linux-kernel - Re: WMI and Kernel:User interface

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Message-ID: <20170613163954.GH27850@fury>
Date:   Tue, 13 Jun 2017 09:39:54 -0700
From:   Darren Hart <dvhart@...radead.org>
To:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
Cc:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        Pali Rohár <pali.rohar@...il.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Mario Limonciello <mario_limonciello@...l.com>,
        Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@...ux.intel.com>,
        Rafael Wysocki <rjw@...ysocki.net>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        platform-driver-x86@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: WMI and Kernel:User interface

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 08:56:42AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 8:50 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
> <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 08:38:57AM -0700, Darren Hart wrote:
> >> On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 12:05:35AM -0700, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> >> > Hi Darren,
> >> >
> >> > first - can you please properly trim your replies and don't write
> >> > more than 7 characters per line?
> >>
> >> Sure... (although I think you've done all the necessary pruning for this
> >> response). 70 I presume you mean? I usually have tw set to 72...
> >> apparently I dropped that setting at some point. Will correct.
> >>
> >> >
> >> > On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 06:24:35PM -0700, Darren Hart wrote:
> >> > > This is a big topic for sure. Speed and scale of platform enabling is something
> >> > > I would like to see us support better. The barrier to entry to kernel
> >> > > changes is high, especially for trivial things, like adding IDs, GUIDs, etc.
> >> > > which would ideally, IMHO, be in the hands of the OEMs.
> >> >
> >> > It's not.  It's a trivial patch, and you cover all Linux users.  Very
> >> > much unlike say the windows world where you are stuck with installing
> >> > a vendor specific set of drivers forever.
> >> >
> >>
> >> The patch is trivial, but the process is time consuming. Two to Three
> >> months to see an ID added and released is big blocker for contemporary
> >> life cycles.
> >
> > Wait, what?  Please explain.
> >
> > Yes, it could take worse case 2-3 months to add a new device id, but
> > does it really?  I take new device ids up until 2 weeks before a -final
> > kernel is released.  And once they are in Linus's tree it's usually only
> > a single week before they end up in all stable kernel releases.
> >
> > But that's upstream, no device ships with upstream, they ship a distro
> > kernel.  Look at the pre-installs from SuSE and Canonical, to get a new
> > device id into their kernels takes what, a day or two?  And that is what
> > really matters as that is what goes out the door for their device.
> >
> > At least that is the process for when _I_ used to work on pre-installed
> > Linux on devices, maybe things have gotten a lot worse since I left that
> > business, but I would sure hope it wouldn't get magnitudes worse.
> >
> > So 2-3 months seems really long to me.
> >
> 
> I should add that one thing that's really, really nice about Linux is
> that, when you install it on a supported laptop, it works.  On
> Windows, you end up with a horrible pile of bloated, buggy,
> unsupported userspace crapware to make random buttons work.

This argument, also made by others, seems to assume that if it isn't in the
kernel it will be of poor quality. What I see a lot of in the platform
driver bug reports are "I am not a kernel developer, ...". I believe we
would see more participation in platform specific enabling, if more of
it could be developed in userspace. That doesn't preclude a well
architected, fully open source solution.

> While I'm all for improving the managability situation on Linux, let's
> please make sure we don't regress the ordinary laptop functionality
> story and make it as bad as it is on Windows.  We're currently in a
> surprising situation in which laptops frequently work *better* on
> Linux than Windows, and I think we should preserve that.
> 

I guess I haven't been running windows on enough laptops to make a good
comparison :-D

-- 
Darren Hart
VMware Open Source Technology Center