'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.

Comments

Not contradictory statements

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Must all vendors support Linux?

[Narcocide]

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.

Razer what? why?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Razer what? why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is worse than that. Their software is cloud based.

So for example, to change the keyboard lights or mouse lights or mouse function buttons or use anything besides basic 2-button HID mouse:

1) Set up an account on Razer
2) Have client software running on windows.
3) Have holes in firewall so that client can connect
4) Your settings, for your local mouse/KB mouse, are stored in the cloud.
5) If it loses connection to the cloud you can't change any of your settings.
6) IIRC it requires cloud access on startup, otherwise it loads default profile.

FOR. A. MOUSE.
Never again.

High end gaming hardware

[Hal_Porter]

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/...

Re:High end gaming hardware

[thegarbz]

It's worth pointing out that when the CEO made his comments, the response here was less than enthusiastic

This is a key downside for Linux for many reasons:

1) The community has shown to be toxic with constant infighting.
2) The community is highly aggressive to anything which doesn't 100% meet their core values. Create a gaming hardware, good. Open source 99% of the firmware, great. That 1% is a closed source binary blob, BURN DOWN THEIR HEADQUARTERS!
3) The community is small so the cost benefit ratio sucks.
4) The community is fussy and has high standards (see all of the above).
5) The community generally isn't of the hardcore gaming type.

Why would any gaming company chose to support Linux when gamers have shown to be more than happy* to run Windows / stuff around with Wine to play their games.

*And by more than happy I mean they whine less about running Windows for games than the do about something in Linux not being 100% perfect.

Re:High end gaming hardware

[tlhIngan]

Why would any gaming company chose to support Linux when gamers have shown to be more than happy* to run Windows / stuff around with Wine to play their games.

*And by more than happy I mean they whine less about running Windows for games than the do about something in Linux not being 100% perfect.

Exactly. They exist to sell hardware to people willing to pay for overpriced stuff (i.e., gamers, the new audiophool). Practically all of them run Windows and knows nothing else, and they probably get their sales from people who see their boxes at Best Buy, go "ooh shiny" and whip out their credit card.

Serving Linux might work if there's a sufficient business case for them to well, sell more hardware, but if the community does what it usually does and says just buy a Model M and be done with it for keyboards or buy a cheaper mouse rather than buying the overpriced stuff, well, that's something they'd rather do without.

That's the problem - the article was about an engineer doing an engineering solution, but the company didn't get the part where it would benefit them. Yadda yadda yadda software does this, blah blah blah. Nowhere does it say "Your hardware is awesome, and there a huge untapped market if you would sell it to Linux users but we need Linux software".

Most of it is pure business decisions - if you can make a cogent case that Linux would help them sell more of their stuff, enough to outweigh the risks and costs, then they'll do it.

High end?

[Chas]

No. They make EXPENSIVE (but extremely breakable) peripherals and skimp on the QA.

In the end, nothing of any value was lost.

Razer keyboards are not high-end

[Misagon]

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.

Re:ROCCAT cares about Linux.

[Cederic]

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.

Re:Must all vendors support Linux?

[jellomizer]

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.

This is certainly helpful...

[c]

"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.

Re:Must all vendors support Linux?

[angel'o'sphere]

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?

Re:ROCCAT cares about Linux.

[MachineShedFred]

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.

Re:Must all vendors support Linux?

[BronsCon]

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.