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Linux 5.19

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Re: Linux 5.19

#171

Post by nobleach »

necovek wrote: post #92
vbernat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take a regular Lenovo laptop, everything likely works out of the box with an upstream kernel. This quite not the case yet with Asahi Linux which does not support power management, no USB, no sound. There was a time where Apple laptops came with very good Linux support. It was the time were every bit of hardware support was present in Darwin (a 12" iBook G3 was working flawlessly with Linux for example). I thin…

While I am a devoted fan of Thinkpad laptops (they are better than Apple MacBooks because of — at least as an option — non-glare screens, keyboards and soft-touch non-wrist-cutting palmrest: two/three most important factors for a portable machine imho), that's only partially true, and rarely with a new generation of hardware. Eg. I remember getting Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen early on in the cycle (I've also got 5th a…

The whole S3 sleep fiasco is the stuff of nightmares. I have a gen 6 X1 Carbon too and I've gotten it sleeping very well. I also have a Dell XPS 15 that I love but... it's been 2 years since it was brand new and it's still stuck on S2 "idle". As I understand it, Microsoft wants it this way so they can maintain network connectivity. My major gripe with the Lenovo is the 16 gigs of RAM soldered on the board. It's so nice to be able to pop open my Dell and put up to 64 gigs in there, while replacing the SSD in one of the two M2 slots.

Then again, I'm typing this on a 2019 Macbook Pro (Intel) that has nary a single replaceable part.

Re: Linux 5.19

#172

Post by nobleach »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #85
vbernat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take a regular Lenovo laptop, everything likely works out of the box with an upstream kernel. This quite not the case yet with Asahi Linux which does not support power management, no USB, no sound. There was a time where Apple laptops came with very good Linux support. It was the time were every bit of hardware support was present in Darwin (a 12" iBook G3 was working flawlessly with Linux for example). I thin…

> regular Lenovo laptop This is true for what we nerds call a "lenovo laptop" (so mostly T series). Install, everything works. Lenovo also sells a bunch of cheapish plasticky laptops that look like some random noname chinese OEM manufactured and lenovo just put a sticker on... well, linux support there is a bit hit and miss.

If it says "YOGA" or you can open it more than 180 degrees.....

Re: Linux 5.19

#173

Post by sbuk »

capableweb wrote: post #156
rowanG077 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly? Apple added a feature useless for themselves but something Asahi Linux benefited from greatly. Can't really make it more clear then this. Or do you expect Tim Cook to announce Asahi Linux in the next keynote?

Maybe the "allegedly" is misplaced, I hope my overall point is clear anyway. Apple haven't "officially" helped Asahi, the change could have be made by a single contributor to the kernel for example, or more of a "why not" change without regarding Asahi specifically. We (unless you work at Apple) don't really know at this point.

Ask marcan_42 for how much support Apple have provided. When it has come up, they have been pretty open about it...

Re: Linux 5.19

#174

Post by nicce »

coldpie wrote: post #159
School-Cotton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it irritating when people quote semver like it’s some kind of law. It’s a random protocol someone came up with that some other people decided to follow. It’s nowhere near a de facto standard for version numbers: plenty of software has non-semver version numbers (in fact, this applies to all software I have worked on so far in my career!)

I think it's pretty clear semver doesn't really have a place in modern software. Except for Microsoft, no one cares about backwards compatibility, which semver is all about. All software is continually developed, every release contains both new features and bug fixes, which violates semver. The vast majority of software has a meaningless "1." or "0." tacked to the front to try to satisfy semver, until the project get…

SemVer has significant benefit for package manager world. Many argue that why don’t you just read a changelog, but that is not the point. Package manager should know whether it can update some dependency to later version safely, without some guy always manually hardcoding the suitable version. It is everywhere. In Arch Linux, Debian, Pip and Cargo. They all rely on versions which itself should describe the impact of the change. If there is no standard, then it is always risky to update. On Debian it means manually testing every package. In Arch you accept the risk. If everyone would follow version schema, then you could trust the number in most of the cases.

My original message was a bit joke which some missed, but SemVer has a place and need.

> All software is continually developed, every release contains both new features and bug fixes, which violates semver.

Combination of them is not violation. Overall impact of the change should be described with the correct increment. It does not matter how do you categorise the content of the change.

Re: Linux 5.19

#175

Post by nicce »

bzxcvbn wrote: post #138
nicce wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is not the law, it is the only reasonable attempt to solve dependency issues. If the software gets an major release when author feels like it, then version itself tells nothing about the changes. Then dependant software can never estimate the impact of update. I agree that Linux Kernel is a bit different, since it sits on top of everyrhing, but still.

> Then dependant software can never estimate the impact of update. They can read the changelog. And if they can't be bothered to read the changelog, then why even update?

> They can read the changelog. And if they can't be bothered to read the changelog, then why even update?

