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.
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.
Of course, the kernel drivers are now commonly signed. 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.
In Linux, you have a kernel driver and a myriad of vendor’s pci ids mixed together and the vendors just have to deal with it. As a side effect, a USB to serial dongle is about 99% likely to work in Linux, and in my experience 90% unlikely to work in Windows (can’t find the driver for it, or in one very prominent case Microsoft bans drivers of counterfeit chips that function fine, but violate IP rights). Punishing the counterfeiters may have been understandable, but ultimately the unwitting customers paid rather than the counterfeiters (they still sold their devices, but the users that were oblivious suffered).
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.
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
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. ☹️
Stop giving so many fucks about what other people think about your fashion. You do you, fam.
Unfortunately, it would likely be detrimental to my ongoing work situation.
Though saying that, the BBC had a guy who would turn up to work dressed as a wizard (think harry potter style). He was the reason Teletext continued for so long. He was the last one left on the team. They retired Teletext the day after he retired himself.
I’m still not sure I have the force of personality to not just look like an idiot try hard however. 🤷♂️
Maybe a rainbow unicorn cloak?
Tempting… Unfortunately, I don’t think I could pull it off. You need a certain… force of personality to pull off something like that. I’m just not outgoing (or skilled!) enough to pull off a full Thom Merrilin look.
Went camping at a festival my band was playing at. I had a woolen cloak as part of my costume. Everyone was shivering. I was loving life.
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
yes, I remember the Cape Revolution. I actually did buy a cloak! it took me like a year to wear it though. finding more to purchase is not easy
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.
That’s the great thing about open source though. Sure, you might drop off the face of the earth tomorrow. But if you do, the code is there, and maybe someone who was using it clones the repo and carries on that work.
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.)
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.
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
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
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
A god among men
Shoutout to whoever maintained my wifi drivers before i switched to ethernet (i forgot who they are lol)
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.
