After working with linux drivers for far too long, I’ve developed some strong opinions on the so-called “APIs” they implement.
Linux: Of course you can use these syscalls designed in the 70s. Windows: Compatibility with what? No, you must use these newly-designed functions that exist only on windows. It’s for your own protection.
Tell me again how proprietary software gives a shit about compatibility.
“Backwards compatibility” is a totally different thing from “cross compatibility”. Of course proprietary software is going to be less cross-compatible.
whoosh
Sorry isn’t Linus the one that always says “never break user code”? Or are you complaining about how you actually use those APIs?
Plus I’ve seen many, many shitty closed source APIs. You are conflating correlation and causation.
Good points, but there’s undeniably some poor choices here and there. Like trying to recompile a bunch of kernel modules every time the kernel version changes makes me wish they had a better system in place… or even worse , if you have a blob driver, you’re SOL or stuck on an old version.
This is also why proprietary drivers are bad.
never break user code
That’s a fine mantra to have but is rarely true in practice. I’ve seen way to many needlessly breaking changes in open-source libs that are explained away with “users can just pin the old version until they update their code”.
To be clear, the linux kernel itself is almost never the cause of the breakage per se, but some other library often implementing one of the APIs it defines. Often the reason for the breakage is under-specification of the original API, for example including a
uint32 flagsfield that is not checked against a known set of valid flags, and inevitably ends up populated with vendor-specific (and often conflicting) usages.As much as API design is about exposing the functionality you want, it also involves avoiding exposing functionality you dont’t want to expose. Open-source software often omits that critical design consideration, waving it away under the false virtue of “openness”.
FOSS leads to bad API design
Later…
…some other library often…
How long until…
I swear I’m right, guys. Just trust me!
With the risk of breaking the internet, I see no reason to fight someone who is wrong.
My 14+ year old laser printer “just works” on the latest linux kernel. It has been several years since MacOS supported installing the last driver binary created for it.
If it “just works” with linux it’s probably using a standard protocol like LPR that you can just as easily use on MacOS without a driver. The driver is usually just for non-standard functionality like color level monitoring or scanner/AIO integration that you won’t get on Linux anyway.
Well, trying to take your point seriously I guess you could argue that companies with paying customers do have an incentive to keep stuff compatible. However, also FOSS devs don’t like public shitstorms by their users which should be a similarly effective.
However, you just argue based on annecodotal evidence without explaining how your examples are exclusive to FOSS.
yeah because windows is a shining example of a great api
Some super old version of GIMP will run on both XP and Win11.
I had to modify and recompile my laptop’s Broadcom WLAN driver for it to run on the latest kernel.
Fight me 🤪
And how many super old drivers run on both XP and Win11?
None beyond basic drivers tbh, it was a tongue-in-cheek joke just to have some fun.
I thought the big flaw in my argument (comparing the Linux kernel ABI to the Win32 API) was obvious ☹️
Any concrete examples on that? I feel like FOSS is what pushes people towards making modular software with APIs in the first place while proprietary software is usually monolithic, probably because all the devs are colleagues and can just talk to each other.
I would much rather pay for closed source code that also has bad api and lazy backwards compatibility!
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If you don’t bother to provide any argument, I won’t bother to argue.
