Comment by barrkel
6 days ago
If the observable behavior is bad Linux performance, it's a Linux problem.
There's a saying in motorcycling: it's better to be alive than right. There's no upside in being correct if it leaves you worse off.
There are ways to make things better leveraging the Linux way. Make more usable tools for fixing ACPI deficiencies with hotloadable patches, ways of validating or verifying the patches for safety, ways of sharing and downloading them, and building a community around it.
Moaning that manufacturers only pay attention to where their profits come from is not a strategy at all.
Decompile your ACPI tables and then do a grep for "Linux". You are likely to find it, meaning the vendor took time to think about Linux on their hardware. Some vendors take the time to write good settings and code for the Linux ACPI paths, some dump you into no-man's land on purpose if your OSI vendor string is "Linux".
It's quite literally a vendor problem created by vendors leading anyone that doesn't run Windows astray in some cases.
If you run Linux, then dare to change your OSI vendor string to "Windows", you've entered into bespoke code land that follows different non-standard implementations for every SKU, where it's coded to work with a unique set of hardware and bespoke drivers/firmware on Windows. You also forgo any Linux forethought and optimizations that went into the "Linux" code paths.
You seem to have totally ignored his point...
My point is that from the Linux side, you're damned if you and damned if you don't no matter how you tackle the issue. If the layer above Linux is going to deliberately malfunction and lie on the Linux happy path, or speak some non-standard per-device driver protocol if you lie to use the Windows path, there's not much that can be done.
It's only a "Linux problem" if you're trying to run Linux on hardware that is actively hostile to it. There are plenty of vendors who supply good Linux happy paths in their firmware, using their hardware is the solution to that self-imposed problem.
I think the correct strategy in this case is to return your laptop to the store if it has linux compatibility issues, and keep trying until you find one that works.
i.e. don't support vendors whose laptops don't work in Linux.