Linux 3.17 Kernel Released With Xbox One Controller Support 114
An anonymous reader writes The Linux 3.17 kernel was officially released today. Linux 3.17 presents a number of new features that include working open-source AMD Hawaii GPU support, an Xbox One controller driver, free-fall support for Toshiba laptops, numerous ARM updates, and other changes.
Please explain (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Please explain (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't, you can load it as a module.
Re:Please explain (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't, you can load it as a module.
...or run the alternative userspace driver, which linux supports doing as well.
What really should be the question is why can't even Microsoft, which despite their software reputation generally is well reguarded for input accessories, not present a consistent interface across different generations of controllers. It's not like there isn't an enumeration standard they could follow.
Re:Please explain (Score:5, Insightful)
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Xbox One Controller + Cable for Windows Brings the Console Experience to PC [xbox.com].
That was announced nearly 3 weeks ago.
Re:Please explain (Score:5, Interesting)
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They didn't have to go that far, actually.
Xbox accessories have an authentication chip that's verified during USB connect so that's all the Xbone had to do - just check to see if it's an Xbone accessory and be done with it. Likewise the 360 can do the same.
OTOH, the controllers are supposed
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You could see it two ways
1. They want to avoid re-use of controllers and make more money
2. They want to ensure the experience for all Xbox One users is the same and ensure game companies can rely on the fact that the controller remains the same across the platform
3. Both of the above
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Because the box is a loss leader, Microsoft make their money on software and accessories, and because they don't want to ape Nintendo with their legacy ports in the Wii. If I had an N64 as well I'd have no need for two Wiimotes.
(glad I'm not the only one who noticed the more-than-passing similarity between the Duke and the One and questioned the need for physically incompatible ports).
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yeah that. I could take a photo of my Wii if you like, with some sort of live indication of the date/time, and upload it to imgur?
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Wii Homebrew [wiibrew.org]
The wii is still the most played console in our house.
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So that people can plug the controller in and use it without having to compile their own driver?
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A kernel is an interface between software and hardware (like a game controller...)
Any hardware driver in the linux kerel can be built in the kernel, or as a pluggable module.
Re:Please explain (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that you can not control a kernel driver through an ABI, it all runs as root so bad driver code can corrupt or crash everything. If you can compile and trace/fix the driver yourself that's a manageable risk, if it's just a blob you're at the vendor's mercy. And since Linux doesn't have the market share (carrot) or a big certification program (stick) that wouldn't be a very good idea. The best case scenario is when you have a low-level ABI and can put the high-level driver code in a userspace driver, that way it can't harm the rest of the system at a slight performance penalty due to the context switches.
That does depend on the hardware complying to some low level ABI though, otherwise the kernel wouldn't know how talk to the hardware. Fortunately USB is such a thing, plug in any USB device be it a keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, memory stick or an XBone controller and Linux has a low level kernel driver (one per USB generation I think, actually) to read/write data. That's what the alternate "xboxdrv" driver does, it reads USB events, translates them to input events and returns them to the kernel. It only works for USB though, you still need drivers to talk to PCIe devices, disk drives, network controller and whatnot else though.
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Some of us like low latency input
Is there really a difference in latency between kernel and userland drivers? As in, anywhere near the time it takes to render a frame?
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FTFY. Even the most ardent Stallmanites don't usually try to claim credit for the kernel.
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so MS backs down on locking down X86 systems (as long as all uses by something from MS they look the other way)
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Why does a driver for a game controller need to be incorporated into the kernel?
Because it is easier for somebody else to maintain that way, the issue is that the Linux kernel does not have a stable binary interface so you cannot just provide a driver and expect it to continue working over time. When the kernel ABI is updated any changes to it that any driver depends on needs to be reflected in every one of those drivers.
The alternative is that every driver is hosted in its own repo somewhere else and kernel maintainers then have to pull all those drivers from the various repos and mak
Systemd should replace the kernel. (Score:5, Funny)
Why do we even have a Linux kernel these days?
It's late 2014, for crying out loud. It's almost 2015! We shouldn't have to deal with a Linux kernel. We should just have to install systemd and then we can have a working system.
The Linux kernel needs to go. It needs to be replaced with systemd.
Re:Systemd should replace the kernel. (Score:4, Funny)
Why do we even have a Linux kernel these days?
It's late 2014, for crying out loud. It's almost 2015! We shouldn't have to deal with a Linux kernel. We should just have to install systemd and then we can have a working system.
The Linux kernel needs to go. It needs to be replaced with systemd.
That's foolishness. Neither a kernel nor systemd is needed. My system boots straight into Emacs, and has systemd implemented in elisp.
