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Linux Might Need To Claim Only ACPI 2.0 Support For BIOS

Posted by timothy on from the and-you-can-taqiya-that-to-the-bank dept.

jones_supa writes Some of us remember the story of why Linux kernel responds "False" when ACPI BIOS asks if the operating system is Linux. We have found yet another case where mimicking the Windows behavior instead of writing to the spec is the right choice if you just want your machine to work properly. The ACPI spec defines the _REV object as evaluating to the revision of the ACPI specification that the OS implements. Linux returns 5 for this, because Linux actually tries to implement ACPI 5.0, but Windows returns 2 (ACPI 2.0), possibly due to legacy reasons. Linux kernel expert Matthew Garrett discovered that still a fair amount of brokenness appears when 5 is returned as the revision, including a Dell machine which left the sound hardware in a misconfigured state. He is proposing a kernel patch which simply reports _REV as 2 on all x86 hardware.

2 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The patch should fail to be included by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's the point of following the spec if no hardware does? The goal of an operating system is to run.

  2. Re:This is so Republican by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Linux already lies with his source control system. He created a command called rebase that lets you change history. Lies are the way of his kind as they are for the vast majority of Western Europeans. They're just liars. It's their way.