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.

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jiggunjer 2 days ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	mort96 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> 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.