Better Support For Microsoft Surface Laptops On Linux Is Coming With "SAM"

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Better Support For Microsoft Surface Laptops On Linux Is Coming With "SAM"

Better support for Microsoft Surface laptops on Linux is slowly coming to the mainline kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsoft-Surface-SAM-Linux

[curfew]

Microsoft does not love Linux, they merely support it in order to tie the Windows-escaping devs to their Micro$oft platform by any means possible, even if it means allowing them to use a virtualized Linux environment somewhere in the middle of the Microsoft product chain. By producing Windows-locked computers they ensure that Linux never gets to be the native platform, instead remaining enslaved by Microsoft.

[mifritscher]

Holy shit... https://lore.kernel.org/[email protected]/ is a good summation of the really dirty hacks and proprietary bullshit MS has done - and gets worse on every new version. Basically, they are omitting the PC standard more and more, building a completely proprietary hacky-style device without even Plug-and-Play functionalities (no standard way to detect the hardware), but basically hard code the stuff. The design is more from a cheap "fire and forget" tablet than a PC or laptop.

[andyprough]

Paying thousands to the fruity company or to the anti-trust violator for underwhelming hardware that I can somehow hack a real OS onto is always a big "No" from me. I had no interest way back in the days of Yellow Dog Linux and I have no interest now. They despise my freedoms, no reason to give them my cash.

[microcode]

Seems like it's just a normal EC just like on Chromebooks. I wonder like you why they bothered giving this its own name lol.

[slalomsk8er]

I had to support surface hardware some years ago (1th and 2th or 2th and 3th gen.) and I will never ever touch that stuff on my own, if not ordered and paid to do so - and even then I will complain about it.
It looks like I'm not the only one as the advent calendar form the 4th is still not sold out

Now it's the 8th: Still not sold out

[ed31337]

Paying thousands to the fruity company or to the anti-trust violator for underwhelming hardware that I can somehow hack a real OS onto is always a big "No" from me.
(...)
They despise my freedoms, no reason to give them my cash.

Those are my sentiments exactly! And it's why I love Raspberry Pi so much.

Basically, they are omitting the PC standard more and more, building a completely proprietary hacky-style device without even Plug-and-Play functionalities (no standard way to detect the hardware), but basically hard code the stuff.

The PC standard is unnecessary legacy bloatware that slows down boot times. I don't blame them for dropping more and more of it as time goes on.

From a purely software freedom point of view, BIOS firmware is a largely closed-source immovable rock. In an ideal world, firmware should be minimized down to the absolute least amount of code necessary to load the open source OS and then get out of the way. The more code you can move out of the closed-source firmware and into the open sourced OS, the better in my opinion.

[jojo7887]

Microsoft does not love Linux, they merely support it in order to tie the Windows-escaping devs to their Micro$oft platform by any means possible, even if it means allowing them to use a virtualized Linux environment somewhere in the middle of the Microsoft product chain. By producing Windows-locked computers they ensure that Linux never gets to be the native platform, instead remaining enslaved by Microsoft.

Couldn't agree more. First thing that sprung to my mind when reading this article was "I'm almost sure this isn't an MS' employee work" and after looking up the author's github I was darn right.

MS is always about helping themselves and whatever benefit Linux gets out of it is due to the nature of open source.

[mifritscher]

The PC standard is unnecessary legacy bloatware that slows down boot times. I don't blame them for dropping more and more of it as time goes on.

From a purely software freedom point of view, BIOS firmware is a largely closed-source immovable rock. In an ideal world, firmware should be minimized down to the absolute least amount of code necessary to load the open source OS and then get out of the way. The more code you can move out of the closed-source firmware and into the open sourced OS, the better in my opinion.

AHCI, USB, PCIe - all legacy? Own proprietary shit is the new big thing?
Even the battery can't be read via the normal AHCI interface, but only by an own-brewed protocol! The Surface 4 used at least the HID protocol, newer ones use their 100% own shitty protocol.

And: perhaps the UEFI gets a little tinner. But this comes with the massive firmware in the SAM-controller, which is even more closed-source and undocumented.