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linuxmemes @lemmy.world

0x4E4F @lemmy.dbzer0.com

1y ago

Some heroes don't wear capes

94 comments

Shoutout to screenshot tools

Way back in the olde tymes, I was having trouble with the NIC driver in my Linux install. I posted a question about it on USENET, and got a reply from the guy who wrote the drivers. He asked for some info about the card, then updated the driver to support it.
- Damn... now that's a wholesome moment 🥹.
  
  There used to be a lot of cards based on same or similar chips, but with small differences. That made little changes to drivers common. It's a bit like LCD modules or audio chipset quirks. One driver with tons of little differences depending on what each manufacturer decided to do differently.
- Back in the day I was running GLTron on an Athlon 1800+ w/Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (I think?) and I was running dual monitors. GLTron didn't like using both screens since it presented as a peculiar resolution. So I emailed the GLTron dude and he quickly emailed me a patch that let me run the game across both monitors (bezels not an issue because I was doing multiplayer split screen).
  What a great game.

For all we know, he does wear a cape.
- I wish capes were socially acceptable to wear again
  
  And get stuck in turbines and shit?
  
  I'd settle for a cloak. A nice leather, or heavy woollen cloak would be amazing for being outside on cold evenings.
  Unfortunately, they are still seen as dark and 'edgy'. Moreso even than a trenchcoat. ☹️
  
  just wear them already
  
  Be the change you want to see.
  
  I remember early 2020, there was a small push to bring capes back, before something else took over every discussion. Something about blue jays or crows or something

Shoutout to this guy for maintaining my mainboards temperature sensors and pwn fan headers: https://github.com/Fred78290/nct6687d
Without this and https://github.com/codifryed/coolercontrol my PC was either a jet engine from the sounds or a nuclear reactor from heat constipation.
- Fred78290 is the man. Much better than Fred78920
  
  Of course he's better, he's a whole 630 Freds above the other one.
- Some dude wrote a driver for the temp sensors on my motherboard... Then quit maintining it because people were being shitty
  https://github.com/a1wong/it87
  DRIVER REMOVAL NOTICE ===================== I have been unable to meet support demands for this driver, resulting in unpleasant experience and frustration for everyone involved. Consequently, the driver will be removed from github, effective August 1, 2018. Interested parties are encouraged to clone the driver before that time and to start maintaining it on their own.
  
  Wow, thats just plain stupid. I hope someone forked it.
  
  This guy still maintains it87: https://github.com/frankcrawford/it87
  I've was using his for years on my old motherboard, since the mainline it87 didn't play nicely.

A lot of Linux drivers are like this - just one or two people maintaining them. They usually eventually mainline the driver rather than having a separate Git repo though.
- It's mind boggling just thinking that things like this depend on the effort of one or two guys... while on the other hand, it's not so uncommon that a team of engineers and developers fails to deliver a working (mostly) bugfree product.
  I think management is who is responsible for the shitty decisions, as always... and, in general, just holding the team back.
  
  Obligatory
  
  The thing with drivers is that the hardware they're written for doesn't really change. A particular network card is always going to behave the same way. Once the driver works well, it's pretty much complete, and the only changes that are needed are bug fixes, updates to handle new firmware, or adjustments if the kernel changes some implementation detail of how drivers are used. There could be months or years between updates to the driver.
  Some manufacturers have great first-party Linux support. Intel is a good example - they contribute a lot of code to the kernel, and their drivers are maintained by employees.

There's such a lot of those heroes! I have some weird USB WiFi thing and there's someone maintaining a driver for it!
- Yo I'm looking for something like that right now for Linux, what's the name of it??
  
  This is a list of USB WiFi cards endorsed by FSF
  
  Wifi dongle?

Had some problems while trying to compile and install a WiFi driver for the first time. Managed to find the email of the driver's creator and sent them a message. They responded a few hours later with incredibly helpful guidance, walking me through the process and enabling me to get it working, all while gaining valuable insights....
- This is the way

Its these kind of people that give me hope
- To be honest, yes. In general, not just tech or Linux related stuff. You look at humanity and what it has come down to, and then you notice these people... and hope fills your heart again.
  
  The vast majority of my open source projects, I'm the only user. I release it open source because back in the day, GitHub only allowed open source projects if you want to use it.
  But another reason is the hope that someone will find it helpful. If not the project itself but maybe the code.
  I have one project that has a significant following and honestly it's sometimes very scary because I might not want to keep it updated because of my own interests changing.
- The astounding thing is history is full of these types of people when you peel back the “couple great men” narrative of history and actually look at how good things happened, it is kind of bewildering.

This is the link to the GitHub repository h̶t̶t̶p̶s̶:̶/̶/̶g̶i̶t̶h̶u̶b̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/̶m̶o̶r̶r̶o̶w̶n̶r̶/̶8̶8̶1̶2̶a̶u̶-̶2̶0̶2̶1̶0̶6̶2̶9̶ Give them a star.
(I also looked for a donation link, but couldn't find one.)
Edit: https://github.com/morrownr

And shoutout for this one too: https://github.com/tomaspinho/rtl8821ce
Otherwise I wouldn't have a functional WiFi card either.
- Send your thanks directly to the maintainer (preferably email/mastadon/twitter/etc, not a ticket)! Open source maintainers don't get a lot of positive direct feedback.
  
  And if you have some coins to spare, don’t hesitate to donate 😊 it’s hard spending time for no money in this world right now.
- I use this too on my laptop.

One of the best parts about Linux. So much is open source which means your 20 year old hardware still likely has support.
- Unfortunately, the RTL8812AU isn't 20 year old hardware (then it might get a pass) - it's current gen stuff

Shoutout to https://github.com/clnhub/rtl8192eu-linux for monitor mode and packet injection <3
- Wait i think that was the wifi driver i used
- Well, I'll give him a star :-)

Does he live in Nebraska?

Shoutout to whoever maintained my wifi drivers before i switched to ethernet (i forgot who they are lol)

Oh hey I have the same wifi card series (little usb dongle thingy). I use the aircrack drivers when i use it. https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au

Why aren't these drivers installed by default yet
- They're still waiting to be mainstreamed into the kernel. The process of integrating drivers into the kernel is complicated. Coding practices of the coder that wrote the driver play a large part in that. Buggy or badly written code will not get accepted. Not all of these drivers have the code quality that is required in order to be merged with the kernel.

94 comments