Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Device Passthrough Considered Harmful?
From: Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>
Date: 2024-07-25 13:20:40
Also in:
linux-cxl, linux-rdma
On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 03:02:13PM +0200, Ricardo Ribalda Delgado wrote:
On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 2:23 PM Leon Romanovsky [off-list ref] wrote:quoted
On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 11:26:38AM +0200, Ricardo Ribalda Delgado wrote:quoted
On Wed, Jul 24, 2024 at 10:02 PM Laurent Pinchart [off-list ref] wrote:<...>quoted
It would be great to define what are the free software communities here. Distros and final users are also "free software communities" and they do not care about niche use cases covered by proprietary software.Are you certain about that?As a user, and as an open source Distro developer I have a small hint. But you could also ask users what they think about not being able to use their notebook's cameras. The last time that I could not use some basic hardware from a notebook with Linux was 20 years ago.
Lucky you, I still have consumer hardware (speaker) that doesn't work with Linux, and even now, there is basic hardware in my current laptop (HP docking station) that doesn't work reliably in Linux.
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They only care (and should care) about normal workflows.What is a normal workflow? Does it mean that if user bought something very expensive he should not be able to use it with free software, because his usage is different from yours? ThanksIt means that we should not block the standard usage for 99% of the population just because 1% of the users cannot do something fancy with their device.
Right, the problem is that in some areas the statistics slightly different. 99% population is blocked because 1% of the users don't need it and don't think that it is "normal" flow.
Let me give you an example. When I buy a camera I want to be able to do Video Conferencing and take some static photos of documents. I do not care about: automatic makeup, AI generated background, unicorn filters, eyes recentering... But we need to give a way to vendors to implement those things closely, without the marketing differentiators, vendors have zero incentive to invest in Linux, and that affects all the population. This challenge seems to be solved for GPUs. I am using my AMD GPU freely and my nephew can install the amdgpu-pro proprietary user space driver to play duke nukem (or whatever kids play now) at 2000 fps. There are other other subsystems that allow vendor passthrough and their ecosystem has not collapsed.
Yes, I completely agree with you on that.
Can we have some general guidance of what is acceptable? Can we define together the "normal workflow" and focus on a *full* open source implementation of that?
I don't think that is possible to define "normal workflow". Requirement to have open-source counterpart to everything exposed through UAPI is a valid one. I'm all for that. Thanks
-- Ricardo Ribalda