this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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I have had to spend so much more time thinking about drivers on Windows than on Linux it's not even funny
And what are Nvidia users supposed to do?
I have never had problems with Nvidia drivers on Linux mint detects them and ask if you want to install the official drivers
LMDE didn’t install the DKMS modules on my kid’s PC, so the nVidia drivers never loaded after a new kernel got installed. I do enough tech support at work so we chucked Pop!_OS on the PC (and set it up with btrfs and timeshift-autosnap) instead. No more problems.
May not be a problem with mainline Mint, of course, but there are weirdos like me who prefer the Debian edition.
Don't be ashamed of using Debian!
Far from it, Debian is one of my favorites, though I run EndeavourOS on my main machine.
It’s Linux Mint Debian Edition that’s the oddball, but in a good way.
That's untill you switch to Wayland and realize just how shotty Nvidia's support can be.
They're supposed to buy an AMD card, obviously. /s
I wish AMD had a competitive 4090 alternative
Use POP OS which has NVIDIA Drivers in the iso
Or Nobara which has a dedicated Nvidia install tool in its welcome screen
Unfortunately it has weird issues with my bog standard Intel HP Omen laptop and a 2060 GPU.
Basically any kind of sleep mode kills the GPU. I have go into Display settings and force a re-detect to wake it. Kind of a pain when you use the laptop connected to an external monitor with the lid closed.
...to let the distro pick the best driver for you? That's what I do at least.
I'm starting to wonder if this is a meme or if people are actually having problems.
Less about problems and more about performance/features in games. How much of a hassle is it to get dlss, ray tracing etc running? How's the performance impact from not properly supported drivers.
Suffer. It’s ok I’m used to suffering for graphics cards. Thanks bitcoin!
It depends on your distro
cry because no Wayland
I don't know how Linux users are using Windows but whenever I see comments like these I'm surprised they aren't using OSX or a tablet instead of a computer by now because they clearly don't know what they're doing...
Yeah, I also dont get it. Most drivers by default are for windows. I have no idea how those people managed to get this confused on windows, of all OSs. Part of me thinks that its just linux circlejerk and bandwagon, but some of those has to be true.
And since 2012 Windows Update can get most of them anyway
That's exactly what it is. It's people that have had to get so far into the weeds with an operating system that I think they just enjoy the pain. Looking through some of the Justifications for hating Windows on here and it's like, "I tried to use a 20 year old proprietary Webcam for a video game console and it didn't work immediately on Windows" or a guy that had issues with getting a serial port like rs-232 or something. Neither of these things are a typical user case. These are people that are specifically looking for trouble. Use a webcam from the last decade. Use a usb port for God's sake.There is a reason why the "I use Arch btw" joke exists
I like Linux. I use Redhat at work. But Christ the Linux Fandom is as bad as Apple.
I hard disagree. The fandom is not that bad, sure some are way too passionate. But the fandom is way broader then those whom are vocal online a FOSS federated chat platform. Not everyone use Linux because they hate Windows or MacOS, some use Linux because they've seriously considered the pros and cons of each available OS and come to the one that works best for them in a day to day. Some are using it to revive old hardware Windows doesn't support anymore so they can save a few bucks (and the environment at the same time). Some bought a Steam Deck and genuinely enjoyed it and decided to try Linux on desktop and like it, and so on.
Meanwhile : Apple fanboys are the way they are because "Apple daddy can do no wrong! my system is completely unhaxable! my brand shows off how rich I am! ew! omg! 🤢 is that an Android? POOR, WE GOT A BROKIE" at least with my personal IRL interaction with a few of them.
Like at least Linux is a community project that allows you to actually get involved in the development and contribute to it. But Apple has none of that, so it makes no damn sense to be that obsessed with a brand name just because it's
brand.So just as a voice of discord from someone who used Linux, MacOS, and Windows on an almost daily basis for various things. Not everyone that likes Apple products thinks they can do no wrong in fact I hate a lot of things they do as a company and there are many frustrating things about the ecosystem. I use MacOS as my primary daily driver, Windows everything at work, and Linux in my homelab. All have their strengths and weaknesses, I gave MacOS a try because of the M series chips(Mac Mini 32gb M1), and after hating on them relentlessly for years found it a great system to work with, I can do everything I need without issue or headache, at the end of the day its ‘a Unix system’, and I can connect fairly seamlessly with any Windows machine I need and completely seamlessly with all my Linux machines.
Not trying to convert anybody just pointing out that while Apple as a company is shitty, their products and particularly their OS is not terrible
I can agree with that judgement.
M series is probably the best thing they've made in years, and the OS isn't bad, maybe a little hand-holdy at times imo, but at the end of the day it's still a decently flexible Unix system that uses ZSH as it's shell.
If Apple didn't make it such a walled garden, we could've seen it become a really popular OS.
Asahi Linux coming in clutch with bringing Linux to the M series and pushing Linux on ARM development forward tho.
You clearly have never tried flashing a microcontroller from a windows host. Have to scour the internet for some random ass driver to install.
