hs86 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #10
hs86 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if this is good or bad. On the one hand it gives hardware vendors an incentive to contribute their drivers directly into their kernel but on the other hand most Android phones are now restricted to one old kernel version due to the lack of ongoing support from SoC vendors. I assume that the majority of Linux kernels are running on Android phones and due to this lack of stable ABI for drivers these kerne…

> I assume that the majority of Linux kernels are running on Android phones and due to this lack of stable ABI for drivers these kernels are all outdated or even unmaintained. No, it's because the hardware manufacturers won't upstream their drivers. All they have to do is send the code licensed under GPLv2 and it will be updated and maintained. Stable ABI for drivers will result in the Windows situation: hardware ven…

What if they are ok with this? What if the device vendors use this lack of stable ABI to put an expiration date on their products?

Android phones don't get more than 3 years of support and my fear/tinfoil theory is that the vendors abuse the good intention of the kernel devs to deprecate old devices faster.

Re: Software Updates

#12

Post by mehrdadn »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #10
hs86 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if this is good or bad. On the one hand it gives hardware vendors an incentive to contribute their drivers directly into their kernel but on the other hand most Android phones are now restricted to one old kernel version due to the lack of ongoing support from SoC vendors. I assume that the majority of Linux kernels are running on Android phones and due to this lack of stable ABI for drivers these kerne…

> I assume that the majority of Linux kernels are running on Android phones and due to this lack of stable ABI for drivers these kernels are all outdated or even unmaintained. No, it's because the hardware manufacturers won't upstream their drivers. All they have to do is send the code licensed under GPLv2 and it will be updated and maintained. Stable ABI for drivers will result in the Windows situation: hardware ven…

> Stable ABI for drivers will result in the Windows situation: hardware vendors will just release one driver for one Windows version and one processor architecture.

Uh, I dare say Windows hardware + driver compatibility is pretty damn good, so this doesn't really resonate with me... at all. Has not being able to install Windows XP on a modern machine left you bitter...? Or have I been living in a bubble?

Re: Software Updates

#13

Post by arghwhat »

sambeau wrote: post #9
Jyaif wrote: post #2

Ultimately, the problem is that we are not good at creating stable APIs. If we did have stable APIs, then once something (a feature, or even entire software) is written agains this stable API it would be available forever. This is IMO one of the greatest challenge the software engineering field needs to solve.

Even stable APIs may need security fixes. I'm not convinced a world where APIs continue forever and their exploits do too would be much better than what we have. And I say that as someone who has just accidentally lost an expensive, fully-working piece of audio hardware to an ill-advised software upgrade.

I'm fairly confident that the vast majority of functionality broken by updates have not in any way been related to security mitigations.

Re: Software Updates

#15

Post by matheusmoreira »

mehrdadn wrote: post #12
matheusmoreira wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume that the majority of Linux kernels are running on Android phones and due to this lack of stable ABI for drivers these kernels are all outdated or even unmaintained. No, it's because the hardware manufacturers won't upstream their drivers. All they have to do is send the code licensed under GPLv2 and it will be updated and maintained. Stable ABI for drivers will result in the Windows situation: hardware ven…

> Stable ABI for drivers will result in the Windows situation: hardware vendors will just release one driver for one Windows version and one processor architecture. Uh, I dare say Windows hardware + driver compatibility is pretty damn good, so this doesn't really resonate with me... at all. Has not being able to install Windows XP on a modern machine left you bitter...? Or have I been living in a bubble?

> Has not being able to install Windows XP on a modern machine left you bitter...?

Not at all.

I have been burned by drivers that only worked in 32 bit Windows XP though. They simply couldn't be used in newer versions of Windows. The manufacturer couldn't care less, they think I should just trash the unsupported hardware and buy the newest product instead.

Linux doesn't have this problem. Once a driver makes it into the kernel, it can be maintained, updated, fixed, refactored, improved, backported to older kernels, recompiled for new architectures. It's just so much better.

Re: Software Updates

#16

Post by latchkey »

I just tried to fastlane a new beta version of my flutter iOS app up to the app store today. It got rejected by Apple because I was using Xcode 11.2, which was released on Nov 1st.

Apparently, on Nov 5th Apple released 11.2.1, but still haven't put it in the App Store. I didn't know about it.

Ended up being a 7.3gb download and about 10 minutes to extract the .xip file on my 12 core 2.9ghz macbook pro.

The struggle is real.

