I am doing the same but with LLVM. For starters, I filtered issues with the "good first issue" label and found something to work on [1]. It took 2 months in review and about a month to research and write the code. Finally got merged yesterday. I am writing about it so that when someone else bumps into the same problem, they hopefully take 1 hour instead of 1 month. Compilers, like the kernel, are a lot of fun!
If I had no problem with devoting the time and money, contributing to the kernel (especially in a topic as obscure as making the extra buttons work on a 20-year-old laptop) is at the top of my bucket list, and I am definitely going to be doing it in the near future when my calendar clears up a bit.
Exquisite write-up and OP's simple writing has a motivating ring to it, and I'm now on the local used marketplace looking for pieces of tech like this :-)
What I did was buy a wifi router with a chipset supported by OpenWrt but with no build target yet. One of the OpenWrt maintainers then guided me in what I had to do to get the info he needed for a patch. I followed his instructions, he wrote the patch and there it was, a new build target. Later I wrote a patch myself to fix the LED control. It was a rewarding and educational experience. Later I even found someone using OpenWrt on the router I helped get supported which put a smile on my face.
If you want to find devices that still need hardware support under Linux, I highly recommend trying to get a mobile Linux distribution to work on an old smartphone or tablet.
postmarketOS in particular has a really good devices page [1] showing missing feature support at a glance, as well as guides for porting to new devices [2] and porting features from an outdated vendor-provided Linux fork to the upstream kernel [3].
I genuinely want to work on postmarketOS but I don't have the technical know-how right now but one day.
I would prefer a sort of dual-boot or just a simple ability to run linux in "android phones"
Like, if we were to build a linux phone somehow hacking it through a raspberry pi or the alikes, they would be so much more costly and subpar.
Android phones have whole globalization working on it and the only reason why they don't work is lack of drivers support/software side, something which can be worked on.
I think if society rewards something like PostMarketOS more/make it easier to install it, then things can be so great as well.
I know I can run a terminal inside android but till now it was only possible through qemu which had its issues...
I am not sure but I have never really appreciated having linux run inside a vm, I'd much rather run something like waydroid in a postmarketOS phone than linux inside android in an ideal world technically speaking from strictly performance but we don't live in one and installing waydroid on postmarketos or even installing postmarketos can be a very huge issue whereas installing linux on android can be a single step with termux or userLand.
You could also look into running mobile Linux on top of libhybris - it's a proprietary compatibility layer, but some people use it to get support for mobile Linux runtimes on more recent devices.
We might have a different definition of issue.. I think 100% compatibile working would be launching bloatware installed by the manufacturer. I'm happy not to have the pavlovian training that may some day cause me to click one of these things on someone's windows machine.
I think it's more of the buttons perform specialized tricks to launch bloatware in Windows.
Some of the issue here is the keys themselves have almost no standardization, even across models. Hell, possibly in the same model sometimes. Some backend windows driver captures these signals via a 50 mile long series of if statements that make grown men weep when viewed. This later can mean your totally working fix for the kernel doesn't actually work on a 1/3rd of that fleet of laptops.
> I think it's more of the buttons perform specialized tricks to launch bloatware in Windows.
The linked article is discussing play/pause buttons as well as a "mode-switch" button that allows the play/pause button to have a second function. I do not understand how any of these regular functions become bloatware in your estimation.
> Some of the issue here is the keys themselves have almost no standardization, even across models.
There is actually widespread standardization, which is why many important keys work by default. Laptops sometimes have buttons to disable the internal wifi or adjust the keyboard brightness. These keys are less universal, but still hard to categorize as bloatware.
> ome backend windows driver captures these signals via a 50 mile long series of if statements that make grown men weep when viewed.
I don't know any grown men who would weep when viewing this. I'm confused that you do not like a simple solution (if statements, which a computer has zero problems following precisely even if it is complex to you) nor the complex solution ("bloatware")
> This later can mean your totally working fix for the kernel doesn't actually work on a 1/3rd of that fleet of laptops.
Most devices used in fleets are well-supported in linux after a few years, specifically because of users like the linked article who spend time making buttons worked when pressed.
