Comments

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

ROG is a Republic Of Gamers edition motherboard… it’s probably a lot more expensive than the lower end models (like my Z97-K board for example… and that wasn’t cheap as well, like 100€ back in the day).

I guess the definition of “cheap” varies from person to person. My definition of cheap is lower end (50, 60€ tops) motherboards. I don’t buy those either, but make no mistake, they’re a common household item in 3rd world countries (I can vouch for that).

I have no idea what the prices are for a Realtek NIC vs. other manufacturers. All I know is, they’re usually the default choice for cheaper models… which probably means they’re dirt cheap. Have no idea how this compares to Intel or other manufacturers (Marvel, Qualcomm, etc.).

In general, yes, those NICs are cheap. But, let’s take USB to Ethernet adapters. I don’t think Intel has a solution for those things… or if they do, it’s probably more expensive than the one Realtek offers. It’s $5 on AliExpress. They’re not great, but they get the job done (no wifi, no onboard etherent plug on a brand new laptop, and you need internet to get it up to date with drivers). I haven’t looked for anything else since this one does a great job, but I guess that, even if there is an Intel based solution out there, it’ll be at least tripple the price of the Realtek one.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago (edited 6 months ago) to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

Realtek is basically on every retail motherboard manufacturer. Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Biostar, ASRock, etc. If you’re talking about hi-end or server grade motherboards, yeah, but let’s face it, the chips are cheap so they’re practically in every household.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

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.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago (edited 6 months ago) to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

The real problem is catering to manufacturers demanding to have their own bespoke driver pack, often including some stupid branded management application, when it’s just the same as the other dozen manufacturers packaging of the same product. Then you end up with bloated “driver packs” and a system tray of a half dozen vendors screaming for you to pay attention to them and know that they are somehow contributing to your experience.

This is exactly why I use driverpacks in Windows (3rd party, like SDI). If the drivers are not in the pack, I download them from the manufacturer and if they’re packed with an app, I just extract the whole thing and point Windows (through manual driver update) to search for the drivers in that location. It will install only what it needs to work, nothing else.

they still sold their devices, but the users that were oblivious suffered

Or they did know, but the copy was a lot cheaper than the real thing. Hell, I’ve done it. If it does the same thing, why buy the more expensive thingie. I get IP rights and all that, but seriously, in the end, you just have to deal with these things. Unless you’re Intel, you should expect your device/chip to end up being copied. China doesn’t enforce western world IP laws, so it’s a “free for all” kind of a thing there. If you plan on doing this (making your own device/chip), your device/chip better be niche enough so it’s not viable to actually copy the design. Otherwise, copies will pop up left and right.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to lemmyshitpost in Me and my kid IRL

Have no idea, found it in the wild.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago (edited 6 months ago) to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

There could be months or years between updates to the driver.

Yes, but someone still has to implement that “a thing or two” in it every few years.

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.

Agreed. But, to be honest, most aren’t. Just take a look at Realtek. There’s bound to be at least one chip made by them on your board (in most cases, two, LAN and audio, two very crucial pieces of hardware).

0x4E4F, 1 year ago (edited 6 months ago) to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

Oh, OK, I think I get it, we have a place like that in jokes over here as well, except it’s made up 😂.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

Lol 🤣🤣🤣

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to lemmyshitpost in Me and my kid IRL

Lol 🤣… yeah, he likes it 🤣…he starts falling slow motion to the ground to evade the attack and pick up something bigger from the neverending imaginary aresenal 🤣.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

What’s the deal with Nebraska? Are people from there like really polite and helpful?

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to piracy in Is it possible to get a virtual credit card for a different country?

Android warns you every step of the way if you do stuff the manufacturer and Google don’t advise (basically, anything that doesn’t come from the PlayStore or messing with services and permissions). If you’re an average Joe, certainly you’re not gonna do those things. Manually installing apps not in the PlayStore requires you to first find those apps, which is not something your average Joe will do. Messing with permissons or services, again, regular users wouldn’t even know where to find those settings or what they mean, let alone know what bypassing those will do… and you get warned all the way through the process. Even if you accidentaly tap on something, if it’s an advanced setting, it will awarn you, and you have a countdown before you can tap Yes or tick the “I agree” box or whatever. Certainly a regular user will understand that this is not something to be messed with, so it will not choose to bypass those settings.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago (edited 6 months ago) to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

Yeah, I know, that’s why the kernel with the drivers is not more than 150MB. Otherwise, you’d have the Windows situation where driverpacks compressed with 7z (LZMA2, solid archive, 273 word dictionary size and 2GB decompression memory, which requires about 128GB of RAM to compress) take about 30GB.

You have to pack the driver from each manufacturer because of signatures, even though they might even be the same with other drivers in the pack… but, REV differs and oh well, the driver installer doesn’t recognize that driver as a valid one for that device.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago (edited 6 months ago) to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

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.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

Damn… now that’s a wholesome moment 🥹.

0x4E4F, 1 year ago to linuxmemes in Some heroes don't wear capes

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.