Re: Software Updates

#17

Post by s9w »

Software getting worse, just out of my head:

- VS2019 removed at least two important features from VS2017 (export of profiler results and the concurrency profiler)

- Firefox "new" extension API still means you can't remove the top tab bar from tree style tabs (best FF extension) without hacks

- Current Dropbox versions are incredibly invasive. They popup when opening a word document. When pluggin in my Camera. And now started showing a glowing red "error" because I "only" have a Pro account and no business account (when using 0,4% of my storage). Also they still have no way of ignoring folders.

- Malwarebytes Anti-Malware just jumped the shark two (?) years ago with its redesign. It was so good back then

- Skype is being almost completely unusable. Still popular because of the name unfortunately

- Imgur is a joke and became what it was literally founded to avoid

- The new Reddit layout is borderline unusable. They will lose the rest of the core users when they disable the old. subdomain

- Teamviewer. How is it possible that such an program is not backwards compatible between versions? Everytime I want to use it it's a dance to quickly delete/find/install a version that the other side has

- I don't understand how the "modern" Windows start menu works they introduced in Win 8 I think. Luckily everyone I know uses classicshell

- Phones have gotten almost to the point of being unusable. The latency, audio quality, skipping and hearing your own voice made me avoid phone conversations for years now. Even landlines are all digital and horribly compressed. Humanity had that one nailed in the 60s.

Re: Software Updates

#18

Post by matheusmoreira »

hs86 wrote: post #11
matheusmoreira wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume that the majority of Linux kernels are running on Android phones and due to this lack of stable ABI for drivers these kernels are all outdated or even unmaintained. No, it's because the hardware manufacturers won't upstream their drivers. All they have to do is send the code licensed under GPLv2 and it will be updated and maintained. Stable ABI for drivers will result in the Windows situation: hardware ven…

What if they are ok with this? What if the device vendors use this lack of stable ABI to put an expiration date on their products? Android phones don't get more than 3 years of support and my fear/tinfoil theory is that the vendors abuse the good intention of the kernel devs to deprecate old devices faster.

Manufacturers already do this, stable ABI or not.

They can release drivers for a specific operating system and processor architecture. When those change and the driver breaks, they aren't going to spend time and money updating the driver for an old product they aren't even selling anymore. They'll just tell people to buy their new product instead.

Re: Software Updates

#19

Post by arghwhat »

mehrdadn wrote: post #12
matheusmoreira wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume that the majority of Linux kernels are running on Android phones and due to this lack of stable ABI for drivers these kernels are all outdated or even unmaintained. No, it's because the hardware manufacturers won't upstream their drivers. All they have to do is send the code licensed under GPLv2 and it will be updated and maintained. Stable ABI for drivers will result in the Windows situation: hardware ven…

> Stable ABI for drivers will result in the Windows situation: hardware vendors will just release one driver for one Windows version and one processor architecture. Uh, I dare say Windows hardware + driver compatibility is pretty damn good, so this doesn't really resonate with me... at all. Has not being able to install Windows XP on a modern machine left you bitter...? Or have I been living in a bubble?

Windows hardware + driver compatibility is a nightmare fueled by proprietary duct-taped one-off drivers supporting only one or two devices each.

One of the reasons for this is that you can get away with anything on Windows, because everything is proprietary. There are headsets targeting Windows users that require kernel-mode drivers to work. Which, of course, is super fragile and will break at some point, rendering your expensive headset useless.

Re: Software Updates

#20

Post by Crinus »

s9w wrote: post #17

Software getting worse, just out of my head: - VS2019 removed at least two important features from VS2017 (export of profiler results and the concurrency profiler) - Firefox "new" extension API still means you can't remove the top tab bar from tree style tabs (best FF extension) without hacks - Current Dropbox versions are incredibly invasive. They popup when opening a word document. When pluggin in my Camera. And no…

> I don't understand how the "modern" Windows start menu works they introduced in Win 8 I think.

The current start menu was introduced in Windows 10 though even the initial 10 version was a bit different. Windows 8 had a "start screen" where there were only tiles (that are now at the side) and took the entire screen.

Because the Windows 8 start screen and the initial Windows 10 start menu strongly deemphasized folders (submenus) everything was placed on the top level (in Windows 8 you'd see even subfolder icons on the top level). More recent versions of Windows 10 have the start menu show proper folders by default, but they use a tree-like "flow down" approach instead of an actual popup menu approach which makes navigating them harder.

These two combined makes the start menu a mess with tons of toplevel entries for applications that you are not going to use often or at all and a UI that makes it hard to create proper categories.

Nowadays we have more applications and programs than we ever had in the history of personal computing, yet the UIs for launchers are now being made as if we only have a handful of applications. This is true not only for Windows but also for launchers like those found in GNOME, elementaryOS, etc.

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