On Mon, Apr 12, 2021 at 12:45 PM David <dlocklear01@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > If one goes to the Intel website and does a search on "Linux," they will find several articles, that may be of interest to someone interested in Linux drivers for Intel components. > > For example. > > https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000025890/ethernet-products.html > > > While their pages do not mention Fedora, there are some that mention RHEL, which should apply. Feel free to elaborate, if you have insight into all that. > > Any drivers that claim they are compatible with Ubuntu are likely compiled for Debian Package Manager. So they will not work in Fedora. I do not know if there are generic drivers that work in both .rpm and .deb. Can someone please elaborate on all that ? > > Is Intel support for Linux excellent ? or amazing ? > > I would say that their support for Fedora is lame, compared to their support of Clear Linux. And, that their support of Red Hat or Fedora is not as good as their support for Ubuntu. > > Intel's community forum does allow specific questions about Fedora. For example: > > https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/search.html > > If that link does not work, try a general search there, such as "Fedora 32." There are hundreds of post there from Fedora users asking for troubleshooting help, going back several years. > There are 2 reasons why a hardware vendor doesn't/won't support Fedora (and this is not just speaking of Intel, all of the hardware suppliers of hardware used on linux). #1: The abi for the fedora kernel changes often...each 5.X to 5.X+1 can change it, and will require driver code changes to work every few months. Note most of the supported version of linux are some variant 7+ year supported ABI with no changes (RedHat, LTS versions, SLES), so drivers need to be backported into that ancient ABI, but the ABI does not change often. #2: it is likely most of the intel drivers are being put into the kernel.org kernel upstream that Fedora is being built from, so often an update of the kernel will fix it. Generally if you have to download a out-of-tree drive for anything (the RedHat/LTS/Sles variants too) then you are going to have rough time of it as either the code is barely tested and behaves oddly and/or completely breaks on updates. Where I work we will only use a out-of-tree driver as a last resort and the few times we have attempted to use the out-of-tree driver delivered by the vendor rarely has it actually solved the problem and/or worked hence its attempt by us as a last resort. On Fedora at home the times I have tried to use an out-of-tree driver it has been a time consuming experience as every few linux versions you have to the get an updated version of the code from someplace (this was a newer wireless driver that was never put into kernel.org by the owner). Hence most of the corporate customers that have any pull are pushing the hardware vendors to make sure their driver is a part of kernel.org and the OS distributions vendors updates, because otherwise it is a nightmare to manage. The hardware vendors have stated this on calls with them I have been involved in. If you are running a current version of the kernel for the distribution you have and your card is not supported with it then even if there is a "supported" out-of-tree driver, it is almost certainly going to be a rough experience. The out-of-tree drivers often have limited numbers of users and limited testing so the chances of a bugs are high, and that is assuming you can get it compiled and get it to load and find your device. The regression testing of out-of-tree driver updates is also very limited. So often you will get an update/code fix that adds some feature you don't care about but breaks a critical basic feature making the driver useless. The only major disaster on the hardware support is the wireless drivers. What is supported or not is hit and miss even with major wireless vendors. For the most part the major ethernet cards just work, though you might have to wait a few weeks for it to get into kernel.org and that kernel to get to fedora. At the end of the day, if the vendors does not have enough staffing to get their driver into kernel.org/redhat/LTS/Sles they certainly cannot support their hardware at all for anyone. _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
