Driver support on Linux is depressing?

[Gat Pelsinger]

I am new to Linux and I am happy to make the switch, but one thing that I have always been upset about is the driver support. Of course, Linux is not to blame (at some extent) but the manufacturers. What if I have a sick gaming mouse but don't have the appropriate drivers to fully utilize its abilities? Not even that, but hardware accelerated devices like a sound card (integrated) also don't have the appropriate manufacturer made drivers for Linux. The only thing you mostly have a driver for is your GPU. I know, drivers are integrated in Linux, and its just plug and play, but those drivers are generic, not manufacturer drivers. This makes the system feel very incomplete. There are so many devices I can talk about but I think you get the point. So, that's just how life is on Linux, or am I assuming something wrong?

[Skipple]

24 minutes ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

So, that's just how life is on Linux, or am I assuming something wrong?

There are really only four choices: 

1. Default drivers good the job well enough
2. Manufactures fully support their hardware on linux and create the appropriate software
3. People and random GitHub pages fill in the gaps.
4. Don't use that device on Linux

ooorrrr you become really good at scripting and become one of those random GitHub page maintainers yourself. 

Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux. 

[da na]

Linux has fine support for chipsets and GPUs but almost nothing else works.

I've had a couple people INSIST that I MUST use Linux on my old laptops but... everything is broken. Card readers, cameras, soundcards, hell even the USB ports sometimes don't work. Unfortunately that's just how Linux is.

[wasab]

If your hardwares are not supported then they are not supported. Look into Linux compatibility list to see what hardwares, e.g. printers, wireless cards ect run on it. Same thing for softwares.  In short, do your research. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

21 minutes ago, da na said:

Linux has fine support for chipsets and GPUs but almost nothing else works.

I've had a couple people INSIST that I MUST use Linux on my old laptops but... everything is broken. Card readers, cameras, soundcards, hell even the USB ports sometimes don't work. Unfortunately that's just how Linux is.

You must have some very weird hardware as that's simply not true.  Generally Linux has excellent hardware support, much better than Windows when it comes to supporting older hardware.

 

It can be less obvious for things like mice, for example there is nothing obvious to tell you that you need the Solaar application to get the advanced features of Logitech mice, but it exists.

 

Sound cards are well supported with usually better sound quality in my experience, cameras might be a bit spotty if they are old but reasonably modern ones should use a fairly generic driver.

[8tg]

The only things you’re going to see full Linux support with in terms of hardware are modern high end business laptops that offer Linux from the factory, and their model family.

The more obscure the less likely something will work, and the more gamer-y, definitely less likely to, revision, have proper software support beyond the basic driver.

 

For example, my thinkpad x1 nano is the only machine I have which currently runs Linux consistently. 11th gen mobile i7, iris xe graphics, etc, modern stuff.

Everything works fully and without issue. Battery life is somehow better. The webcam and shutter work, the quad microphone input works,  plugging it into a thunderbolt 4 dock everything works fine. Biometrics works fine. Just lose windows hello but that’s obviously a windows thing.

It even has its own display driver or monitor profile which is a rare occurrence on Linux.

 

Meanwhile my old via artigo a1200 falls too heavily into the old and obscure category with its via Eden dual core and s3 chrome 9 graphics. It doesn’t have graphics driver support without a third party option installed, the Ethernet doesn’t work ootb, and the cfast slot has no chance in hell of working.

 

linux is just like that, stick on simple mainstream or business hardware if you want it to be complete

[OhioYJ]

As some one who uses Linux as their primary OS, I generally do a little looking before buying, but generally I've found the opposite to be true. Linux hardware support for me has been better.  I'm typing this actually right now from my main PC (13900k / 4090 machine) that is a dual boot machine (Windows only for gaming) that has a brand new HP laser printer that only works in Linux for some reason, Windows just disagrees with it. 

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

I am new to Linux

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

I have always been upset

How long have you been using linux for? I guess always is a short amount of time? It's pretty well known that Linux has more hurdles to jump through to get a solid fully functioned machine.

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

As some one who uses Linux as their primary OS, I generally do a little looking before buying, but generally I've found the opposite to be true. Linux hardware support for me has been better.  I'm typing this actually right now from my main PC (13900k / 4090 machine) that is a dual boot machine (Windows only for gaming) that has a brand new HP laser printer that only works in Linux for some reason, Windows just disagrees with it. 

