linuxmemes @lemmy.world Luffy @lemmy.ml 4w ago

POV: Automatic Driver installation for Linux

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

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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
- @NeatNit @Luffy879 There is amdgpu-pro driver, but anyway it use opensource kernel driver. So it's just ubuntu kernel little outdated
  
  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
  
  @NeatNit @Luffy879 also, many years ago there was closed-source ATI fglrx driver, which required disabling many kernel features. amdgpu-pro is still may contain some parts from fglrx and mention ATI technologies, but now amdgpu-pro not used anymore in most configurations...
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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Just run DDU bro.

Just run scansfx /now bro.

Just run oobe\bypassnro bro.

Just run Chris Titus Tech Tool bro.

No Linux is too hard bro.
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 need is the proprietary NVidia drivers, but you need to do it on Windows as well so... Eh
nixos-hardware go brrr
I hear it every time: But Muh Windows is better, because you dont have to install Drivers!!!11!11elf

I come from a time when you (in Windows) had to hand pick the correct driver for the individual device from a very long list of options to make anything work, not just graphics. Not just "the nvidia driver". Think "driver for the Sapphire RTX 12345.6.7-8 pro super max whatchamacallit RGB edition with anime waifu on the backplate, manufactured between May 21st and august 15th, quality controlled by Jeff and packaged by Tony". If your card was packaged by Bertha instead it wouldn't work. (Mine was always packaged by Bertha. Fuck Bertha.)

I feel so fucking old when I read complaints like this (yeah, I know, it's because I am). Is clicking the highest version number behind the word "nvidia" considered complicated nowadays?
- No, nowadays people expect computers to be skill-less intuitive devices, like toasters. And i kind of agree with them because you need one for everything nowadays, so it makes sense for them to be usable by everyone too. Though it seems schools are also dropping the ball massively on that front.
- The problem is kind of exactly what you described
  
  Normies are used to „run exe and it will work”, so when installing Linux most of the time they will either
  
  not install any driver
  
  try to run the exe
  
  install the Linux driver, but from the website instead of the repos
  
  or (as you described) try and install the driver, but fail at looking up which driver (nvidia has 4 of them for the rtx, gtx, and gt) they need to install
Funny though, I only had to install drivers manually on Windows for years now, but not on the various Linux systems I manage.
But fr fuck Nvidia. Two different distros (Ubuntu/fedora) and couldn't use a Nvidia gpu as primary display.
Most 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

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