[HN Gopher] Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work
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Remembering Larry Finger, who made Linux wireless work
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 325 points
Date : 2024-06-27 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| ohmyiv wrote:
| RIP. Thanks for the work on wifi drivers. NDISWrapper was a pain.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://lwn.net/ml/all/77997185-86a6-41c5-af7a-74e4e9064437@...
|
| https://hkfuneralhome.com/larry-finger/
| bombcar wrote:
| https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/20240625103929.133292...
|
| This has some serious GNU-Pratchett vibes -
| http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com and nice to see
| tree666 wrote:
| :(
| kapilvt wrote:
| Arstechnica has a solid write up. He did a lot of work making
| linux wifi and driver ecosystem significantly better.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/larry-finger-linux-w...
|
| I remember cursing ndis wrappers and Broadcom wifi ecosystem a
| long time ago, Larry helped fixed that, and mentored many others
| along the way.
|
| quote from the arstechnica article "In a 2023 Quora response to
| someone asking if someone without "any formal training in
| computer science" can "contribute something substantial" to
| Linux, Finger writes, "I think that I have." Finger links to the
| stats for the 6.4 kernel, showing 172,346 lines of his code in
| it, roughly 0.5% of the total."
| dang wrote:
| (This was originally from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40770724 but we merged
| those comments hither)
| haneefmubarak wrote:
| dang, could this merit a black bar in remembrance and honor?
| xwiz wrote:
| Sorry to hear it. His work was a key part of my entry into the
| software world.
| nashashmi wrote:
| I always think of him every week or so for his support of a
| belkin wireless card FG... I had as a broke college student in
| 2005 trying to get linux working on my machine. His driver worked
| better than the belkin supported windows driver.
|
| What do I think about? Why the hell did he volunteer his post
| work hours trying to do this menial job hardware thing. Did he
| not have a family or something? He did. And today they lost him.
| camkego wrote:
| It seems he was the best in the world at broad Linux Wi-Fi
| driver development. That's quite a valuable accomplishment.
| Thanks, Larry Finger.
| freedomben wrote:
| Same, if not for Larry I may not still be a Linux user. Unsung
| hero indeed.
| foobarian wrote:
| > What do I think about? Why the hell did he volunteer his post
| work hours trying to do this menial job hardware thing. Did he
| not have a family or something?
|
| I wondered the same, imagining some 40-something FTE frustrated
| with bureaucratic work projects and with a couple young kids.
| Guess what, this guy passed at 84! Which means the driver work
| happened in his 60+ years. I will be lucky if I can remember my
| name at that age. :-)
| neogodless wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://lwn.net/Articles/979419/
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/news/Larry-Finger-Linux-Wireless
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/larry-finger-linux-w...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks - I've changed the URL to the last one of those (from
| https://www.developer-tech.com/news/2024/jun/24/linux-
| commun...) because it seems to have the most background.
| freedomben wrote:
| I know it violates the general guidelines to change the
| headline, but the new title doesn't make clear that he has
| passed away. I imagine there are a lot of people who might
| overlook it without that key part in the headline.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've grafted on a piece of the subtitle that makes it
| clearer.
| freedomben wrote:
| awesome, looks great, thanks so much!
| loa_in_ wrote:
| > will benefit users for years to come
|
| /years/decades/s
| kirth_gersen wrote:
| What a hero. Rest in peace.
| freedomben wrote:
| Wow, this is sad news indeed for the world at large, but also me
| personally. I'm suddenly in deep regret for having procrastinated
| reaching out the thank him. He doesn't know this, but he was
| somewhat of a mentor for me.
|
| In the early 00s I bought a laptop that had an RTL 8188 CE card
| in it that ran awful under Linux. I forked his driver and made a
| number of changes to it and eventually got my wifi working really
| well (by doing things that could never be upstreamed due to
| legal/regulatory restrictions). Over the years I rebased often
| and reviewed the changes, and learned a lot from watching his
| code. It took a bit of getting used to, but a certain amount of
| beauty and appreciation emerged. One thing was very clear: This
| man was doing _a lot_ of the work to keep the ship together. Even
| just keeping the driver compilable with each kernel release often
| took some non-trivial refactoring, which he did reliably and
| well.
|
| Larry, you will be missed my friend. RIP.
|
| If you are waiting to reach out to somebody, don't wait too long
| or it may suddenly be too late. The years can slip by in a flash.
| maCDzP wrote:
| This is what makes me come to HN every single day.
| nanna wrote:
| This is what makes me come here every single minute my anti-
| procastination setting allows me to.
| freedomben wrote:
| Found a small typo, but it's too late to edit the original. I
| meant early 2010s (not early 00s)
| exe34 wrote:
| > Even just keeping the driver compilable with each kernel
| release often took some non-trivial refactoring,
|
| I realise that the kernel contributors themselves are mostly
| volunteers and as such can just do what they want, and writers
| of non-upstreamed drivers will need to get used to chasing
| trunk, but to me this sort of thing seems like a waste of human
| talent. once something works, it should never not work again.
| it seems to me that despite all the layers of cruft that we've
| accumulated over the decades haven't really helped much with
| this, in fact they probably mean more work just to stay still.
| freedomben wrote:
| I've struggled philosophically with that very question as
| well (especially having to update my own WORKING code just to
| conform to API changes), and I'm very torn on it. I just
| don't think there's a good point to pick at which to "freeze"
| the API and say no more changes are allowed. It would greatly
| hamper innovation and IMHO ultimately lead the Linux kernel
| having major forks or being displaced by something more
| adaptable. Despite the pain points, I think it's an overall
| good, though that doesn't stop the stinging of having to keep
| up. It really forces you to either be in or out. It can be
| very difficult to be a part time contributor.
| exe34 wrote:
| I've always wondered about how versioning could help. i
| don't think it would work with a monolithic kernel, but a
| microkernel might allow you to run multiple versions of
| different things, and they would still work.
|
| I've also fantasised about the same thing in application
| programming languages - e.g. the way racket runs loads of
| different dialects, you could also have versioning for
| different things running at the same time.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Just accept the fact that software does age with time. If
| it didn't change a literal bit, the real world in runs for
| and the software ecosystem it runs on did. Any software
| older than 10 years should be rewritten from absolute
| scratch, not be kept on life support at ever increasing
| expense.
| exe34 wrote:
| virtual machines exist, and it might be easier to run
| something in them than to port them every two years.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Much of windows OS weirdness can be attributed to the fact
| they have a relentless dedication to backwards compatibility.
| wvenable wrote:
| Much of Linux's weirdness can be attributed to that as well
| -- at least in userland.
| Teknomancer wrote:
| Legendary. Larry lead a full life. He mentored many hundreds over
| the years and his legacy will live on in those who he taught and
| inspired.
| tomrod wrote:
| This guy deserves the black bar, certainly.
| 01acheru wrote:
| I came here to say the same, this guy pushed Linux desktop
| adoption forward like few others by himself and just for
| passion.
|
| RIP
| dbolgheroni wrote:
| Besides Larry Finger, another Linux kernel developer passed away
| this week: https://lwn.net/Articles/979617/
| ginko wrote:
| People keep making fun of the year of the linux desktop, but for
| me that year was distinctly around 2007 when wifi started working
| mostly painlessly on my thinkpad.
| renewiltord wrote:
| WiFi in the late 2000s early 2010s was a crazy place, man.
| Looking at the code it's wild how much he contributed to the
| process. Damn.
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