I've been using Linux for 24 years and it must be at least a decade since I've found any hardware compatibility problem.

 

I don't mean just modern hardware, I mean the fact the Linux kernel driver support has gotten so much better in that time that stuff that didn't work on Linux back then, does now.

[wasab]

16 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

It can be less obvious for things like mice, for example there is nothing obvious to tell you that you need the Solaar application to get the advanced features of Logitech mice, but it exists.

This is one of the strange paradox on Linux. Older hardwares run decent but the newest released hardware run poorly if they run at all. I remember getting my amd 6xxx series graphics card and the mesa drivers simply had zero support for it. it wasn't until 6 months later that the newest release ubuntu has all of it baked in and working out of the box. The only way for me to get it working in the early days was following this video tutorial that manually installs amd propietary driver and the package was unstable so although it worked, it crashed my PC a lot. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

12 minutes ago, wasab said:

This is one of the strange paradox on Linux. Older hardwares run decent but the newest released hardware run poorly if they run at all. I remember getting my amd 6xxx series graphics card and the mesa drivers simply had zero support for it. it wasn't until 6 months later that the newest release ubuntu has all of it baked in and working out of the box. The only way for me to get it working was following this video tutorial that manually installs amd propietary driver and the package was unstable so although it worked. It crashed my PC a lot. 

I don't know about AMD, people rave about it having excellent GPU support on Linux but when I tried it on an APU I had issues, though mainly getting the compute drivers installed rather than normal 3D support.

Same with Intel that works fine for most people by default, but I couldn't fix screen tearing so resorted to an NVIDIA card with the proprietary drivers.

 

Admittedly NVIDIA can be tricky like you describe, had plenty of issues trying to get picture at all when booting the installer on newer cards due to NVIDIA BS (they take a while to release the firmware to support basic acceleration on Linux) and the fiddling to get the proprietary driver installed - but once its installed its absolutely solid.

 

So yes it can be more tricky with certain newer hardware at first, but once you've learnt any quirks then you can use that knowledge again in the rare case you ever need to reinstall - which is practically never.

[da na]

22 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

You must have some very weird hardware as that's simply not true.  Generally Linux has excellent hardware support, much better than Windows when it comes to supporting older hardware.

 

It can be less obvious for things like mice, for example there is nothing obvious to tell you that you need the Solaar application to get the advanced features of Logitech mice, but it exists.

 

Sound cards are well supported with usually better sound quality in my experience, cameras might be a bit spotty if they are old but reasonably modern ones should use a fairly generic driver.

Much of the aforementioned stuff is proprietary rather than a generic driver. Cameras from Creative Labs, card readers from Ricoh, etc - all needing a specific driver, and a lot of those just don't exist in Linux land. It's not hard to modify an XP or Vista driver to run on Windows 7 or 10, though.

Multimedia featuers are also broken on Linux - Dell QuickSet, HP QuickPlay etc. applications do not have Linux versions and thusly the multimedia enhancements they provide are Windows exclusive.

[Alex Atkin UK]

11 minutes ago, da na said:

Much of the aforementioned stuff is proprietary rather than a generic driver. Cameras from Creative Labs, card readers from Ricoh, etc - all needing a specific driver, and a lot of those just don't exist in Linux land. It's not hard to modify an XP or Vista driver to run on Windows 7 or 10, though.

Multimedia featuers are also broken on Linux - Dell QuickSet, HP QuickPlay etc. applications do not have Linux versions and thusly the multimedia enhancements they provide are Windows exclusive.

Specifically what Creative Labs cameras?  Camera support is pretty good, now specific features perhaps no as those aren't driver related, they are down to the vendor specific software.

 

Same with the Dell and HP stuff, you're talking about applications not drivers.  I mean I'm not shocked you're suggesting driver problems with Dell and HP either, they are notorious companies for doing things none-standard ways.  Its not Linux fault those companies deliberately do things in an obtuse manner as they want you to stick with the software that was provided with their device.

 

Now multimedia support in general then sure, Linux is still very much behind when it comes to integrating everything effectively (though it does work but not so easily in specific use cases), its part of what is going on with the shift to Wayland and PipeWire.  Its already leagues better than it used to be to a point there are distros specific to audio production.

 

So really it comes down to more that there is not necessarily a Linux distro that is a "one size fits all" case.  If you have a specific task in mind, it can be better to choose a distro aimed at that task and then it likely does it better than Windows would.