No such thing in Linux.
Or you might never have tried using some random Ethernet usb adapter where windows doesn’t quite know what to do, if it doesn’t have an alternative connection to try and automatically download the drivers (not always finding them)
Or using any legacy hardware such as the playstation eyetoy camera, a usb keyboard with a built in piano keyboard, some old random TV tuner card
Then there's the hardware which windows only ever had 32bit drivers for, meaning even if you find the drivers on some obscure dodgy site they'll never work.
Then there's the whole bs of windows not allowing unsigned drivers.
None of these issues on Linux
Maybe because that's a non issue for 99.9%+ of the population?
Seriously. "I wasn't able to flash a microcontroller on windows". That's a normal use case.
The problem is maintaining the os. Installing the drivers on windows is usually fine. Maintaining them is frustrating, because of how updates has to be done, and the dirty uninstall process, and the issues.
On many Linux distro it doesn't work perfectly, but maintenance is so trivial that people become used to it. And going back to a high maintenance OS is annoying. Like going back from a modern EV to ford model T. Some people like the experience of going back in time to the mid 90s with Windows, other prefer the simplicity of maintaining a Linux OS
I dont get it, can you provide some examples please? I installed windows 10 like 2 years ago on my “new” laptop. I have installed all drivers from my external hardrive. Since then I havent done anything related to drivers ever. If I plug something in, like an external screen, controller, mouse, headphones whatever, it installs itself automatically and just works. I havent done any maintenance either, except I will dust it off every other month or so. And thats pretty much the same with every PC I ever owned. What OS maintenance am I supposed to be doing? I sometimes do registry cleanup and disk defrags, but I thinks those are just placebos :D
There no real control of what and how you installed stuff. This create long term issues. This is why you perform registry clean up. But it is not enough, because of orphaned and conflicting dlls, inconsistent installation paths, conflicting versions. You probably don't see just because you are used to the issues and you think that's how things work.
If you install a better os, everything is accurately and centrally managed, making maintenance much more easy. Problem is with closed sourced software and drivers, because they break the normal processes of installation and maintenance, creating similar issues as in windows (not as bad because the os is better engineered)...
I dont notice them because they are not happening, or at least because I dont see them. Can you please provide specific examples of what I am supposed to be seeing that breaks?
Slowness of the system that increase with time since last reinstallation of the OS, dll conflicts (you also have a Wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_Hell), corrupted registry, conflicting drivers, configurations, libraries.
I am not saying anything controversial, it is one among the main complaints about windows, together with worse resource management and less general stability.
That's the reason you find windows for accountants, but no one uses windows for complex systems that have to be stable, reliable and maintainable.
Many casual users live with these issues, many move to mac, few move to linux
Like how the international space station ditched Windows for Linux because "...we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable – one that would give us in-house control.” or how NASA used Linux for the Mars helicopter.
I've never done any registry cleanup for years now, ever since I know better than to think Windows need any of that. How many years ago have you used Windows? You're like that Windows user that keeps telling people you can't game on Linux. It's old news by now.
Often the conversation here feels like the commenter hasn't used Windows since XP. I use Windows and Linux daily and I think most commenters are wrong with their trash talk of Windows but right with their prop talk of Linux.
This is so true, especially if you're doing any development. Everything just builds from the package before it more or less. So you don't end up with duplicates of the same code and end up with /programfileA/blah.whatever being different from /proframfileB/blah.whatever and fucking around for hours cause 'the file is updated, and it's pointed to the right file. Why does it say it's not'. Until you figure out it wasn't pointed to the right file/package and you kick yourself for missing such a stupid mistake. Ask me how I know lol
I unfortunately have to deal with it daily at work... With a premium laptop that cost thousands, and it is extremely less performant than much smaller and older machines with linux (I use linux at work as well).
I am not saying anything controversial. It is literally the reason why windows professionally is used for accountants, but it is practically never used for tasks that require performances, reliability, stability and long term maintainability.
Most casual users live with these issues, many move to mac, few move to linux. Victims of corporate IT like me must justify the budget to avoid the standard laptop and get the overpriced piece of extremely powerful hardware to have a daily experience slightly better than a raspberry pi running on respbian. Because outlook...
I am using a Netbook from 2009, Atom N570 1666Mhz, 2Gbyte RAM, 120GByte SSD. It is 550 gramm light, is so small it fits into the interior pocket of my jacket, runs eight hours on battery. And everything runs okeyish on it except maybe Youtube-Videos inside Firefox. So I set Firefox to start Youtube-Videos in VLC. Now I can even watch Youtube on my rusty old Netbook.
Worst problem: 32Bit support is running thin nowadays. It could run 64Bit but on that old system that actually costs quite some performance.
I install Windows, everything works, I install PopOS, everything works. So yeah, an equal amount of time.
I have spent very little time worrying about drivers on either.
On windows geforce came preinstalled and I just updated it occasionally when something didn't work
On NixOS I add one line to my config file and it handles Nvidia drivers for me and updates with the rest of my packages