I’ve been in a fortunate position this past year of having some extra money to throw at shiny new hardware and I’ve experienced a side of Linux I haven’t dealt with before…its poor support for shiny new hardware.
I grabbed a Ryzen 9000 CPU and an X870 motherboard…only to find that ethernet didn’t work on kernel 6.11. I had to use a usb-c to ethernet dongle for several weeks until 6.13 released.
Just today and what prompted this post, I splurged on a 4k 240hz HDR monitor. HDR is obviously in-progress and I did not expect it to work out of the box. Critically, what I did expect was for the 240hz part to work, but I couldn’t set it to anything beyond 120. Skip forward a couple hours, and I now know what EDID files are and how to use different ones. For more insight on my night, see this issue, this blog post, and this blog post. After all that, 240hz is smooth, goddamn.
For me, I’m not complaining. I love desktop Linux far more than shiny new hardware. I would return this monitor before considering not using Linux, and in the latter case it was a good chance to learn more about how Linux deals with display devices.
But I’m also one of many people here who wants to see desktop Linux become more popular, and if a regular person encountered either of those issues, they’re going straight back to Windows. While that monitor issue has been fixed upstream, it’s still broken in an up-to-date distro like Fedora and the monitor is over 6 months old at this point.
When it comes to stuff like HDR, that’s obviously progressing quickly and is likely to become a non-factor in the future. But new ethernet controllers and new monitors with invalid DisplayIDs are likely always going to be coming out. Unless you’re willing to tinker, your only option is to wait weeks or months before buying the new shiny thing if you want to use Linux.
That brings me to my question, is there a future where this isn’t the case? And what would be required to get there?
Do motherboard/monitor/IC/etc manufactures need to submit their own kernel patches well in advance of product releases, like what AMD and Intel do for their CPUs and GPUs? Are we just waiting for them to give a shit?
Is there any possibility of hardware support-related patches getting backported to older kernel versions sooner rather than waiting for new major releases?
This is kind of an ungooglable question, and I figured it might make for an interesting discussion topic if anyone has more insight or thoughts on this.
Do motherboard/monitor/IC/etc manufactures need to submit their own kernel patches well in advance of product releases, like what AMD and Intel do for their CPUs and GPUs? Are we just waiting for them to give a shit?
Yes. There isn’t really any other good solution.
What do you do with 240hz on linux? I understand people who game on windows and need 240hz, is it even noticeable beyond 100hz when not gaming? Please elaborate
I game on Linux lol
is it even noticeable beyond 100hz when not gaming
Actually yes, honestly it’s most noticeable when moving your mouse or dragging windows around. It’s insanely smooth.
Interesting. Maybe my next monitor should be 240hz. Now im currently running 100hz
I understand people who game on windows and need 240hz
I don’t. Isn’t this just a numbers game? Above 100hz should be unnoticable even for sensitive people.
Honestly if you want the best chance of brand new hardware working, a rolling release distro running the newest release kernel as soon as possible is pretty much your best bet.
What you’re asking is very difficult due to resources, creating new bugs etc. The reality is, go with true and trusted hardware. Linux can not possibly support every new shiny thing. That’s Windows’ job, because that’s where the drivers are made for. And since it’s difficult to install Linux drivers manually for most users, manufacturers don’t bother with Linux at all. Especially, since Linus doesn’t care about compatibility with older kernels as much as Windows does. Either support is in the kernel, or you’ll experience problems.
Personally, all my laptops and PCs are more than 4 years old, for that reason. I often buy refurbished too. I write this in a refurbished Macbook Air from 2015, where I nuked MacOSX to run Linux Mint (with a binary broadcom wifi binary which is thankfully well supported by ubuntu). On my main PC, the only new thing I bought was an Intel gfx A- card, a 2 years old card, but I knew it had support before I bought it.
And even then, if it’s some weird thing, e.g. some over-complicated sound capture device, gaming mouse with a thousand buttons, etc etc (in other words, non-standard hardware), don’t expect great support for it, even if the years are passed. Stay with vanilla hardware to be compatible. If you had bought a 60 Hz 4k monitor, you wouldn’t have had problems and you would have saved money. Personally, the only feature I look in monitors these days (apart from good color and enough ports), is that they are 32" instead of the usual 27", so that I don’t have to use scaling (which creates yet another problem with Linux). I use 4k in its 100% resolution, fitting lots of windows in it, and not destroying my eyes because they’re well visible.
the only feature I look in monitors these days
Not being smart.
Not be an Arch Linux shill, I don’t use it (albeit a distro that is based on it), but try Arch or some other rolling release distro. There is a reason why Valve switched steamOS to Arch from Debian. Also, quit buying new shiny stuff, you a**hole? We get jealous over here 😂
is there a future where this isn’t the case? And what would be required to get there?
Hardware manufacturers of companies in a position of power who leverage it. Like Valve.
Are we just waiting for them to give a shit?
Speak with your money. They won’t care though, the linux market is minimal.
Speak with your money.
This is tough to do when there’s often not a functional alternative. Buying old motherboard stock and a non-HDR monitor isn’t going to teach manufactures people want Linux support, they’ll just think you are saving money / don’t care about new features.
Without some sort of clear ‘Linux Certified’ system they can compare sales against, no hardware manufacturer is going to be able to recognize the 0.1% sales increase stemming from the time random internet volunteers fixed the open source implementation of their display drivers.
The best path forward is that developers make their linux drivers before they release their hardware to the market. You know, like what they do for windows.
There’s no silver bullet here. You have to wait for someone to reverse engineer the drivers if the developers of the hardware don’t care enough to supply even basic linux driver support. Either that or linux becomes so popular that it becomes senseless to ignore it (let’s be real though, MacOS is popular enough for this to be true and yet there’s still new hardware made that ignores that platform too.)
Could the kernel makers create some sort of sandbox to run Windows drivers in - so we ride on Windows coat tails until true Linux drivers are available? Or is the Windows, um DPI (driver program interface) just too different to allow that?
Edit: Then we use the Windows drivers an make loud noises to the hardware mfg that we would really rather have a Linux driver and that they would sell many more of their $hardware if they make one.
Bring back the good old days of ndiswrapper.
I wasn’t around that early, was ndiswrapper, bad?
Believe me, it used to be so much worse than that.
Hardware vendors see the need to allocate their resources to support the majority of the users, so that means making drivers for all current flavors of Windows and Mac. Linux has a residual market margin, so no incentive there.
It usually is up to some talented person or persons somewhere out there to come up with support for dinner shiny new hardware, usually months or years after the shininess went away.
The path is clear: buy from vendors who support Linux, make yourself heard if they don’t, or put up the work to make it work if you have the capability.