You can obviously map arbitrary key codes however you want on a custom OS and have extremely little fear of someone having embedded nonsense down to the bios.
On windows many of these laptop buttons were added like the Yahoo browser bar to specifically work with bloatware that might go on to make a meaningful action for non malicious software as well as what it is really for.
I prefer not to be in the habit of pressing footguns given that I might occasionally be placed in front of a consumers windows laptop that no one cleaned.
> I prefer not to be in the habit of pressing footguns given that I might occasionally be placed in front of a consumers windows laptop that no one cleaned.
If you're this anxious about security, you might not want to be anywhere near a Windows machine.
By the way, delving into obscure and hardware-specific kernel code, sometimes yields quite interesting generally-applicable problems. For example, @dougg3 did an (excellent!) series of articles about his work on bringing mainline kernel support to "Chumby 8", a somewhat obscure, but historically significant piece of hardware, and as a side-quest he stumbled into this:
Thank you for this. I have a USB desktop speaker whose volume controls don't work and I was thinking of writing a patch, but didn't know where to start; now I do.
congratulations. as someone who is a bit of a finnaboo and lives there, it's my dream to have had contributed something to the linux kernel. I was wondering if you used the same email for the commit as your github profile so that it shows up in the contributor list in the github mirror of the kernel and on your profile? I don't think I see the contribution when taking a quick glance at your github
My favourite contribution to the Linux kernel, which I witnessed myself, was a 1-character fix to a macro that my boss found, related to reading ADC, and which we spent two weeks checking and double-checking and re-double-checking to be sure that it was actually a bug.
It was, he submitted it, and that one character fix got him into the contributors file .. we were all highly amused, because that particular boss didn't program much, but found the bug during testing and it was, nevertheless, a huge win for him .. ;)
This was a fun read, and well written. Thanks for sharing! Adding/improving support for some niche piece of hardware sounds like an ideal way to get started with kernel development, and something I'd like to try myself sometime.
Even if it's small it demonstrates a level of commitment to working with a human system of senior engineers and ambition for software to become better just because. Always good on a resume.
This was an absolutely awesome post, and it makes me want to do the work to fix the functionality on my Lenovo laptop. Though I'm sure the Lenovo drivers are a little more closely watched, so I'll make sure to do my due diligence first. Thank you for the write up!
I too went on this adventure with my laptop. Sadly I hit a wall while reverse engineering the ACPI stuff. With no logs, error messages or tools on the Windows side to intercept the ACPI events, I was at a loss but eventually gave up. Massive respect for managing it with your own laptop!!
I did manage to reverse engineer the keyboard's LEDs and drive them from user space! Studied the kernel to make a contribution but decided not to do so when I saw comments saying it is better to keep functionality in user space if at all possible.
Same. I found serious bugs in a couple of games, exploited some, had fun, wrote a patch and sent it to whoever. Problem is, I was so anxious I did it under an alias. I have my different aliases in the changelog of some games. Nice to look at them, like "wow, that's my contribution", and then it hits "but no one will believe it was me, it was not under my name". God damn it. :(
You know, back when I confused "hash function" with "encryption" and whatnot.
I've never really done anything with the kernel, and at this point it feels kind of overwhelming to start contributing.
I'm sure if I went to the source tree and asked people for a low-hanging-fruit task someone would be kind enough to guide me to get started, but it's still kind of overwhelming to a point where I've just avoided it.
I should probably should stop coming up with excuses and just do it, as I would like to do a lot more with filesystems and having an understanding of the kernel would probably help with that.
I've been procrastinating a trivial fix for years, thanks for having listed the commands to run to format and send the patch, that might help me find my way out from procrastination because this is exactly what's been blocking me.
Neat! I don't know much about the Linux ecosystem so I didn't realize how Linus himself is still so deeply involved in the day-to-day review and release process.
Thanks! I haven't, but I probably should, since you're the second person asking about it. The site is built with Zola[0], and it's using the Radion[1] theme, with small modifications.
Wait… Koskivuori? Well of course they took his Linux patch right away, this is blatant Finnish favoritism! Imagine if some poor Estonian tried similar…
;-)
Just kidding, very cool to see a blow by blow of landing a Linux patch. I felt similar excitement landing a mere emacs patch.
