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| ▲ | threetonesun 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | And then what, ever single gaming mouse/keyboard config is going to appear in the Windows UI dialog? I think extra options in an app is fine, but you should have to download it. At which point who knows what you’ve opened yourself to but at least you chose to do it. | | |
| ▲ | VorpalWay 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > And then what, ever single gaming mouse/keyboard config is going to appear in the Windows UI dialog? Actually, why not? The driver could declare a list/tree of extra configurable options, and windows could generate a configuration dialog for them. I think this is already is thing in Windows for NICs, I remember seeing TCP offload options when I go into properties for a NIC in the device manager. You just need to make it a bit more accessible to non-tech users and with more modern control options such as colour wheels for RGB. And the Linux software for these sort of devices (when such software exist) don't tend to be as bloated. Usually the driver just exposes some control files under /sys and someone else builds a GUI or such on top. But there is no reason you couldn't also expose a schema that describes what the options do to make a more generic GUI for those. | | |
| ▲ | threetonesun an hour ago | parent [-] | | As a user I agree, but I think this misunderstands the Windows market. Forget about mice for a second, if you look at GPU drivers between Linux and Windows on Linux they... just work, and you can use some apps to modify exposed features, like you said. On Windows out of the box they kind of work, but you really need a manufacturer's software suite to take full advantage of them, and that software suite is, surprise, an advertising and analytics platform, a situation I think both Microsoft and the peripheral manufacturers are very happy with. |
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| ▲ | isityettime 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Configurable peripherals should store their configurations entirely on-board, and they should be configurable using a well-understood protocol. Users can then use either the vendor's application, a common third-party application, or the configuration interface native to their desktop environment to configure them. When they plug them into a new machine, they should just keep working without having to install any configuration software. Many generations of Roccat peripherals were usable this way on Linux, thanks to the work of one generous volunteer who reverse-engineered them. Companies like Logitech don't store their devices' configs in firmware in a way that "forces" you to run some additional shit to use all of their features (some features aren't implemented in software). It's a convenient excuse that allows them to push their spyware onto users, but it's totally unnecessary. A vendor that was actually "user friendly" in the deep sense (opposite of "user hostile") would do this themselves; configuration would be upstream-first via libratbagd or whatever, and then they'd provide their own configuration interface as a value-add for a uniform cross-platform experience, or in areas where they thought they could provide a better UI than the design principles of KDE and GNOME, or so that they could have a uniform interface to refer to in their documentation. | |
| ▲ | LucasOe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Drivers should just make my stuff work. If I want to configure my hardware, I download the app from the manufacturer's website. | |
| ▲ | solarkraft 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes! Extra apps suck. |
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| ▲ | michaelmrose 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Linux users think of a driver as the thing that makes my silently hardware do the existing things its supposed to do like every other item in its class. Windows users think of the driver as what makes the hardware do what everything in its class does but subtly different and somehow glued to a command center with its own unique and bad GUI auto started, in the tray, with its own update schedule, and ads. | |
| ▲ | MatejKafka 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How exactly do you propose to sandbox drivers running in kernel space? Do you even know how drivers work? (I'm guessing no, based on this comment) | | |
| ▲ | toast0 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Microsoft has a program to do static and dynamic analysis of drivers... not a sandbox, but better than nothing. Of course, wonky drivers plus wonky hardware can still do bad things (io-mmu can help, a bit). The problems tend to be in the userspace software that's also installed with the driver. Sometimes there's also some pretty derpy stuff where the driver wants to talk to the userspace software but there's no validation/verification and that opens up a big hole. | |
| ▲ | milesvp 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are people working on this problem honestly. The general solution 10 years ago was a micro kernel. Today, I’m not sure. The linux model is starting to look dated, with similar problems elsewhere. Modern hardware design looks less and less like classic textbook design, with all kinds of random chips having direct memory access to memory the cpu uses on some shared bus. Where even things like on board blue tooth chips can become attack vectors on the system. There was a good keynote on the topic 5 years ago By Timothy Roscoe https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-ke... | | |
| ▲ | MatejKafka an hour ago | parent [-] | | Agree with all of those points and there are some partial solutions (IOMMU, userspace drivers, virtualization,...), but we're still quite far from being able to safely connect untrusted hardware and load its driver without effectively giving it privileged access. |
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| ▲ | masfuerte 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The User-Mode Driver Framework is a thing. Most plug-in devices do not need (or have) a kernel-mode driver. | | |
| ▲ | MatejKafka an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yes, but unless all 3rd party drivers can run in userspace (which is not really feasible), Microsoft needs to give vendors the option to install a kernel driver, at which point a vendor can always decide to ship a kernel driver and bypass any restrictions. Imo, the only thing Microsoft can meaningfully do here from their side is threaten LG with pulling all their drivers if they keep doing this. |
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