unholy software..

https://sh.itjust.works/post/4119044

I have never had problems with Nvidia drivers on Linux mint detects them and ask if you want to install the official drivers

They're supposed to buy an AMD card, obviously. /s

Use POP OS which has NVIDIA Drivers in the iso

...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.

Suffer. It’s ok I’m used to suffering for graphics cards. Thanks bitcoin!

It depends on your distro

cry because no Wayland

press two buttons after install

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.

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

Yes for stupid stuff like turning off the network device, to cut access to the internet. Windows finds by itself that the network device is disconnected and reconnects it by itself. Granted it's not much, but it's as complicated to find that menu than to run that utility.

Has the annoying "search for a solution" window ever found a solution?

Actually yes. In W7, at least, anytime sound wasn't doing what it should have the "search for solution" button would fix it right up. The first time it gave and performed a solution and worked I was dumbfounded.

huh every time I plug my Logitech receiver in a different port I get a notification about a driver installation, fortunately it's almost instant on my new pc but it's still weird that we need that in 2023

I still have it from time to time that Windows has to install a driver for something benign like a thumb drive. Not always, though. And yes, the driver is fixed to the physical port. Using a different port reinstalls the same driver again.

Experienced this exact behavior on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 and Windows 11.

I see it regularly with Win10, and I also see plenty of PCs in my job.

I once was fixing someones computer booting with Bluescreen, because Windows 7 thought it found newer drivers for USB 3.1, and those newer were causing BSOD

I've seen this so often on Windows Vista, and I've never seen it on Windows 10.

Granted, I've switched USBs in the meantime, so maybe it's just the USB?

You forgot that you were using arch, btw.

You should get into crossfit. Or ultramarathons.

Printers in general are the devil regardless of OS.

If there exists a hell, especially built for IT, it's filled with printers.

nVidia has entered the chat

Yeah I was very confused. Only thing one needs to install nowadays is mesa and the correct Vulkan loader

I've just been using Windows for work stuff now and then for over two decades now - so I just have the install scripted so I can just deploy it from scratch whenever I need it, and throw it away afterwards. Before we had multicore CPUs making emulation not annoying I had a sun workstation with a SunPCI card for that.

The one constant over all windows versions is it running into some driver issues for stupid reasons. Now with 11 its the signed drivers - and while you can do exceptions for development I never got unsigned graphics drivers to work.

Also, Windows on ARM is horrible - something as simple as a usb serial adapter doesn't work because there just are no ARM drivers.

I installed Windows (both 10 & 11) last month on separate occasions, it took nearly 45m for it to install (with both 10 & 11), on top of that Windows 11 fucked up the first time around & I had to do it again. All to just update the BIOS because HP sucks.

When a Linux distro like Linux Mint installs in 5m-10m flat on the same exact device, first time around ever time.

Linux doesn't need AV software, "security by design" is a key principle of Linux, and I don't even think Windows itself actually "needs" AV software. It's called common sense.

Automatically installing drivers won't work if your WiFi card is unsupported out of the box like others have mentioned, especially with Windows 11 where you need internet to even install it the official "Microsoft way". While Linux has all such supported drivers built-in and can provide support for these devices long past their EOL on Windows.
\ Nvidia drivers will auto install on Linux distros such as Mint too.

Windows 10 is a great OS, it's hilarious how people attempt to pretend it's not.

Nobody said it wasn't, his comment comes off more as shitting on HP than Windows; we just don't ignore it's downside when looking at the whole picture.
\ Also Windows 11 is arguably worse than Windows 10.

Each OS has pros & cons and it's important to look at each closely without assuming someone else is in fairyland because they chose a different OS then you, if you're not careful you may find yourself in the very fairyland you're accusing others of being in.

You take the mouse and do clicky clicky. Luckily theres usually one control panel on linux in contrast to three more and more legacy versions in windows where you need to go three levels deep in order to change the local ip address.

I literally click one button and it starts the entire automated update process. The only interruption is asking for a password

You probably never used Linux. Or you used it 20 years ago.

Imagine thinking the terminal is something to be forced into.

First off, you really don't need the terminal if you choose to avoid it. You can get by just fine with a GUI package manager included in the "user-friendly" Linux distros; which is essentially a graphical app store that handles all installs, uninstalls, updates & system updates for you with a point and click.

Second :
\ Tab key, Auto completion, command cycling, command highlighting, man pages, TLDR pages, and so on.
\ There's no; absolutely 0, zippo, nada; reason you should, need, or want to remember individual commands or how to use them when the previously mentioned exist.

On the other hand, it takes only four letters and hitting enter for me to update everything installed on my pc so not that hard to memorize a few commands.

If you have to do that to install anything, it's either always your package manager or something that can be copy-pasted from the included installation guide.

