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 :-)
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.
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.
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.
If you're this anxious about security, you might not want to be anywhere near a Windows machine.
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.
https://docs.kernel.org/next/wmi/driver-development-guide.ht...
I think if they're honestly not being hyperbolic, they should find a less technical career or hobby. If you're afraid of flying, don't join the Air Force.
~~
I looked it up, the Human Interface Devices usage "Consumer Control" code assigned to "Application Launch - Calculator" is 0x0C0192 or 0x192
This keypress is sent as a scancode/keycode, not an ASCII character. On Windows, this opens calc.exe by default, but you can change which app opens in response to the calculator key by editing the media key mappings in the Registry
And the pmos wiki is severely lacking IMHO.
Currently only do that on one of my older devices, would love to do it on my main device but when I bought it I was in a hurry to get it going and did not have time to unlock the bootloader. Unlocking the bootloader now means having to factory default the device but I simply have too much important stuff set up that it's not worth it. Apparently there's also no great way to backup all partitions of the Android device which I find to be quite strange.
(Not a new issue... here's the problem on an R60) https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/475968/thinkpad-vol...
E14 Gen4 https://forum.manjaro.org/t/thinkpad-e14-gen4-special-keys-m...
E14 Gen2 issues https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/609942/thinkpad-spe...
T510 issues https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=268269
Fn Volume Control Keys Not Working https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=412947
It just takes a cursory glance of search results to see that your ThinkPad experience is not everyone's.