[20:29] <Zahovay> Hello, anyone active here?
[20:32] <Hirppa> hi
[20:32] <Hirppa> this seems to be abandoned channel, nothing happening in here
[20:36] <Zahovay> Well I would like to join the ubuntu developer team especially aiming to have power management implemented. Exactly for laptops. Gonna be really hard work but then the laptop section could awake
[20:36] <Hirppa> perhaps you should join #ubuntu-devel channel for that
[20:37] <Zahovay> I have joined a few channels but this should become my main channel later on
[20:37] <Hirppa> oh, I see :)
[20:38] <Hirppa> it would be awesome to get better power management for laptops!
[20:38] <Zahovay> I am really passionate about ubuntu for laptop I hope I can bring changes. Lots of my friends want to use ubuntu on laptop but the lack of power management made them change back to windows.....
[20:39] <Hirppa> yeah, that has been one of the biggest problems with Linux laptops always
[20:40] <Zahovay> Well I am learning programming at University attending IOT labor at my freetime, I've learned a lot about performance and power management. I will try all I can
[20:41] <Hirppa> it's quite difficult problem to fix, though. For example the open source driver 'nv' for nvidia gpu's is consumes quite a lot of power, and no one has been able to fix that so far
[20:42] <Hirppa> the problem with that one is lack of hardware documentation
[20:43] <Zahovay> Well, first of all I have to catch up where the development is at. As far as I know a basic power management is also missing which could improve a lot not even considering the hardware.
[20:44] <Hirppa> then there's the headache of buggy kernel modules behaving badly during wake-up from hibernation, although those problems luckily are not so severe anymore as they were a decade ago
[20:45] <Hirppa> so a lot of very different kind of issues with laptops
[20:46] <Hirppa> what do you mean by "basic power management"?
[20:46] <Zahovay> Would you help me getting involved with the first steps of becoming an ubuntu developer?
[20:47] <Hirppa> hmm... I think folks at #ubuntu-devel channel are better to help you with that, as they are Ubuntu developers, I am not
[20:47] <Zahovay> I mean by "basic power management" that as far as I know it was designed to be desktop OS which means a lot of unused modul working in the background not even optimizing for battery.
[20:48] <Hirppa> oh, yes
[20:48] <Hirppa> that's true
[20:49] <Hirppa> Google encountered that problem also when they began development of Android, and they ended up making quite big architectural changes to the whole system
[20:50] <Zahovay> may I ask without any offense what do you do here? are you involved with other parts of contributing? do you actually program? you seem to know quite a lot..
[20:54] <Hirppa> perhaps system administrator would best describe my skills with Ubuntu -- and yes, I'm not a software developer, I have just been interested in the overall architecture of systems, so my knowledge does not go into that deep into detail as a developer's knowledge would go
[20:55] <Hirppa> I'm not affiliated with the Ubuntu project in any way, just a user of Ubuntu
[20:58] <Hirppa> but anyway... one of the big changes that Google made to the Linux kernel running in Android systems is that processes do not run all the time, as is case with Ubuntu -- instead the kernel runs only a few processes at a time, and the rest of the processes are hibernated
[21:00] <Zahovay> Oh I see, well I do not really have architecture knowledge of systems yet that comes the next semester but I am really curious
[21:01] <Hirppa> :)
[21:01] <Hirppa> that will be interesting stuff
[21:03] <Zahovay> I know I cant wait for it
[21:04] <Hirppa> I used to study computer science at university a few years ago, although I haven't graduated
[21:04] <Hirppa> defenetely interesting stuff :)
[21:06] <Zahovay> well it is really hard to get graduated.. I cannot accept any jobs because I know I would leave the University.. I can learn so much more from real world projects.. I gather all the basics from the NET
[21:08] <Hirppa> hehe, yeah, that's quite common to drop out of uni after getting a job
[21:09] <Hirppa> but on the other hand having some kind of job already during studies is also a good thing, one get's to apply all the learned things in real projects and lean more by doing so
[21:11] <Zahovay> I agree, although my attitude cant allow me to do so. I can only join these kind of projects which does not pay so that I finish my studies
[21:11] <Hirppa> :)
[21:11] <Zahovay> at my country this is already a thing that hardly anyone does so I will actually find job more easily
[21:11] <Hirppa> open source contributions are a very good attachment to your CV
[21:12] <Zahovay> Though I only want to make ubuntu be a little bit better so I can drop windows. (I have had enough of it)
[21:12] <Zahovay> But yet, I enjoy the 10 hours of this weak laptop
[21:16] <Hirppa> I think in the long run Windows really does not have a future
[21:18] <Hirppa> Ubuntu is getting better and better year by year, so there must come a point at which it really becomes the preferred option for most users
[21:18] <Zahovay> Well, I hope so. The lack of designers, the attitude. I actually have not seen any improvement just updates.. updates that did actually nothing but annoyed me.
