OK Lenovo, we need to talk! | Haiku Project

Good news, it is still around: ArcaOS 5.0 from Arca Noae is the new release of OS/2 for the 21st century

3 Likes

Do you really expect that hardware manufacturers will provide docs indicating that they used adhesive tape to fix things up? :grin:

I don’t know if situation on drivers has changed but, it was even worse at the time of win95. If you consider that hardware manufacturers had to pay to have drivers (that they wrote?) certified and to print the logo on their boxes; you could say that manufacturers were paying to provide them.

ATI were already making good hardware and perhaps I’m completely wrong but, I suspect that, at this time, they were paying another company to develop initial drivers that they were patching themselves after to provide updates. This would explain why these were of such lame quality.

Debian used to be very careful to indeed say “Debian GNU/Linux”, especially at the time when they were more actively working on Debian GNU/kfreebsd and Debian GNU/Hurd. But the new version of their website picked a different solution: they just removed all mentions of both GNU and Linux. Now it’s just Debian.

I think that is a nice way to solve the problem, and indeed the same thing we did for Haiku (it’s just Haiku and not “Haiku GNU/somekernel”).

Yes, but for the last 20 years it drifted apart from it, so calling it newos today wouldn’t be really accurate. A lot of the code was rewritten or largely replaced, independently in both projects.

4 Likes

Yes, having support for the Framework laptop is a great idea, but it will be Haiku developers who will need to work on porting drivers etc. over so the laptop works without a hitch (remember that there are also the modular expansion cards that need to be supported too), and I am not too sure if there are any developers who wish to do this.

Whilst a valid point, I don’t see it in zero sum terms where there is a fixed amount of talent to go around. Rather there may be the opportunity to draw in new contributions from those who have a Framework and want to make Haiku support a particular feature or work with their expansion cards. Assuming of course their hardware is adequately documented as per the essay from @mmu_man. Perhaps the “expansion card” modularity of the Framework would benefit driver creation: there will only be a finite number of modules released over time, few enough perhaps that driver creation is able to keep pace.

Incidentally whilst poking around the Framework Discourse just now, I found a thread entitled “The myth of the Repairable Thinkpad”.

1 Like

Well, yes, but there were also other kernels as well even back then. The ones from BSDs (and remember BSD had to defend themselves from people wanting to force them to close their source code, they were just more discreet about proselytism), MINIX that Linus Torvalds new very well about since it was his teacher’s… I’m not saying the success is only due to the GNU stuff, just that it was there, it’s these tools many people used and should be accounted for. It wasn’t just a few shell tools. That you can’t find a something with that name doesn’t mean it does not exists, just that nobody accounts for it. Again, that mention was not about the name but about the philosophy of the projects involved.

Yes, they should be forced by law to document their thing, and be ashamed of gluing things in for no valid reason. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah I guess I zapped this racket episode from my memory, still maybe this practice has stopped mostly, but we’re far from the openness that was the norm in the 80s.

If you read my previous blog entry about it (some people have a hard time seeing links on the dark theme), you’ll see I talked about Guillemot which also subcontracted writing drivers… Again it’s not a reason, they are the ones selling the product, they should be held accountable for it.

AFAIK these are just USB-C / Thunderbolt dongles in a custom form-factor. So it would mostly be about properly supporting all the various busses that can be channeled into these by the various bridges, which we’ll need anyway for other hardware.

Oh, let me read that right now :slight_smile:

I don’t have an account on lobst.er and I wouldn’t want to comment on most I see there, but this I want because I probably missed the most important point in this already long essay:

Unlike Linus Torvalds who raises fingers at nvidia, I did contain myself writing this. Heck, I lived 10 years using an OS where no single vendor cared about, I did feel all that, it’s not a philosophy course. And I wanted people to feel that too.

That’s the very thing people miss about the whole issue: The problem is choice. I do not want to choose only between 3 vendors which do things as should be, I want to choose between all the models, and have all other vendors do things right. Yes I want to support Framework, Pinebook and others who lead the way, but these should not be left alone for people like me to have a bone to play with. They should be an example of what ought to be the norm. Buying from them without even trying to get other vendors to change their behaviour will not fix the problem, just make it look like everything is ok, that everyone found what he wanted, that no problem exist, when that isn’t the case because we had to fall back on those devices due to lack of proper choice.

2 Likes

To make it even more clear what I feel when a company ignored you and the project you care about for more than a decade and even put a spoke in your wheel, and then when it finally succeeds that company suddenly pops in to be on the first rank on the photo in the media…

Forget it’s about Linux. Now replace “company” with “politician” in the description above. Wouldn’t you feel insulted?

I dont want to comment on the gnu/linux topic, everybody knows well how much disgusted by linux and other ‘60s survivor wannabe mainframes.

But!
I would extend what @mmu_man wrote: the OEMs should publish not just the documentation for their hw, but it should be mandatory for them to publish an lspci/lsusb report for ALL their different models/versions. I want to know what exactly i pay for. I want to know the exact hda chip model, i want to know if the keyboard connected via PS2 or USB or via some crap. I want to know exactly the lan chip model. Why are those infos not published in default?

3 Likes

Good idea and more realistic then publishing all documentation. It can be promoted in EU. It can also help to reuse components of broken hardware and reduce garbage and environment pressure.

2 Likes

Well, both. I know in France at least some law allow you to try the product beforehand, so while it’s not easy with online shops, if you ask to try booting on a USB key to see what is supported you might find a nice enough shop that will let you try.

When I’ve needed them I’ve always been able to find schematics and even boardviews for thinkpads, I don’t know if this is because they are leaked or actually released.

Thinkpads are not recognisable compared to older models now. But at the end of the day if I need a new laptop I’m going to probably still buy a thinkpad because I cant live without a trackpoint, as much as I’d like a fully open machine. I notice that the framework laptop is a macbook look-a-like that also has no trackpoint… no dice for me.

The powerpc notebook project is another interesting related project GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC notebook - An Open Hardware project for everyone, a PowerPC Notebook for you. Join now!

1 Like

Because „HD Audio“, or „Bose Dolby Ultramegabrutal HiDef stereo 1 inch speakers“ and „UltraRGB Touchpad“ or „SD Card reader: yes“ is not enough. Do you buy a car like „Doors : yes*“?
* : in selected models

4 Likes

Isn’t ArcaOS a commercial product? I remember it being something crazy like $400

You can get it for as low as $129 (US).

That’s still a good amount of money for something that’s just essentially OS/2

That’s my point: I should not have to choose between having a trackpoint and having schematics, because schematics ought to be public.
And no, AFAIK they all had to be leaked in some way, because they think it’s their so precious “property”.

Yeah I know some people behind the PPC notebook, nice project too :slight_smile:

Corporations have money and power so they do that they want. You haven’t.

End of story.