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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.
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;
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
You assume the docs exist. You assume the docs are in distributable form. You assume the docs are written in a readable manner. You assume the docs don't contain important secret stuff.
Just validating those assumptions takes up the time of skilled experienced staff that the companies have already committed to to delivering other work.
So are you willing to pay $200k to cover the cost, opportunity cost and losses due to disruption that diverting this resource would require?
Just that, you seem willing for the companies involved to incur those costs.
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.
your understanding of the history of Direct X is full of ignorance. They didn't go to Direct X because of "other" OS support of Open GL, they went Direct X as they wanted a unified hardware access layer for devices, sound and graphics, Open GL was only graphics. Also Direct X won at the time because it actually produced faster and better rendering for games, that combined with the sound and input devices made it more cost effective, especially when most gamers ran windows only anyway.
"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.
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.
Then make a proposal to Razer.
Come on now, msmash - you've got a nice bully pulpit here. Get in contact with Razer and ask them to put together a cost analysis of what it would take, get the number, and then Kickstarter it. If there's enough interest in it, then it becomes cost-neutral for them to do it (or even profitable due to increased sales they wouldn't have otherwise gotten because of lacking support), and there's literally no reason to oppose it any more.
Don't just bleat about it being a tiny cost of other people's money and shit all over someone else with completely valid concerns - that's what the uninformed do. Get up and do something about it if it's important enough to you to "find it sickening and short sighted" and implore someone to rethink.
I implore you to do the same.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
And what if the process of "putting the bloody firmware into the bloody device" involves decrypting, or otherwise authenticating with some form of secret that is kept close?
Then they're doing it wrong.
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.