Millions of people using Windows 10 are facing a tough choice. Microsoft plans to stop offering security updates for the system, leaving countless computers vulnerable. For many, upgrading to Windows 11 simply isn’t an option because their hardware isn’t new enough. This situation is pushing users to look for alternatives. But here’s a fresh twist […]
Ah yes, the year of the Linux desktop
(in all seriousness, this is looking really good, my main hope from all this is that hardware manufacturers step up their FOSS drivers game)
When Linux hits 10%, you will see hardware ship with Linux drivers day one.
we already do
Most consumer hardware on earth does already (Android phones). The problem is those drivers are usually proprietary bullshit that’s very difficult to integrate with anything but OEMs kernel fork & Android version. Unfortunately I don’t really foresee that changing in the near future, hopefully if Linux becomes more mainstream, Linux phones become too and then we get some progress.
And for laptops/desktops, I think the situation is pretty good already as well. Many mainstream OEMs have an option with Linux pre-installed now, and the drivers there are mostly FOSS. I’m hoping that the problematic part vendors e.g. NVidia and Broadcom step up and provide sources for their drivers - otherwise they will continue to be a buggy mess that most people hate.
Nvidia recently started NVK for Turing and newer and even more recently it was made conformant going back to Maxwell, but that still doesn’t give me a lot of hope for everything between Maxwell 1 (so basically just the GTX 750/750Ti for desktop Maxwell 1 cards) and Turing after driver version 580.
Also, Nouveau works for Maxwell 1 and earlier but ymmv with that stack, and it’s still not like Mesa RADV and AMDGPU for Radeon cards going back to GCN1.
Agreed - and make those drivers open source and unrestricted