And fucked it up by releasing the 8169 with a stepping change that added power management.
The kernel driver didn’t know this, so links would silently not come up, and you wouldn’t know why till you googled and learned you had to rebuild your kernel for your new motherboard.
Wasn’t it Realtek who made 1GbE popular as well by making the cheap 8111 IC over two decades ago?
And fucked it up by releasing the 8169 with a stepping change that added power management.
The kernel driver didn’t know this, so links would silently not come up, and you wouldn’t know why till you googled and learned you had to rebuild your kernel for your new motherboard.