This is the easiest way to hire engineers with high quality open source contributions with a public track record.
All it takes is just to check that the commit shows up in upstream projects such as Linux and anyone can see the code, the reviews and the authors email in the AUTHORS file which verify that this contribution / patch is indeed from the author who committed that change.
This is a very old form of social proof which saves lots time and makes Leetcode redundant. (Which can now be completely cheated with LLMs.)
Be careful.. any measure becomes a target, and in doing so voids its usefulness. Getting a kernel patch in is probably already somewhat afflicted by this, but imagine the lkml if every Bay Area wannabe company started soft-requiring this as a screen!
> Be careful.. any measure becomes a target, and in doing so voids its usefulness.
Except, this tests for a wide range of tasks related to a typical SWE role: programming proficiency, reasoning through rigorous code-review, clean code, open-source and testing.
Given that Leetcode and Hackerrank tests can be cheated / beaten with LLMs, it not only has been gamed to death, but it tests for nothing that is related to the role.
> but imagine the lkml if every Bay Area wannabe company started soft-requiring this as a screen!
Then this saves time and the proof is on the interviewee to show high quality functional open source changes to high profile projects like the Linux kernel for example and the bar is set high on purpose.
Imagine if hundreds of candidates have "interview cheating" software installed, just to pass the coding interview. Both the interviewer and the interviewee lose.
[1] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/154914
Exquisite write-up and OP's simple writing has a motivating ring to it, and I'm now on the local used marketplace looking for pieces of tech like this :-)
postmarketOS in particular has a really good devices page [1] showing missing feature support at a glance, as well as guides for porting to new devices [2] and porting features from an outdated vendor-provided Linux fork to the upstream kernel [3].
[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices [2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Porting_to_a_new_device [3] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Mainlining
I would prefer a sort of dual-boot or just a simple ability to run linux in "android phones"
Like, if we were to build a linux phone somehow hacking it through a raspberry pi or the alikes, they would be so much more costly and subpar.
Android phones have whole globalization working on it and the only reason why they don't work is lack of drivers support/software side, something which can be worked on.
I think if society rewards something like PostMarketOS more/make it easier to install it, then things can be so great as well.
I know I can run a terminal inside android but till now it was only possible through qemu which had its issues...
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-linux-terminal-app-...
I am not sure but I have never really appreciated having linux run inside a vm, I'd much rather run something like waydroid in a postmarketOS phone than linux inside android in an ideal world technically speaking from strictly performance but we don't live in one and installing waydroid on postmarketos or even installing postmarketos can be a very huge issue whereas installing linux on android can be a single step with termux or userLand.
Maybe you won't find an issue as simple as fixing a button, though.
Every laptop I've used with linux has had a few non-functioning buttons and keys. I think you underestimate the widespread issue.
https://docs.kernel.org/next/wmi/driver-development-guide.ht...
Making a physical button work requires bloatware in your understanding?
> I'm happy not to have the pavlovian training that may some day cause me to click one of these things on someone's windows machine.
Do you know what you're trying to say here? I do not.
Some of the issue here is the keys themselves have almost no standardization, even across models. Hell, possibly in the same model sometimes. Some backend windows driver captures these signals via a 50 mile long series of if statements that make grown men weep when viewed. This later can mean your totally working fix for the kernel doesn't actually work on a 1/3rd of that fleet of laptops.
The linked article is discussing play/pause buttons as well as a "mode-switch" button that allows the play/pause button to have a second function. I do not understand how any of these regular functions become bloatware in your estimation.
> Some of the issue here is the keys themselves have almost no standardization, even across models.
There is actually widespread standardization, which is why many important keys work by default. Laptops sometimes have buttons to disable the internal wifi or adjust the keyboard brightness. These keys are less universal, but still hard to categorize as bloatware.
> ome backend windows driver captures these signals via a 50 mile long series of if statements that make grown men weep when viewed.