Package managers cannot read the changelog. That is why we have version numbers.

Re: Linux 5.19

#176

Post by DJeuxg »

nobleach wrote: post #171
necovek wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am a devoted fan of Thinkpad laptops (they are better than Apple MacBooks because of — at least as an option — non-glare screens, keyboards and soft-touch non-wrist-cutting palmrest: two/three most important factors for a portable machine imho), that's only partially true, and rarely with a new generation of hardware. Eg. I remember getting Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen early on in the cycle (I've also got 5th a…

The whole S3 sleep fiasco is the stuff of nightmares. I have a gen 6 X1 Carbon too and I've gotten it sleeping very well. I also have a Dell XPS 15 that I love but... it's been 2 years since it was brand new and it's still stuck on S2 "idle". As I understand it, Microsoft wants it this way so they can maintain network connectivity. My major gripe with the Lenovo is the 16 gigs of RAM soldered on the board. It's so ni…

The windows created S3 sleep debacle was annoying. But it's long since solved. Lenovo ships both sleep options in bios now and Linux distro a support both sleep styles because they have different drain profiles.

Re: Linux 5.19

#177

Post by DJeuxg »

xtracto wrote: post #146
whalesalad wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish other laptop hardware was on par with Apple. One can’t deny their attention to detail, fit and finish.

I just bought a Thinkpad because my home's other Windows machine died. The laptop is ok in general , and I love the mate screen, but the black plastic body is just horrible. It feels as if it's going to break just by opening the screen. Does apple have some kind of patent for the aluminium body?

Aluminium is heavy, cold, dents and expensive.

Plastic is better in most ways for a laptop shell.

Re: Linux 5.19

#178

Post by nicce »

bombcar wrote: post #152
bzxcvbn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then dependant software can never estimate the impact of update. They can read the changelog. And if they can't be bothered to read the changelog, then why even update?

Semver is a bandaid on a gaping chest wound, that can best be summed up as "major version number changes may break everything, or they may not, but minor version numbers might not break everything, but they may." It's more of a philosophy than a law, and it can't really be relied on that much; as often the developers themselves can't accurately predict what is a major breaking change and what isn't. The Linux kernel…

Actually testing is the bandaid . You always have the dilemma when updating dependencies of the software - do they break something? Of course you could manually check every time every software from changelog, if this has some impact. Problem is, that usually for example in Linux one dependency might have hundreds of dependents. Are you going to check all of them manually? If standard versioning would automatically show this information, a lot of time and testing would be saved.

> often the developers themselves can't accurately predict what is a major breaking change and what isn't.

There is a difference with a breaking change and a bug. All breaking changes are predictable. If you modify API, it possible breaks. If you don’t modify API but it breaks, it is just a bug. If you add feature, and don’ t modify API, but something breaks, it is a bug. You are not expected to apply SemVer for bugs because you can’t predict them.

Re: Linux 5.19

#179

Post by pxc »

nicoburns wrote: post #21

Somewhat surprisingly, Linux support for Apple Silicon MacBooks seems to be shaping up to be better than that for pretty much any other laptop. The Asahi team don’t have support for everything yet (notably no GPU) but what they do have support for seems to be high quality, well integrated with Linux’s conventions, and upstreamed into the mainline kernel! How much other hardware can claim that? The Asahi developers ha…

> Somewhat surprisingly, Linux support for Apple Silicon MacBooks seems to be shaping up to be better than that for pretty much any other laptop

People are writing about Thinkpads below, but the real comparison should be to laptops that are sold with Linux on them, like the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, the HP Dev One, or the many laptops sold by System76 which even feature 'instant on' since they run open-source UEFI implementations.

The Apple Silicon laptops have gained Linux support faster than most Apple hardware in recent memory, including the Intel MacBooks from 2016 on. But Linux support has long been especially late on Apple machines because the hardware is custom and quirky and volunteer interest in reverse-engineering it has been relatively low.

And let's be real— a computer without GPU acceleration is virtually unusable. You need that these days for everything from actually getting to use basic features of your window manager to videe playback.

That said, Intel and Microsoft have hampered Linux support recently with crap like S0ix and Pluton, so if the GPU support ever becomes stable enough to support most Linux window managers, the Apple Silicon laptops might seem attractive by comparison to laptops that aren't built for Linux. I would consider one at that point. But it's hard to be optimistic when Apple has no material reason not to pull the rug out from under Asahi at any time (not necessarily out of malice).

Re: Linux 5.19

#180

Post by q3k »

ryukafalz wrote: post #95
smallpipe wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You widely underestimate how much work goes into documenting hardware.

They need to have that sort of documentation internally anyway for their macOS devs to work on it, right?

Yeah, in the form of “here’s some excel spreadsheets from the hardware team and half-generated C sources from the validation team, just ask them for more info”.
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