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Look, if it's not running straight LISP at the hardware level, it's not a real computer. Who needs firmware when you have CONS?
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This has actually been tried.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
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And it can do towers of hanoi, web browsing, email, ftp, and it even includes an editor I think.
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it even includes an editor I think.
Yeah, you can run vi on it, which is the only editor you'll ever really need.
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We need an emacs smartphone! Not necessarily to run emacs on it, but at least we'll have the modifier keys on or around it.
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/me spits out the hook
Re:Please explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the xbox controller is the de facto standard controller in windows and on steam. And Linus knows that to get Linux onto everyones desktop one of the biggest shortcomings in Linux is mainstream commercial software and games. Steam OS (which cqan be installed over linux and not just standalone) sorta fixes that so it helps if the OS already has controller support.
What I am waiting for is when Linux has out of the box support for those $1 usb bluetooth modules. They are a bitch to get working and really needed when youre setting up Linux as a HTPC and you dont want a huge IR module hanging out of your pc.
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uh... thought it had that, given that there's a (now sadly unmaintained) standard: IEE802.15.1, and that most commodity bluetooth gear is driven by chips from just one or two manufacturers (Broadcom is one, I think Ericsson might be another)
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Because 2000 unnecessary context switches per second are 2000 unnecessary context switches per second.
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They are not unnecessary if they provide extra safety.
It is like using C++ vector instead of C array. There is some performance overhead, but it is a fair price to pay for the added safety.
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Why do a driver for random tv-card?
Why not? I want support for the controller. Thank you all :)
Re:Please explain (Score:4, Funny)
Why does a driver for a game controller need to be incorporated into the kernel?
Welcome to /. Mr. Tanenbaum. Please feel free to create an account.
They Needed This (Score:1)
Re:Linux games (Score:5, Informative)
No games to play???
http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com]
998 games and counting
including...
Xcom Enemy Unknown
Wasteland 2
Portal 2
Counter Strike
Left 4 Dead 2
DOTA 2
TF2
Garys Mod
Half Life 2
Civ 5
Borderlands 2
Witcher 2
System Shock 2
Killing Floor
How many games does a platform have to have so it doesnt have "no games to play" ?
Re:Linux games (Score:5, Informative)
World of... oh what was the name of that game... it's on the tip of my tongue....
Goo?
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I have World of Goo on nearly everything I own!
(Wii, Phone, Linux machine, and every my work Mac and work Windows machine)
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turn in your Geek card on your way out, you missed the ONE game that should have been the top of that list: Kerbal Space Program. :)
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How many games does a platform have to have so it doesn't have "no games to play" ?
The PS3 was (and sometimes still is) widely ridiculed in gaming circles for having "no games", despite a launch lineup of 6-23 games (6JP/14US/23EU) and a current library of 796 retail games.
As no similar critiques were lobbed against the Xb360 (1,125) or Wii (1,222), we can conclude that the number of games necessary is somewhere in the range of 800-1100, most likely 1000.
However, your link only shows 702 games for me. Also, the above counts are of retail releases, which excludes a lot of the small indie s
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That 'ps3 has no games' thing is a meme. It's from the early days of the first generation "fat" ps3 back in 2008 or so.
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There's another way of thinking about it. When people say there are "no games" for a system, they mean no games that they care about. If you had a system that only had the 200 top selling titles on it and nothing else, the feeling among the general population wouldn't really be that there were no games for it.
When linux has ports of the vast majority of the top selling PC titles, then people will stop saying there are no games for it, irrespective of the size of the long tail of guff no one cares about and
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At least 10 of the top 20 most played games on Steam have native Linux versions, so they are hardly irrelevant. DOTA2, CS:GO, and TF2 alone have peaks of more than 1.1 million active (in-game) players combined. Some of the rest, like Skyrim, can be run well with Wine, other than lower frame rate compared to Windows.
The issue may be how to install the game, and how to acquire it? .iso under /mnt .. except for the graphical output which stays
Sometimes you can run a Windows game on Wine, but you can't install it. And then maybe you need to crack the game before running it on Wine. And to try the game out, you might need warez downloads anyway.
e.g. to run the first Serious Sam (over 10-year-old at that point) I had to boot into Windows to install it. Then it runs fine under Windows. Then it runs on linux when mounting the
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System Shock 2? You are serious giving it as an example of how good non-windows gaming is? Release dates from wikipedia
August 11, 1999 (Win)
June 18, 2013 (OS X)
April 1, 2014 (Linux)
15 years late exactly - as OP claimed and you tried to disprove.