[emosun]

linux is...... the best idea executed by the most toxic of men to say the least

[wasab]

Dell does make linux laptops, mostly ultra books(dell xps 13 developer edition), time to time tho. These machine are slick and sick. 

[goatedpenguin]

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

What if I have a sick gaming mouse but don't have the appropriate drivers to fully utilize its abilities?

Use Solaar for logitech, razercfg for razer mouses(that's the majority)

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

driver for is your GPU

AMD is easier on Linux however, NVIDIA proprietary drivers aren't that hard to install.

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

but those drivers are generic

And they are better most of the time than its windows counterparts.

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

So, that's just how life is on Linux, or am I assuming something wrong?

Wrong, Linux has one of the widest support of drivers possible. The Linux kenrel itself is pretty small, what makes it really big are all the drivers it supports.

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

hardware accelerated devices like a sound card (integrated) also don't have the appropriate manufacturer made drivers for Linux

What intergerated soundcard are you using, cuz most motherboard with in built soundcards work fine on Linux.

[goatedpenguin]

6 minutes ago, wasab said:

Dell does make linux laptops, mostly ultra books(dell xps 13 developer edition), time to time tho. These machine are slick and sick. 

System76 has some really good ones too imo.

[da na]

Just now, goatedpenguin said:

What intergerated soundcard are you using, cuz most motherboard with in built soundcards work fine on Linux.

And to add on, soundcards haven't done real hardware acceleration in quite a long time - MS killed off hardware accel for soundcards in Vista, so soundcard manufacturers mostly stopped bothering.

[da na]

13 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Specifically what Creative Labs cameras?  Camera support is pretty good, now specific features perhaps no as those aren't driver related, they are down to the vendor specific software.

 

Same with the Dell and HP stuff, you're talking about applications not drivers.  I mean I'm not shocked you're suggesting driver problems with Dell and HP either, they are notorious companies for doing things none-standard ways.  Its not Linux fault those companies deliberately do things in an obtuse manner as they want you to stick with the software that was provided with their device.

 

Now multimedia support in general then sure, Linux is still very much behind when it comes to integrating everything effectively (though it does work but not so easily in specific use cases), its part of what is going on with the shift to Wayland and PipeWire.  Its already leagues better than it used to be to a point there are distros specific to audio production.

 

So really it comes down to more that there is not necessarily a Linux distro that is a "one size fits all" case.  If you have a specific task in mind, it can be better to choose a distro aimed at that task and then it likely does it better than Windows would.

I have a feeling had these laptops come out today instead of in 2005-2009, Linux driver support would be just fine. 

It's a bit of a shame that many of the things that make old laptops good depend on proprietary (Windows-only) applications.

[goatedpenguin]

41 minutes ago, emosun said:

linux is...... the best idea executed by the most toxic of men to say the least

If your talking about Linus Trovalds, than you should go see the crap he has to deal with(dumb ppl on his mailing lists), not to mention he has a very high standard of volunteers who are contributing and he has to have so. It's a very big responsibility to have when basically every company and the whole internet runs on top of Linux. 

[wasab]

36 minutes ago, emosun said:

linux is...... the best idea executed by the most toxic of men to say the least

you arent wrong linus is an asshole.

 

linusrants/table.md at master · corollari/linusrants (github.com)

 

this is list of his most notorious mailing list abuses. brilliant man but i imagine also someone who is difficult to work with. steve jobs, founder of apple is another well-known tech asshole for anyone who knows him well enough.  he would straight up tell his subordinate that their work is complete utter crap if thats what he felt. 

[goatedpenguin]

No human is ever perfect, some are less "perfect" than others. Steve tho was a piece of work. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 minutes ago, wasab said:

you arent wrong linus is an asshole.

 

linusrants/table.md at master · corollari/linusrants (github.com)

 

this is list of his most notorious mailing list abuses. brilliant man but i imagine also someone who is difficult to work with. steve jobs, founder of apple is another well-known tech asshole for anyone who knows him well enough.  he would straight up tell his subordinate that their work is complete utter crap if thats what he felt. 

Quite a common trait for clever people I suspect, little tolerance for others.

 

From what I've read, the whole core kernel development team can be quite hard to work with.

[goatedpenguin]

No Bullshit people are the reason this world is still functional.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

No Bullshit people are the reason this world is still functional.

Unfortunately we also get people like Elon Musk with a similar attitude but completely lacking the skill or reason, forcing engineers to do dumb things like make the Cybertruck.