Linux

48008 readers

825 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

596

Fed-up Torvalds suggests disabling AMD’s 'stupid' performance-killing fTPM RNG (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

165 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Linux still has too many issues, for example...

Fedora doesn't provide binary drivers even if they exist, you need to get a pluggable wifi usb tool that is supported and install the repositories and configure binary drivers to get wifi working on a huge amount of laptops.
Ubuntu does provide binary drivers but the configuration tool can just crash by itself a lot of the time and just fail to load the driver.
Ubuntu's desktop sometimes just crashes.
Fedora uses some strange memory compression driver to handle its paging file and this can sometimes just crash the OS entirely by itself.

These are major issues that shouldn't be issues, they should either have been fixed as a priority for the crashes or have some kind of workaround that doesn't require owning specific USBs that regular people just won't have. There's no reason for the memory compression thing either, it probably doesn't do that much for performance overall but random hard-locks are a huge negative. Linux is its own worst enemy on the desktop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sometimes the issues with WiFi chipsets is not the distro but the manufacturer. Debian for instance now includes non-free firmware on its installation ISO image, but some manufacturers do not allow the distribution (e.g. Broadcom) of firmware, so Debian can't legally include them. And unfortunately the manufacturers don't make it easy to "just download the firmware" so you can put it on the USB stick so the installer can see them. (Literally the only issue with putting Debian on my old 2013 Macbook Pro was the Broadcom firmware - but fortunately, having a Debian desktop I could install the firmware downloader there to get the two files the installer needed).

This is not a fault of the Linux distro, but a fault of the hardware manufacturer. Unfortuantely, like the smell of piss in a subway, we all have to deal with Broadcom.