You don't even need the terminal in most cases. You have GUIs. Simple ones.

I'd rather have to type a line than struggle with installing 10 pieces of unnecessary bloatware individually

Lmao. "Unless you're in the majority of PC gamers then it's not a problem" Linux users I swear

apt install nvidia-driver

Most gamers use nvidia.

The average person uses integrated intel or amd graphics.

They didn't imply that little people were using Nvidia GPUs, he is referring to the fact that you do like...2 extra clicks or so to install Nvidia's drivers? You don't even need to open a web browser!

Also WiFi

I have a 4k laptop display and use it alongside 2 1080 monitors just fine nowadays, Wayland handles that no problem

AFAIK HDR support still sucks though

HDR support is almost finished, raytracing is pretty much rolled out, certain drm works such as Netflix.

There is Aptx HD support, but I believe they're reverse engineering I'm sure Aptx LL will come eventually (or Qualcomm makes it easy). I have a friend that uses Aptx/ldac but I haven't bothered myself.

It seems the only things that don't work are tied to stereotypical anticompetitive companies refusing to support. Which is a shame because it's capable of exceeding the other platforms in ease of use.

Widevine DRM works in both Chrome/Chromium and Firefox. HDR Support is nearly done. Yes, we can have different DPI/Scaling per monitor thanks to Wayland.

Go get some up-to-date information.

Inkscape is not on par.

I don't Mint the uncalled, ty.

I kind of like Windows 11, but even the Pro version is riddled with ads. The search banner in the taskbar has them regularly, there's a large number of falsely installed Microsoft Store apps in the Start menu (which get downloaded when you click them, like Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, Instagram, I think also TikTok and I'm certainly forgetting some), the whole "news" menu on the left side of the screen is just that too. The Windows 10 default Mail app (which I think is close to be the perfect email app on Windows) is also being retired in favor of Outlook, the free version of which has an ad displayed either as a banner at the bottom of your mails list, or as an unread email at the top of it. This prompted me to enjoy the Thunderbird update, which isn't as good but has no ads. And that's not even counting Edge, the shortcut of which gets added back to the desktop on a regular basis, which redirects all HTML help pages and searches to itself instead of using the default browser.

You might not have seen any ads on your W11 computer, but it's probably either because you have a system-wide adblocker, installed scripts to remove some of the most invasive bloat, or simply hand pick and manage carefully all apps and and settings on your systems (that's what I do, but when I do I make it so I won't see it again). Or you don't notice them as ads, which is sadly very possible.

You mus have a nice install. I see them when I press the windows button. I see them when I press a random combination and this wierd left side window pops up and task bar shows you not only weather but also shares.

Are you using home or enterprise?

Might sound stupid, but I want to be apathetic about my OS. I mainly game and I have been using Windows since I was 8. I know it in and out and if I am not forced to (or if ads really get that crazy), I am not gonna switch. It's just nothing I am remotely passionate about.

So far, I find Mint massively less frustrating to use than Windows. It feels faster, too.

Windows is so full of bullshittery, it's not even funny.

That's the job of the manufacturer. Check out system76, framework and tuxedo laptops

I have not had this issue with three or four laptops running Linux over the years. Power management turned off somehow maybe?

I installed Linux on my old main laptop and battery life went up by like 2 hours lol. You might want to look into battery life solutions like tlp.

I haven’t tried to use Linux for desktop in a while, probably as long as they haven’t used windows. Because in my mind what they said is 100% backwards.

Seems like both have matured quite a bit

And Windows update takes care of 99.9% of missing drivers automatically.

You're right about the network drivers, but on things like serial drivers, Windows is a fucking nightmare. Hell, I can't use some devices because FTDI drivers will brick the device if it decides its a knockoff of their chip. Getting anything working that isn't consumer grade is a shit show.

Make that 2 decades I gather. Maybe even 3. This sounds like nt4 territory. Maybe barelu6 win2k.

I was a windows user up until about a year and a half ago, and had this issue as recently as Windows 10. I had to use my phone as a tether to go download the drivers for my TP-Link Archer T6E. Also had the issue with my MSI z97m Gaming where I had to go find drivers for the built-in wired network adapter, again using my phone as a tether, on Windows 8.1

Idk, I just built a PC with Realtek mobo integrated wifi, we couldn't even install the OS because it didn't detect the NIC and Windows forced us to sign in before it would continue the installation.

Had to lug the machine to a router to get anywhere, and still had to download the Asus mobo software to get the wireless going. Wasn't convenient in the least.

Since drivers are so specifc, people's anecdotal experiences with having to install them is never going to be shared.

IE, I had to install a wired NIC driver just last month on a fresh Windows 10 22H2 for a Dell laptop that was no more than a few years old.

