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'Razer Doesn't Care About Linux' (gnome.org)
An anonymous reader shares a blog post: Razer is a vendor that makes high-end gaming hardware, including laptops, keyboards and mice. I opened a ticket with Razor a few days ago asking them if they wanted to support the LVFS project by uploading firmware and sharing the firmware update protocol used. I offered to upstream any example code they could share under a free license, or to write the code from scratch given enough specifications to do so. This is something I've done for other vendors, and doesn't take long as most vendor firmware updaters all do the same kind of thing; there are only so many ways to send a few kb of data to USB devices. The fwupd project provides high-level code for accessing USB devices, so yet-another-update-protocol is no big deal. I explained all about the LVFS, and the benefits it provided to a userbase that is normally happy to vote using their wallet to get hardware that's supported on the OS of their choice. I just received this note on the ticket, which was escalated appropriately: "I have discussed your offer with the dedicated team and we are thankful for your enthusiasm and for your good idea. I am afraid I have also to let you know that at this moment in time our support for software is only focused on Windows and Mac." The post, written by Richard -- who has long been a maintainer of GNOME Software, PackageKit, GNOME Packagekit, points out that Razer executive Min-Liang Tan last year invited Linux enthusiasts to suggest ideas to help the company make the best notebook that supports Linux.
I would like to learn to read music this year, and welcome suggestions on how to do so, but I'm a bit busy this month, and my focus is not on that task at the moment.
Well, sorta. They don't actually try to sabotage 3rd party efforts at least. Purportedly they've even donated some hardware to the guy who works on the Linux driver anyway. They don't recognize his support as official or anything like that. It's sad that this is as good as it gets.
Other popular pointer device companies that hate Linux so much they spend more effort and man hours drafting an excuse than it would take to just forward the docs:
Razer
Saitek/Mad Catz/Cyborg
Logitech
I remember when it was first suggested that Unity3d be ported to Linux... the request garnered a large following on their requested features forum, and by all indications it seemed like it was never going to happen, but then about three years after the request had been proposed on their feature request website, it materialized. While it still hasn't evolved to the point of being an officially supported platform, it's still a welcome addition for doing unity development.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Honestly none of them have to "support" Linux aside from coughing up some documentation. Sending an email to claim they don't have the man power to send an email is a pretty obnoxious way to lie about it.
Is this the same Razer that requires you create an account on their site just to use a mouse? If so who cares? This company is total shit anyway.
If they're making expensive laptops to play games, are Linux users their intended market?
Also referencing "Meltdown and Spectre" is a bit bogus. Intel CPUs have a firmware update facility but that's already supported.
https://downloadcenter.intel.c...
And the kernel already does KPTI.
Sure they could assign someone to do LVFS contributions to do firmware updates for their USB devices, but I guess their priorities are elsewhere. It's not at all clear that significant numbers of people are not buying Razer USB devices because you can't update the firmware on Linux. I'm guessing some support engineer got the request, escalated it up to management and management said "No".
It's worth pointing out that when the CEO made his comments, the response here was less than enthusiastic
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It's Razer, but the reDhaT employee that logged the ticket didn't even have the decency to spell their name correctly.
OK, We'll do this: Razer don't care about Linux because their target demographic also don't care about Linux. Only hardcore Linux geeks obsessed with getting everything to run on Linux because it's "better/purer/freer" etc care, but they care to a passionate, frankly evangelical degree. Linux to them is scripture. They are so all-consumingly obsessed with it's superiority that to not support it must either be an error to be corrected, or ideological impurity to be attacked.
Either way, in the venn diagram of hardcore gamers and Linux evangelists, the number of people in the intersection is statistically irrelevant to Razer.
No. They make EXPENSIVE (but extremely breakable) peripherals and skimp on the QA.
In the end, nothing of any value was lost.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Razer is not seen as "high-end" within the high-end keyboard community.
Their mechanical keyboards would better be described as "entry-level" into the world of mechanical keyboards.
The build materials are cheap. They have gimmicky features.
