In short, after a Linux kernel update (6.5.8-200.fc.x86_64 on Fedora KDE), I can’t use the top button of my pen on my tablet. This is really affecting my digital painting workflow!
Right-clicking on the pen is an essential part of my workflow. Right-click on a layer in Krita to get the menu, right-click while using the Transform tool to get the transformation options, right-click on the canvas to get the pop-up palette! …And I’m not even talking about how difficult it is to handle files and the D.E. without right-clicking.
And if that makes you smile, imagine someone hardcoding the behaviour of your main device like the right-click on your mouse or touchpad (or anything else you have been using for more than 20 years) to something completely useless, and pushing it through kernel updates. And the icing on the cake, they left you with no user tool to change it back.
I now have that same feeling or rage mixed with hopelessness that you feel when dealing with pointless government bureaucracy.
Someone still wondering why Linux Desktop have trouble getting wider adoption ?
Crackrock hardware/driver decisions are hardly a linux-only problem. For a lot of touchpad drivers in Windows, whether to enable or disable touchpad input while typing is hard-coded — some drivers expose the option to users and some don’t.
The issue is partly that even competent, well-intentioned authors of device drivers don’t have an easy way to discover typical use cases for their hardware. That an artist and, say, a note-taker attach different workflows to a stylus — and would therefore want to assign different functions to stylus buttons — is only obvious _once you’ve thought of it_.
A perfect illustration of my point that Linux’s attitude of “just hand the driver source code over to us and we’ll maintain it forever” is total nonsense. You give them the code, they lack the hardware to test their updates, and the expertise needed to write the original driver; then they make small breakages like this all the time. Reports like this generally just get buried and ignored because you’re in such a small sunset of users with x hardware and y software.
Kochise – Yeah, because Microsoft never broke or bricked any system with updates ever……..
dark2 – Thats better than the Windows model where they just decide the hardware is obsolete and no one supports it.
Plus, in this case all the user has to do is backup one kernel version. It being Fedora, there should be 3 kernels available.
You and Brainworm seem to missing the main point. Existing driver functionality gets lost due to Linux updates, or outright breaks something all the time. A driver update taking away features on Windows is something that almost never happens, especially when compared to Linux. Complaining about not being able to update because of old drivers doesn’t make sense here and is just Windows bashing for fun because both use cases are unable to update their system in these examples.
dark2,
Sure it can happen on linux too, but TechGeek is right. I am being 100% truthful in saying that personally I’ve had a lot more hardware broken after windows upgrades than linux ones.
Never used a multifunction printer, eh? All of the ones I’ve owned from HP/epson lost features, every last one in my experience. The windows update drivers supported by MS may keep working, but only implementing bare roots functionality.
No it’s not windows bashing. It’s a fair apples to apples comparison. Neither have been perfect. Windows obviously has the advantage in terms of official day 1 hardware support. But FOSS clearly has a huge advantage in terms of people being able to do something about hardware after the manufacturer stops supporting it.
I have been vocal about my gripes about linux unstable ABI. This policy does more harm than good IMHO, but even with this in mind there is no denying that having the driver source code is a huge win in terms of allowing 3rd parties to provide long term support long after manufacturers have stopped caring.
You mean like the Windows driver model change that left modems, sound cards, scanners and printers as landfill material? Or the security fix that broke many bluetooth devices? Windows updates break stuff ALL the time.
Sure, things break in linux. However, I am using a bleeding edge distro and it was free. Whats Microsoft’s excuse?