Most of the other things you mentioned are also quite old. Maybe preparing a list of 10 really good games from 2013-2014 would be better than hundreds of games from 2-15 years ago. Or maybe even better - take 20 best selling games of last 2 years and see how many of
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I'm actually playing through Witcher2 at the moment on Mint, and it is f00king awesome so far.
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it's an OS-agnostic tech built in to the hard drive - the accelerometer is a basic switch that parks the head and deactivates the spindle motor if it detects excessive vibration or acceleration like during a freefall drop off a desk. You know if it's triggered when your OS complains about a delayed write failure (for some reason Windows 7 lacks the ability to send a "spinup" command to the controller), at which point you have to do a cold restart and everything's fine apart from the data that you just lost
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You know if it's triggered when your OS complains about a delayed write failure (for some reason Windows 7 lacks the ability to send a "spinup" command to the controller), at which point you have to do a cold restart and everything's fine apart from the data that you just lost if you didn't already save it.
That is not my experience with HP 3D DriveGuard. Usually when free fall is detected, the head is parked, the HDD LED changes color, and I/O for that disk is blocked. After a couple of seconds, normal operation is restored.
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I cant find details of just what the kernel change was but it seems like the hardware feature is a feature to detect that the laptop is undergoing a sudden shock and shut off the hard disk (move the heads out of the way) to prevent damage to the platters.
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commit 12 July: http://kernel.suse.com/cgit/ke... [suse.com]
huh (Score:2)
...I thought Freefall was a tech built into the hard drive?
(I have a Toshiba laptop with a Toshiba HDD in it, the selling point for me was not in fact the freefall sensor but to be frank, any drop that chips a corner off the laptop case, for me, usually ends up shattering LCDs and glass platters anyway - I can only hope that the platters in the newer drives are made from tougher glass or even back to the aluminium alloy that sensible people build hard drives with (like my 8GB Travelstar that still works aft
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yeah refer to my other post, the tech is built in to a lot of laptop drives, some OEMs use external sensors and sub-HAL triggers, Apple I think is the only one that actually offers some semblance of control (as in allows the user to turn it on and off) which also offers the opportunity to restart the drive and unpark the head without having to coldstart the entire system. My laptop which has all the bells and whistles Toshiba offers, doesn't even bother to pass the message to Windows 7 that a trigger event
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There's APIs that allow developers to tap into the accelerometer directly. Don't think it's an officially supported API, but it does mean that I can wave my MacBook around and have it make lightsaber noises with the right app :)
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I can see that going down well for the Star Wars #7 trailer... o.0
I'm shocked (Score:4, Funny)
Linus missed an opportunity to "adjust" the kernel version numbering scheme. This should have been released as Linux kernel 11.0.
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
Cheers,
Dave
Re:I'm shocked (Score:5, Funny)
Torvalds tried to joke and call it linux 3.18, but that broke the kernelversiond of systemd, which in turn messed the /dev tree so his printer started DDoSing his cellphone.
All in all, a very windowsish experience.
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A Slashdot first!
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not even that, it was announced on Phoronix two weeks ago. Slashdot is behind the curve - as usual. Record here [kernel.org] shows a commit to the kernel source tree on the 13th August.
Chromebook (Score:2)
How long before Chromebooks get this support? It'd be great with my Steam/Chrubuntu setup.
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just as soon as someone wins the Google Pwn2Own prize.
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I'm thinking not, the 3.14 kernel patch fixed a security issue which also broke Win16 support. They've backported it as well so downloading older kernels to try and fix Win16 support under Wine won't work. There is no word on any attempts to fix the issue in the kernel. All I can suggest is to try and get your paws on a Win9x image and install it in Virtualbox (as I've done, though I had to install it as a DOS exec because APM platforms do weird things to modern processors - like cause them to wall it - and
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You can also try and install DOS + Win 3.1 under VirtualBox or under DOSBOX.
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This too, but you'll still need CPUIdle or similar or you'll end up with a completely locked system. APM *does not* play nice.
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It's sad. Just a few days ago I stumbled upon a site about old win16 (Windows 1.0 and 2.0!) which has links to a collection of Windows 3.1 games too.
In particular I found out about a "lost" microsoft game : when Windows 3.1 came out, Reversi was left out but they actually made an updated version of it that looks like a Windows 3.1 game!
http://members.chello.at/theod... [chello.at]
The worst/best thing about it is that it's actually useful to have that game around. I have a gnome 3 version of Reversi (Iagno 3.8.2) which
AMD Hawaii support, you say? (Score:2)
working open-source AMD Hawaii GPU support
I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that's much more front-page-worthy than Xbox 'One' controller support.
Phoronix reports [phoronix.com] performance to be generally satisfactory (which, given the context, is pretty damn good).