Comments on: Microsoft’s Dirty ACPI Secrets: It’s Back! (Updated)

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:40:26 +0000

Ditto. Thanks, David, for putting a rational and positive spin on it. You should see what Carla at Linux Today wrote about this incident.

By: Roy Bixler

Roy Bixler — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:23:52 +0000

@David Gerard:

Thanks for the technical explanation. It seems to confirm what I’ve already heard about ACPI, which is that it’s complex. The answer in a nutshell thusfar seems to be “it’s either a Linux bug or a BIOS bug.” Either way, I hope it’s sorted. Further down in the comments, Ryan (the original person who reported the problem) indicates that Foxconn managers are now willing to work with the Linux ACPI developers. Apparently, they’re not oblivious to the argument that they could sell more boards if they achieve better compatibility.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:10:46 +0000

From the Linux side, Matthew is the most prominent person doing so. From the hardware side, the trick is how to make hardware people want to actively support Linux working (which is why Matthew got so annoyed at the conspiracy theorising in the Foxconn case, when he sees only the usual blithering stupidity and incompetence. Dell pushing its suppliers for bits that'll work well in Ubuntu is basically what we need. The suppliers need to want to support Linux.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:49:30 +0000

What bothers me a lot is that I regularly find people who ditch Linux for something like Vista just because of ACPI. Here is a brand-new example I found just an hour ago:

http://llynix.com/articles/linux/i-bid-adieu-ubuntu/

“Yesterday I threw in the towel. I’ve been having problems with ACPI on my new Ubuntu partition. I’ve got other small problems but the ACPI ones are really the deal breaker. A laptop that can’t hibernate isn’t much of a laptop. [...] Perhaps the LiveCD of the new version will fair better, for now though I’m taking a break and going back to the slower, more sluggish but more compatible Vista system.”

Whether there was technical sabotage or not, someone ought to start taking Linux support seriously. That memo from Gates ain’t helping. Foxconn’s attitude (watch the conversations with them), is not helping, either.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:43:18 +0000

Matthew Garrett explains it as: everyone copy'n'pastes their ACPI code, and so the Linux code there is probably leftover fragments of junk code that are never executed anyway; the manufacturer bodged something together, checked it didn't actually catch fire running Vista and shipped. (i.e. such stupidity is the norm.) Here's his full technical writeup as an expert on ACPI code archaeology.

By: Roy Bixler

Roy Bixler — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:36:29 +0000

No doubt that this is really confusing, so it’s an issue ripe for different interpretations. The exhibit from the Comes Iowa anti-trust case just adds fuel to the fire. On the other hand, it does sound reasonable that the vendor just never bothered testing their board with Linux because they have no intention of supporting that.

My questions would be the following. Why test for an operating system in the code if there is no intention to support it? Why exactly would a hardware vendor explicitly want to exclude an operating system if supporting it would mean more sales for them?

By: Alon David

Alon David — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:51:44 +0000

Hi,

I have a lenovo 3000 N100 laptop, and after coming back from sleep mode the fans on the motherboard don’t work anymore, i think this is an ACPI issue (i’ve tested this on multiple kernels) but I have no idea on how to investigate it and fix it, can anybody help ?

Thanks.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:57:39 +0000

Matthew Garrett attributes it to stupidity rather than malice, and says such stupidity is the norm. (He does a ton of work on ACPI in the Linux kernel.)

By: Yuhong Bao

Yuhong Bao — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:07:51 +0000

The difference is this time they are actually doing it, where last time it was just a suggestion.