The state of RGB is such a nightmare, and I am very glad OpenRGB exists.
If I wanted to control all LEDs on my relatively new "Gaming" PC (Windows 10), I'd normally need software from Gigabyte for the GPU (which straight up doesn't work [0]), Ducky for the keyboard, a no-name Corsair knockoff software where the name escapes me for the mouse, actual Corsair software for the fans, and NZXT for the AIO.
All of them are not only proprietary, they also use a ton of resources and often times cannot be run in parallel, presumably because they try to talk to the same devices (but never all of them!) - analog to an I2C device that only allows one process to access it at a time. Difference being, there is nothing stopping me from trying - everything will just freeze.
It's fascinating - for something as simple as a bunch of LEDs, these companies must have spent millions of developer hours to produce such heaping piles of garbage - and OpenRGB proves all of them wrong.
[0] If anyone knows of a way to control at least the LED backlight on a Gigabyte Auorus XTREME 3080 (ideally the little LCD as well) - please let me know - OpenRGB can't do it. The Gigabyte software is so unbelievably broken that it doesn't even recognize the GPU, and I feel like I've tried every workaround under the sun. I am unfortunately not very well versed in the Windows world.
I think by 2021 most people will understand this simple reality:
Other than Apple, every other hardware company is _not_ a software company.
Yes, they write software. It is universally garbage. If there is anything well-done about the software, it will be because the hardware company licensed (or more likely, just ripped off) someone else's software.
Google (a software company) cannot make any of the hardware companies in the Android ecosystem produce anything but garbage. Samsung Bixby anybody?
And this should not surprise anyone, as the leadership at a hardware company does not care, at all, about the software. Once you plunked down your coins and bought the hardware, the leadership at the company only sees software as an endless cost center. They want you gone as fast as possible.
It's a classic race to the bottom, and this is the result.
It's also one of the most potent forces driving people to use OpenRGB and every other free/libre open source tool.
Apple definitely is lacking in comparison to their (former) reputation, but it's saying something that they're leagues better than everyone else when it comes to creating an integrated hardware-software ecosystem.
Agreed. I think the transition to Apple Silicon has cemented that. Apple may not have their top minds working on the web version of iCloud, but holy smokes if the people writing the translation layers between x86 and ARM have it figured out. Maybe that's hardware(?) so I'm off the mark, but if it is, some of that genius must have trickled down to the software layer in macOS as well.
I was fully expecting M1 to be a shit show on the software front, but Rosetta 2 has made it a non-issue for all but a minuscule minority of applications. Now that we're well into the M1 lifecycle and more software is moving to native builds, it's just going to keep getting better from a compatibility standpoint.
I have spent my entire career working to produce this kind of outcome.
Here's why hardware companies refuse to participate:
1. CEO says, "You're eroding our business's moat. Let's just rip off linux, shove our garbage driver out the door, and refuse to provide the source code."
2. CFO says, "You're trying to set yourself up as the expert on the standard, creating a career for yourself in the standards body. Sorry, we're not paying for you to fly to conferences. Denied."
(This one is particularly ironic because a company with enough clout to define the standard for the whole industry, and employ the experts on it, would quickly become the industry leader with a modicum of effort.)
3. CTO says, "We use outsourced labor to implement our drivers. Shareholders demand it. As a result we don't own the license to the driver source code. Denied."
I see crowdfunded hardware as the next step in this evolution. It's the innovator's dilemma all over again.
Nvidia has always been known for the quality of its drivers. In fact, early Radeon GPUs were often better on paper but poor drivers dragged it down. It is also no wonder that Nvidia is protective while its competitors tend to play better with the open source community. Intel is also decent and AMD upped their game.
But when it comes to user experience, yes, hardware manufacturers tend to be terrible.
> Other than Apple, every other hardware company is _not_ a software company.
DJI stands as a very notable exception. They are frequently Apple-level good on both hardware and device firmwares. It's a different style, but similar levels of polish.
I agree with you, DJI does have decent software, and not just what they stole or purchased from others.
Comparing them to Apple is not a very big a complement, however. Apple isn't well known for having the best software. Apple often has well-designed interfaces and has worked hard to improve human-computer interfaces (both the hardware and the software). To be clear, I do not consider that to be "best-in-class software" though.
Yeah, everything in this space is so horrible. I have a laptop with an RGB keyboard. Its default settings are bright blue LEDs for every key. The only way to turn it off is to boot Windows 10 and start an incredibly shitty manufacturer program that takes over one minute to display a window on the screen and even longer to become interactive.
It was so bad I reverse engineered it in order to make a Linux version. Couldn't figure out how to intercept the I2C/ACPI/EC stuff but it turned out the LEDs were implemented via USB. Wireshark gave me all the data I needed to write a free software replacement.
There's a feature on the keyboard that lights up keys when they're pressed. I thought it was implemented in hardware... I was wrong. They made a driver for this. It runs in kernel mode, intercepts keystrokes and sends commands to the keyboard telling it to blink the specific LEDs. It's such an insane design, I have no idea why they'd do such a thing.
Last time I tried with anything Gigabyte RGB related I had to disable secure boot as the drivers weren't properly signed ... no thank you.
That's why for my custom watercooled loop I run an Aquaero by Aquacomputer - as it has its own SoC once you've used Aquasuite to setup your fan curves you can remove the USB connection from the device and it will just keep on doing its thing.
Ugh, I feel your pain. The software is often SO bad that I almost always immediately uninstall it after using it.
What's doubly annoying is that the new mouse I bought, a Steelseries Rival 5, doesn't seem to store any settings on the mouse. Instead it relies completely on you running their software. All the other mice I've tried have stored keyboard macros and other settings on the mouse, and because of that I'm able to switch easily between PC and work Macbook and still have have my pageup/pagedown side buttons work.
Open source cross platform RGB, fan control, and input settings would be fantastic.
For [0] try downloading RGBFusion from the APP center [1] instead of their site maybe. It's really annoying and Gigabyte should be ashamed for the quality of their software but I seem to remember that working for me at least once in the past with my Gigabyte Mobo. Not sure if that would work with the screen though.
RGBFusion is probably the worst offender of all proprietary lighting software. Absolutely hot garbage. That said, it does work for me with my Aorus Master.
If I wanted to control all LEDs on my relatively new "Gaming" PC (Windows 10), I'd normally need software from Gigabyte for the GPU (which straight up doesn't work [0]), Ducky for the keyboard, a no-name Corsair knockoff software where the name escapes me for the mouse, actual Corsair software for the fans, and NZXT for the AIO.
All of them are not only proprietary, they also use a ton of resources and often times cannot be run in parallel, presumably because they try to talk to the same devices (but never all of them!) - analog to an I2C device that only allows one process to access it at a time. Difference being, there is nothing stopping me from trying - everything will just freeze.
It's fascinating - for something as simple as a bunch of LEDs, these companies must have spent millions of developer hours to produce such heaping piles of garbage - and OpenRGB proves all of them wrong.
[0] If anyone knows of a way to control at least the LED backlight on a Gigabyte Auorus XTREME 3080 (ideally the little LCD as well) - please let me know - OpenRGB can't do it. The Gigabyte software is so unbelievably broken that it doesn't even recognize the GPU, and I feel like I've tried every workaround under the sun. I am unfortunately not very well versed in the Windows world.