I hear it every time: But Muh Windows is better, because you dont have to install Drivers!!!11!11elf
And every time I have to force myself to tell them that its even Easier to install drivers on Linux, because you dont even need to know if you have an AMD or an Nvidia Card, you just open the Software and click on the recommended install
Do people really say this? I’ve literally never had to manually install drivers on Linux. Almost everything is built in to the kernel except NVIDIA drivers, which every distribution I’ve used has an option for in the installer.
Meanwhile, I’ve frequently had to go to a website to download and install drivers on Windows. And then it’s a dice roll if that “driver” trojans an entire suite of bloatware onto your machine.
It’s hard to ger rid of the FUD from the past. There used to be a time where you were happy to be able to boot your computer. Sound, networking (ha, forget about wifi), it was all a gamble or a hassle to get working. To keep it that way Microsoft somehow convinced the industry to make Winmodems. They intentionally crippled ACPI to only work with Windows.
Then came the intermediate time where it was 50/50. Maybe you could get the wifi working with the Windows driver and some ndiswrapper magic. Maybe the hardware vendor had some driver that would only work with exaxtly one kernel version. Before ATI was bought by AMD it was better to buy nVidia because their drivers didn’t suck nearly as much as ATI’s.
And now at least big vendors add Linux drivers before their new hardware even hits the market. Most hardware works out of the box. Even small specialised stuff. Printer? Scanner? Your system has it configured before you even thought about using them. And ACPI is so crippled on Windows that it can’t even suspend a laptop properly half of the time. But Linux does it like a champ!
Windows drivers are such a mess. Recently had an issue so checked if there were updates.
Windows: nope, no update. Lenovo: no updates in their bloatware.
Decided to check Intel bloatware for updates and yup, there actually were driver updates.
Meanwhile on Linux partition, I just updated my packages and the problem was fixed.
Recently built a PC with an AMD GPU. Tried to figure out how to install AMD drivers, because Mint’s driver manager didn’t seem to offer anything like it would for nvidia… Turns out AMD drivers are just part of the Linux kernel and you don’t need to install them at all. Nice.
I did have one problem though - my hardware is too new and the kernel shipped with Mint doesn’t really support it yet. But it was surprisingly easy to install a newer kernel. And anyway for any PC that doesn’t use bleeding edge hardware, this would never be an issue.
<3 Mint and Linux
And now AMDGPU-PRO has dropped the proprietary OpenGL and Vulkan drivers and AMF, so the only thing you would get from it that’s different from the open stack is the OpenCL driver and maybe AMDVLK. https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/release-notes/RN-AMDGPU-UNIFIED-LINUX-25-10-1.html
You can use AMDVLK with the mesa just fine
I play FF XIV on a gaming laptop with a n onboard Nvidia GPU. The only thing I had to install was the game, and the Flatpak, Proton, and XIV Launcher communities have made that trivial.
I use Debian stable.
The only driver I have to install is None.
I legit have nothing in my PC that requires a driver which is not in the kernel with userspace tools/utility preinstalled on any normal distro (normal as in not Arch etc. I use Arch btw.)
Occasionally you will have issues with ancient hardware needing specific broadcom stuff. Also, Surface tablets require a little bit of work.
Other than that I have been having a great time not installing drivers on Linux for the 7 other computers I have recently been managing.
HP printers are even easier on Linux than Windows with hplip.
But… then you’re using an HP printer. 🤮
Yeah, there is that downside.
I just bought an ancient enterprise color printer from auction for a song. It came with an additional full set of unopened toner, all for less than half the cost of the toner.
The upside is that I will have a color printer I can manage and use for printing books.
The fact that it’s a laser printer certainly redeems you! I’m dumb and bought a decent Canon printer several years ago (do they still make them?), and have used it a few times since then. I haven’t checked recently, but am 100% certain all the cartridges are dried up. If I ever wanted to use it again, I’d have to blow out all the dust from it, clean the nozzles, buy more of all the colors (even if I’m printing b&w), and align the printing again. So much better to just go to a print shop the few rare times I’ll need it. I don’t want to make assumptions, but I bet that’s the case for most people…
If you are lucky, you may be able to reclaim the ink with rubbing alcohol, but I always spent forever on that and rarely had good results.
https://www.wikihow.com/Clean-Ink-Cartridges
If that doesn’t work, I’m a fan of blotting the cartridge on an alcohol-soaked paper towel and then dragging the cart along a piece of paper to scrub the nozzle.
I have gotten ink working that way, personally and professionally.
And even so, if you require ancient drivers its probably even wonkier to get them working on Windows
I support several hundred Windows desktops, and most of them work okay out of the box. Since we are stripping down the Windows image, we are injecting the drives at imaging, so it is very difficult to compare.
I CAN discuss that Windows 11 24h2 appears to have issues with scanners, and requires going into device manager and telling the computer to use the driver you just installed and is already selected.
There for a while your could reach pretty far back and get 7 and 8 drivers working on 10 as long as they were whql. Often enough, XP and older drivers would work, assuming you used comparability mode and did just the right dance. I’m seeing lsa blocking some of that now.
Again, it is difficult to compare a professional environment to my personal fleet, just considering scale and one-off cases.
The only driver I need is the proprietary NVidia drivers, but you need to do it on Windows as well so… Eh
nixos-hardwarego brrrMost problematic devices which not have firmware inside them to work so old printers before 2015 I guess and scanners is trash cause they use their own proprietary protocol ,WiFi adapters generally works but exception exist
