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The "somehow" is Microsoft, who defines what the hardware architecture of what a x86-64 desktop/laptop/server is and builds the compatibility test suite (Windows HLK) to verify conformance. Open source operating systems rely on Microsoft's standardization.

by mort961 hours ago|

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Microsoft's standardization got AMD and Intel to write upstream Linux GPU drivers? Microsoft got Intel to maintain upstream xHCI Linux drivers? Microsoft got people to maintain upstream Linux drivers for touchpads, display controllers, keyboards, etc?

I doubt this. Microsoft played a role in standardizing UEFI/ACPI/PCI which allows for a standardized boot process and runtime discovery, letting you have one system image which can discover everything it needs during and after boot. In the non-server ARM world, we need devicetree and u-boot boot scripts in lieu of those standards. But this does not explain why we need vendor kernels.

by jiggunjer37 minutes ago|

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I think they're related. You can't have a custom kernel if you can't rebuild the device tree. You can't rebuild blobs.

by mort9616 minutes ago|

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> You can't have a custom kernel if you can't rebuild the device tree.

What is this supposed to mean? There is no device tree to rebuild on x86 platforms yet you can have a custom kernel on x86 platforms. You sometimes need to use kernel forks there too to work with really weird hardware without upstream drivers, there's nothing different about Linux's driver model on x86. It's just that in the x86 world, for the vast, vast majority of situations, pre-built distro kernels built from upstream kernel releases has all the necessary drivers.

by doubled1122 hours ago|

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x86 hardware has a standard way to boot and bring up the hardware, usually to at least a minimum level of functionality.

ARM devices aren't even really similar to one another. As a weird example, the Raspberry Pi boots from the GPU, which brings up the rest of the hardware.

by mort961 hours ago|

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It's not just about booting though. We solve this with hardware-specific devicetrees, which is less nice in a way than runtime discovery through PCI/ACPI/UEFI/etc, but it works. But we're not just talking about needing a hardware-specific devicetree; we're talking about needing hardware-specific vendor kernels. That's not due to the lack of boot standardization and runtime discovery.