Most of all, their marketing is atrocious, misleading and often borderline fraudulent.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
2. Your declaration of victory based on entirely missing the point is entertainingly trumpian.
3. You make (incorrect) assumptions as to my neurodiversity status.
4....everyone knows, when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of "u" and "umption". - Samuel L. Jackson.
No, but it's good to have a warning about which vendors to avoid.
Ezekiel 23:20
If you go back far enough into gaming history [back to when Bill Gates was running Microsoft, before Ballmer took over], you would get to a heated competition between two graphics APIs. First, there was OpenGL, the "Open Graphics Library", which is somewhat self-declarative. The other was "DirectX", which was driven and maintained by Microsoft.
IIRC, in the very earliest of days, Microsoft actually supported OpenGL, but then spun away from that and created their own API, DirectX [which they still support].
Now the main reason that Microsoft switched from OpenGL to DirectX was because OpenGL was supported by other Operating Systems, not just Windows. Which meant that games would be available for those platforms, which meant, ultimately, that OpenGL became a lever to threaten Windows... So that's why MS eventually wrote their own. The problem that they created for themselves was that they had to suddenly convince games studios to support their new API. And, in it's early days, DirectX was not well understood, not well supported and, well, a bit clunky.
To help bring what we'd now call Triple-A titles to DirectX/Windows, Microsoft actually had teams of developers who would literally go to game studios and offer to port their game code to DirectX, for free. . And that's how DirectX became the dominant API in the gaming space, eventually killing off OpenGL in all but name.
Once MIcrosoft had the two main graphics card manufacturers on board with this [now nVidia and AMD] the natural evolution was to take this model - at least in part - and apply it to other peripherals. So around the time that Creative moved on to the X-Fi hardware platform from their earlier, non-PCI-based cards, so Microsoft began working with Creative on driver development. The particularly observant might have noticed or might remember that there was a marketing campaign at the time, "Runs on Windows". This was, in essence, a program in which Microsoft financially contributed to the marketing and advertising for peripheral makers... However - and here I need to stress that I've never seen the terms of any contract Microsoft produced [NDA and all that], there was a lot of scuttlebutt at the time to suggest that in the small print of these support deals was a clause that basically said, "Terms will be void if you develop or provide support for your hardware for any Microsoft competitor OS" [or equivalent].
Now, that was a very different Microsoft, so we have no way of knowing why any well-respected hardware manufacturer would make life difficult for the Open Source community, but the inference was that this was just very simple, very basic market forces. Microsoft didn't want to invest their time, money and effort in a company not dedicated to supporting Windows, and had a cheque book big enough to help make sure that happened.
Does this apply here? Not sure. Not even sure that this history is entirely accurate as I've represented it. If you really wanted the skinny on this sort of thing, the man to ask would be Greg Kroar-Hartman. If anyone in the OS community would know what's going on, he would. [Although his role moves around a bit, he was the guy who led the "Device Driver" program for Linux during key periods of this history.
Linux (the OS not the kernel, as opposed to Android which is a different is with a Linux kernel) isn’t really setup for the consumer market. It works as a server OS and a workstation OS. But it never caught on for the general public.
This makes Linux a waste of resources for gaming companies.
Say 5% uses Linux at home. 85% of this group will be willing to use non-open source software. 50% of this group is interested in serious gaming. 25% of this group may be interested in their products...
For gaming it is a tough business model to be Linux friendly. Not impossible but it takes a lot of effort and resources for a small return.
It isn’t that Linux can’t do it, it is that not enough people are using it to make it with the effort.
Razor employees may love Linux. But they can not justify the expense in supporting it. And digging all the legal to make things open enough for the community to do something about it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"We asked this company to help us out and they told us that they weren't interested so I guess now we're just going to publicly call them out as a bunch of shitbags so that next time I bet they'll bend over backwards to do what we ask."
Ah, the old "aggressive asshole panhandler" routine. Works every time.
Log in or piss off.
Are you one of those developers who never write documentation?
Or how do you come to the idea that writing documentation (and dealing with questions) requires no man power?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They might not have everything well documented, or it might not be in a format suitable for publication. It obviously comes down to a cost-benefit analysis.
Right. Because all it takes to release internal documentation is for some support guy to grab the doc and mail it out to whoever asks. Brilliant.