When I last installed Windows I had to google where do download Libreoffice, Firefox, Steam, Audacity, VLC, Gimp and a lot more software.

On Linux most came preinstalled, the rest was one click in the Repository ("Store" for Generation Smartphone)

Yeah the last time I had to install drivers for a network card on Windows was over a decade ago

I had to install a network adapter driver the other day. Had to use my wife's computer to download into a flash drive and bring it over to my computer with zero network connectivity.

Granted, this only happened because my network card was broken.

Yeah I've installed Windows about ten times in the last ten years for various people and I've never encountered any of this. It is as close to flawless as I can ask for.

I had the ethernet in my desktop mobo not work when I tried upgrading to win11. Worked fine in 10 but no internet on 11.

I also had a very difficult time getting a Xbox wireless controller adapter working on win 10 without spending about 2 hours searching.

Windows usually works but sometimes it just fucking doesn't. Linux isn't perfect either but I usually don't have issues with my Ethernet ports not working.

Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5 Gen 8 Notebook comes with a MEDIATEK MT7922. Windows 11 does not want to install unless you circumvent the requirement for Internet or supply it with a manually downloaded driver.

Linux? Just works.

TP-Link Archer T6E, one of the most popular on the market

The wireless kind, presumably. Those always need their own firmware and therefore their own driver.

You'd have more driver issues with Windows if you used hardware that wasn't already being sold with Windows pre-installed by OEMs/system integrators. Comparatively Linux supports a wider verity of hardware for much longer, Windows on the other hand only really supports consumer grade hardware that's likely to have it pre-installed anyway with a limited (and often predestined) EOL.

If manufacturers treated Linux desktop as first class like with Windows or Linux on Servers then there'd be a very small amount of unsupported & likely obsolete hardware.

And back at that time if you installed any flavor of Linux you were lucky if the OS install didn't fuck itself over, also God help you find drivers, assuming that they even existed. At least xp would function.

As of windows 10, windows will always function on pretty much any hardware out of the box. Some obscure Chinese WiFi dongles might have some issues, but main board drivers are always right there.

Linux users have this weird echo chamber where they seem to think that Linux just works. It can but it's a 50/50 chance that it won't and you'll spend hours troubleshooting. Also os updates on Linux have a high probability of borking the entire os.

Windows, for all of it's many many faults, generally does "just work". It might not be perfect, but it will function.

Do you realize WINXP is TWENTY FOUR years old now???

The Rust based Cosmic DE is looking awesome.
\ I can't wait to try it when it releases.

I'm pretty sure the blame is on the device manufacturer here

How long ago was this exactly?

ISA cards? That's not even comparable. That's 90s era, 30 years ago, 20 at best. Things have changed.

On one side it is a rare sight to need to install a driver for Linux. I had an Star NL24-10 printer with an IEEE-488 connector for the C64.

INSANE! Linux natively supports C64 peripherals.

I build a simple adaptor from Parallel to IEEE-488-Serial and when I told CUPS the printer was on /dev/ieee488 it immediately found it. Insane. Oh, the Floppy was also available, at least at sector Level though there actually is no C1541 Filesystem so I had to open it in Starcommander, some sort of Norton/Midnite-Commander, which officially supports those images.

The amount of supported hardware is INSANE. You will get stuff working which works nowhere else.

The coolest shit are Host-Based Storage Systems, with the most known group as Memory-Technology-Devices. For example there are SMR-Harddisks where I can change the SMR-Layout from my computer. I can say "50% capacity CMR, 50% SMR". Or Host-Based-QLC-Drives where you can select for each MinWriteCell how to use it: As ultra-Fast SLC/MLC, as the middle TLC or as the superslow QLC. Sure, it costs Capacity. But the choice ist yours. I bought a Data-Center-Intel-QLC-Drive and converted it to 50% MLC at 3.5GByte/s sustained and 50% QLC with 0.5Gbyte/s. Sure, it reduced the capacity of the 4TByte Drive to 3TByte. But who cares if it is so fast it blows anything away. On Windows you can not even detect those drives.

But: If you have a really bad case of "unsupported hardware" then things get complicated fast.

On Arch they're usually right in the AUR. I imagine there's people adding them to the new AUR-like Debian repo which name I can't remember rn.

If it's not in the Kernel, write a driver and upstream it. Be a man.

First: Linux is the street racing scene of the PC world. You can customize everything, and it's going to be faster and more responsive. Also if someone just wants to build a really cool custom experience, there's very cool stuff possibld do on Windows, but that road eventually leads to Linux.

Second: Linux is the long haul huge truck engine of the Internet. Big data processing only runs on Linux*. I've met one Windows supercomputer and one Mac supercomputer. Both are long retired now.