[21:19] <Zahovay> I have also seen posts about linux taking over even the gaming section.. that would be a kick to windows.. once developers start using cross platform librarys like vulkan, microsoft has to aim a new market
[21:20] <Hirppa> one problem that Linux distributions have had during the last 15 years has been the architecturally outdated X11 windowing system, that is running the graphical desktop. Now that it is in progress to be replaced by a modern implementation, Wayland, things really look bright
[21:22] <Zahovay> well I read about this but I know nothing about this topic yet :/
[21:22] <Zahovay> but seems promising
[21:24] <Hirppa> by "architecturally outdated" I mean the fact that the X Window System was invented in 1984, and has only seen incremental updates during the years, but the basic architecture is still from the 80's
[21:24] <Hirppa> Wayland drops all that historical burden
[21:26] <Zahovay> This sounds pretty good
[21:28] <Hirppa> Apple Computer abandoned X11 around the year 1999 because it was outdated already then, and they implemented their own replacement for Mac OS X systems; that is one of the reasons why Macs have been so popular compared to Linux
[21:29] <Zahovay> Well I know most developers cant agree with me but I like Mac OS X and ios too, however I would never develop for that platform.. I really think they do well the programming part.. Maybe I just know only a few mistakes they do
[21:30] <Zahovay> for example I wish I knew why OS X can work for so long from battery.. I know they also have a hardware implementation to make power efficiency even better but I think their software knows something I do not
[21:30] <Hirppa> macOS is a very polished system that works quite well out of the box -- actually I'm writing this on a Mac :)
[21:31] <Zahovay> Once I will have one too
[21:31] <Zahovay> though if Ubuntu improves enough maybe I will not buy Mac, will see
[21:31] <Hirppa> Apple has the advantage that they manufacture all the hardware themselves, so Apple software engineers have access to all documentation of the hardware components, and they get to choose the components based on power consumption
[21:32] <Hirppa> Linux software developers quite often do not have access to hardware documentation, which makes things very difficult
[21:32] <Zahovay> I do not even know how Linux reverse engineer all thoose processors..
[21:33] <Hirppa> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
[21:33] <Zahovay> one conceptional question. If I manage to contribute an awesome driver for a specific processor to ubuntu. it will be pushed back on debian. Will it be pushed to the linux core?
[21:36] <Hirppa> Well, that depends on many things. If you contribute a good quality driver that is of course quite likely to be accepted to the upsream Linux kernel by Linus Torvalds, who runs the Linux project, and from there it will become available to all Linux distributions
[21:36] <Zahovay> Well this clean room design is useful to know but I though of the process of how reverse engineering a processor can be done
[21:36] <Hirppa> Then there's also code sharing back and forth between Ubuntu and Debian project
[21:36] <Zahovay> yes I read about it a lot
[21:36] <Zahovay> and Linux Mint steals it all
[21:37] <Hirppa> well, it's free to take :)
[21:37] <Zahovay> Thats right
[21:39] <Hirppa> That clean room design comes in handy in situations when hardware documentation is not available, and developers have to analyze how commercial binary-only drivers work, and based on their findings they build their own drivers for the hardware
[21:40] <Hirppa> I haven't done such work, so I don't know the details how it is done
[21:52] <Zahovay> well
[21:52] <Zahovay> they said I have to join the upstream to make ubuntu more power efficient..
[21:52] <Zahovay> that sounds silly since the upstream does so much more than that
[21:53] <Hirppa> hardware related development is usually done directly to upstream Linux kernel
[21:53] <Hirppa> distributions like Ubuntu just take the kernel and use it
[21:54] <Hirppa> of course there might be exceptions, but that's how it usually goes
[21:55] <Zahovay> Well yea but .. it might sound silly but I wanted to help ubuntu get on top of all other distros with that.. seems like I cannot do that
[21:57] <Hirppa> hmm. If you woud contribute awsome hardware support related changes to Ubuntu those would end up being copied to other distributions anyway sooner or later
[21:58] <Zahovay> yes I know that
[21:59] <Zahovay> but it shouldnt be me who learns again a new subsystem. I just found my way to ubuntu, registrated everywhere
[21:59] <Zahovay> and now i should keep on going
[21:59] <Zahovay> Also this way ubuntu would have a little advantage making it the most updated distro
[21:59] <Hirppa> well, working with upstream Linux kernel does not mean abandoning Ubuntu
[22:00] <Zahovay> I know.. but if I work in the upstream ubuntu will not have advantage
[22:00] <Hirppa> it just means that you contribute your code to them, and from there it will eventually get copied to Ubuntu
[22:02] <Hirppa> hmm... I can't see the competition between distributions that way. Usually everyone is happy also when their competitor gets things improved -- the reason for being competitors is for other reasons, usually relating to different views on how software should be packaged, what should be installed by default, and such things
[22:05] <Hirppa> Ubuntu has taken an approach to be easy for non-technically oriented users, but it's not really a problem for Ubuntu if other different kinds of distributions flourish also
[22:06] <Zahovay> well I know I started to understand the backend of all this
[22:06] <Zahovay> still I wanted to develop for ubuntu laptop mode tools
[22:06] <Hirppa> :)
[22:07] <Zahovay> though it seems like the kernel core might have something like that too
[22:17] <Zahovay> im out for now, nice to meet you
[22:18] <Hirppa> see you :)