I don't know any grown men who would weep when viewing this. I'm confused that you do not like a simple solution (if statements, which a computer has zero problems following precisely even if it is complex to you) nor the complex solution ("bloatware")
> This later can mean your totally working fix for the kernel doesn't actually work on a 1/3rd of that fleet of laptops.
Most devices used in fleets are well-supported in linux after a few years, specifically because of users like the linked article who spend time making buttons worked when pressed.
And very handy
On windows many of these laptop buttons were added like the Yahoo browser bar to specifically work with bloatware that might go on to make a meaningful action for non malicious software as well as what it is really for.
I prefer not to be in the habit of pressing footguns given that I might occasionally be placed in front of a consumers windows laptop that no one cleaned.
If you're this anxious about security, you might not want to be anywhere near a Windows machine.
By the way, delving into obscure and hardware-specific kernel code, sometimes yields quite interesting generally-applicable problems. For example, @dougg3 did an (excellent!) series of articles about his work on bringing mainline kernel support to "Chumby 8", a somewhat obscure, but historically significant piece of hardware, and as a side-quest he stumbled into this:
https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2024/04/why-is-my-cpu-usag...
...which is applicable to quite a few other machines.
It was, he submitted it, and that one character fix got him into the contributors file .. we were all highly amused, because that particular boss didn't program much, but found the bug during testing and it was, nevertheless, a huge win for him .. ;)
EDIT: it was a 2-character fix. ;)
https://lkml.iu.edu/2103.2/08109.html
(W., if you read this, I still love telling the story of how you found this bug..)
I've never done either, so I'm not bragging or anything
At the bottom, there is a timeline, and I noticed this entry with a LWN link:
https://lwn.net/Articles/1020203/ ... which leads to a LKML link: https://lwn.net/ml/all/aBj_SEgFTXfrPVuj@lappy/The new version of this tool (AUTOSEL) looks very interesting!
embedding technology to provide significantly more accurate recommendations.I too went on this adventure with my laptop. Sadly I hit a wall while reverse engineering the ACPI stuff. With no logs, error messages or tools on the Windows side to intercept the ACPI events, I was at a loss but eventually gave up. Massive respect for managing it with your own laptop!!
I did manage to reverse engineer the keyboard's LEDs and drive them from user space! Studied the kernel to make a contribution but decided not to do so when I saw comments saying it is better to keep functionality in user space if at all possible.
Seeing your name in the Linux changelog must be awesome!
Years ago when I was a teenager I had a couple patches accepted for ksnake and gedit.
Certainly not as prestigious as a patch to Linux, but still the idea of code I'd written running on millions of PCs around the world felt amazing.
You know, back when I confused "hash function" with "encryption" and whatnot.
I'm sure if I went to the source tree and asked people for a low-hanging-fruit task someone would be kind enough to guide me to get started, but it's still kind of overwhelming to a point where I've just avoided it.
I should probably should stop coming up with excuses and just do it, as I would like to do a lot more with filesystems and having an understanding of the kernel would probably help with that.
[0]: https://www.getzola.org/ [1]: https://github.com/micahkepe/radion
Did you try to use any AI tools during their process?
;-)
Just kidding, very cool to see a blow by blow of landing a Linux patch. I felt similar excitement landing a mere emacs patch.
All it takes is just to check that the commit shows up in upstream projects such as Linux and anyone can see the code, the reviews and the authors email in the AUTHORS file which verify that this contribution / patch is indeed from the author who committed that change.
This is a very old form of social proof which saves lots time and makes Leetcode redundant. (Which can now be completely cheated with LLMs.)
Except, this tests for a wide range of tasks related to a typical SWE role: programming proficiency, reasoning through rigorous code-review, clean code, open-source and testing.
Given that Leetcode and Hackerrank tests can be cheated / beaten with LLMs, it not only has been gamed to death, but it tests for nothing that is related to the role.
> but imagine the lkml if every Bay Area wannabe company started soft-requiring this as a screen!
Then this saves time and the proof is on the interviewee to show high quality functional open source changes to high profile projects like the Linux kernel for example and the bar is set high on purpose.
Imagine if hundreds of candidates have "interview cheating" software installed, just to pass the coding interview. Both the interviewer and the interviewee lose.