For gaming it is a tough business model to be Linux friendly. Not impossible but it takes a lot of effort and resources for a small return.
It doesn't have to be that way.
Consider the Linux version a console port, no different than you would the PS3 or XBOX. Then instead of worrying about every possible hardware setup out there make sure it works with the systems on this page and say fuck-all to the rest. Once it works on those systems on factory settings it's going to work for most of what's out there.
Doing that with the right titles will create a feed-back loop. More people will risk adopting the Linux systems, on that page as a console, and more developers will risk developing for them. There has to be a critical mass point.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I bought one of their mice for the office because left handed ones that I can use for hours without problems, are hard to find.
When I got my new PC and needed to install drivers(because I don't do reverse buttons so I need to swap them in software for the mouse and not in windows), they now required me to logon to their "cloud" to install their drivers. Something I can't do at the office.
L'Idiot
But Linux IS setup for the consumer market. Yes, I am talking about the OS, be it XFCE, Gnome, KDE or whatever you want to throw at it. What it is not ready for is the consumer do the installation. That is the same with Windows. Give a person a PC without anything and give them a link to a URL on how to install Windows. See how many users you end up with. The majority will have no idea on how to do it. OK, give them a CD or USB and see how many are able to do it then. Let them do the same with :Linux and see who will able to rpint out a letter with the least frustration.
No, not the Windows CD that comes with the computer. The generic one from the shelf.
The issue is pre-installing. Give them a Linux PC and they will use it. Just as they will use Android or anything else.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
One point that should be obvious to anyone who has worked in a business is that getting someone's services like this "for free" is anything but.
First, there's the straight up cost: Lawyers vetting contracts, employees gathering and then vetting information, etc.
Then there's the small possibility that somehow, somewhere, this turns out to cost Razer big time - they accidentally expose a competitive secret, the person puts out malware in the Linux Razer driver, the person uses the information to build targeted malware for the Windows side, the service provider turns out to be a Russian spy and it's linked with Razer.... It doesn't matter how ridiculous the scenario, there is some chance of a very bad thing happening.
And then think of the benefit. Zero. (Okay, maybe they sell another 2-3.)
So, in which world can this be justified as a rational business decision?
In most situations like this (unusual disclosures, not business as usual, no going forward as a line of business), a medium-sized company might want perhaps $50K up front, a larger company might demand 3-4 times that. Anything less than that is simply too little return for the risk.
You are far more likely to get the kind of support you want from a small company for which the gain of supporting Linux has *real* marketing value to them and thus the company they're putting at (small) risk isn't *that* valuable compared to the benefit.
Consider the Linux version a console port, no different than you would the PS3 or XBOX.
The funny thing is that the PS3 is BSD based and the PS4 is a full fledged BSD system so if there's a PS3/PS4 version already doing a Linux/SteamOS port would be "relatively" easy. Not as easy as doing a ./configure && make && make install of the source tree on a Linux dev system of course, but easier than porting from Windows to Linux.
It's a trade secret, or it contains third-party licensed specs, or it has a few security flaws... or there's just a slim chance of any of those, so the whole proposal requires review by at least 15 engineers and a small army of lawyers, plus all the senior management.
I'm as much a fan of Linux as the next guy, but even discussing something outside the original scope is an unexpected cost. At least they were open about that and provided a response.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Either the hardware designers designed it and documented it for the software guys, or the other way around. The document already exists, so it really does take the same expertise and effort at this point.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The article is about a reply from a support ticket, not any sort of official statement by Razer.
Someone in media should contact them officially.
Ubuntu asks the installer about LVM, GRUB, streaming updates during install, there's a couple screens about keyboard detection, the ability to add web servers or print servers, along with other functions, all as part of the process of installing. YES, you can ignorantly click next on each screen, but the point remains you still have a couple dozen times you need to click next.
This is again, false.
You are right about the keyboard selection. Were you perhaps installing "Ubuntu Server?" You don't need to setup your bootloader, LVM, or any of that stuff. I just installed Ubuntu 17.10. "Like 5 clicks" about sums it up.