Ok, don't know why you think I'm trolling.

I didn't say drivers don't exist in Linux. What I said was "I barely remember them" (or words to that effect). Facetiously, of course, because yes I do remember them.

But one doesn't have to deal with them in Linux. My hardware is detected and the appropriate modules are loaded. I do no have to search for them, download them, install them (manually, I mean - to be clear, they are in fact installed, yes.), worry about whether they're up to date. It's all entirely automatic, I never have to think about drivers, everything just works (as Ant says, so long as your stuff is supported. Which most is and mine all has been for several years).

This is the second time you've called be a troll in this thread (which I honestly don't think I am).

I don't think saying I barely remember drivers can reasonably interpreted as making the ridiculous claim that they don't exist in Linux. Which makes me think you wilfully misinterpreted me in order to have a go. To poke holes in a ridiculous claim that no one would ever make. Which is... odd.

You might not have said drivers don't exist in Linux, but that's how I read your post. Maybe I did wilfully misinterpret what you wrote, but maybe you also wilfully wanted me to misinterpret it?

One as in the royal one, right? We must be both lucky because our hardware works with Linux, but I can fondly remember countless times when it wasn't and yet it worked fine otherwise, and when hardware doesn't work in Linux it's often way more of a ball ache than Windows - doubly so when manufacturers refuse to support Linux by not even providing source code. Things have changed greatly, but this is also true of Windows, which leads me to...

Does anyone (except those that are stuck on Windows XP) really have to worry about making sure their drivers are up to date any more? My current machine, all of them have either been built-in or downloaded and updated automatically by Windows - both 8 and 10. That might be different for Windows 7, but if you choose not to upgrade to have this new functionality, you can't really bitch about it not being available, right?

Edit: Regards the access denied thing, that shouldn't happen so much now.

My recent one had been DVB-S2 cards. But mainly because they weren't supported in mainline, the manufacturers drivers were turd and some folks had developed better open source drivers that I was using. Then one of the cards seemed to die so I fucked it off and bought a SAT>IP box (which I'm now running a custom firmware on :$ )

Oh, and the fingerprint reader on my laptop. A year or two ago I couldn't get it to work at all. My current move to Mint relied on me getting that to work. I managed it, but I'm not totally sure what was the correct path. There was a lot of compiling and installing, a lot of which was probably not necessary, but I somehow hit the right combination and my fingerprints were being read successfully.

Thankfully the Linux community is pretty massive now, especially around debian based distros, so there's usually someone out there with your issue.

But sometimes you end up with a similar situation as this:

You know windows does all that automagically, too, right?

The only reason I was manually installing a driver is because I wanted a different version to the one automatically selected by Windows (print driver: installing it locally makes my printer print when its out of ink, installing the network driver from the machine makes it refuse to print due to having no ink (even though there's clearly loads left). So that's a samsung issue, rather than an MS one. The other driver I had to do manually is the driver for my Via HD Audio chipset. Windows installed one and it works fine, but the manufacturer supplied one includes a license for SoundBlaster Cinema, which does an OK job of making my laptop speakers sound not quite as crap (although it refuses to work in Windows 10, and causes a BSOD with a graphics driver related issue which is nice!) . Again - that's a manufacturer caused situation, rather than MS. 

Beyond that, I haven't had to manually download and install a driver in years (since XP, probably, although even that got drivers via Windows Update in the end). It works essentially the fucking same on both platforms.

>Maybe I did wilfully misinterpret what you wrote, but maybe you also wilfully wanted me to misinterpret it?

:?

What? It wasn't even directed at you. It was a jokey response to Kos's moan about printer drivers.

>One as in the royal one, right?

There's isn't a royal one. There is a royal 'we'. One just means the same to everyone.

>Does anyone (except those that are stuck on Windows XP) really have to worry about making sure their drivers are up to date any more?

People who play games (like me) tend to want the latest graphics (and other) drivers and the ones provided by Windows update often aren't or are fiddled with in various ways.

Also it sometimes simply doesn't work and either gets the wrong drivers or none at all. When it does work it's slow and requires reboots (less so, but it still does). And when I say slow it's really fucking slow. Installing stuff, then rebooting, then somehow still installing stuff before it'll let you back into Windows and then rebooting some more (worst case scenario, of course, but this shit does happen and not that seldom.. And even in the best case it's painfully slow).

But yeah, neither OS is perfect, that's for sure. As a user I much prefer Linux's approach to drivers. For a long time it meant, as you describe, a lot of pain, before (virtually) everything got a basic level of support. But these days it's, in most cases, pretty seamless and completely automatic. It's really nice to have some pretty obscure hardware supported out of the box (WiiMotes for example, used them in a recent project. Just plugged them in and they worked. No downloads, no reboots.)

But yeah, my point in this thread was not to diss Windows. It's totally fine and 10 is a reasonable improvement over 7 (and a huge improvement over 8). There are things *I* don't like about it, which is why I don't use it, but I could.

My point was more about the underlying tech and questioning MS's future (in terms of desktop OSes). Again, not to bash MS, they've done some truly amazing stuff and I have nowt against them. More as just... an interesting (to me at least) topic.









 

Yeah that situation (as per the XKCD) is a fucker.

I find that to be the worst with Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros. The fairly rapid point-release approach means fixes/info goes out of date really fast.

The Arch Wiki is pretty great (regardless of distro). It covers a lot of stuff and is always up to date. It can usually be used on other distros to at least get clues.

I keep meaning to give Arch a go, and I know you keep telling me to.

Yeah, I've ended up on the Arch wiki many a time for info.

It's a degree of effort to set up (it's by no means hard, but there is effort). But once it's set up (and you're in the mindset) it's so nice. So utterly free of the usual hassles.

I get to hear it everytime my pc boots!

I love the cartoon! lol

Just remembered I never posted a pic of my cup.

Edit - bollocks, that upload didn't work properly. Got an 'XHR Returned Response Code 413 error'.

Edit - so that refers to the size of the attachment then...

...and a biiiiig mug to drink it from. (nod)

I fail to believe you'd have anything so generic as that slogan on your cup.

So, unless they're printed on the other side, there's numerous questions that phrase brings up.

• what sort of tea?
• how strong/how much milk?
• how hot?
• leave the bag in?
• sugar? If so, how many teaspoons, and are we talking levelled or rounded?
• if you love tea that much, why don't you marry it?

*I appreciate you've already answered some of these, but to be frank, I'd like some sort of official list, collated in one place, just in case I ever have to make you a cup of tea.

I'm not sure you'd drink from such a dirty mug

The size a mug should be, perhaps even a few cl short.

Oh, how well you know me, James. How oh so well!

 :O)

Wait a minute, dammit! Tea things belong in my Great Tea Experiment thread! Help, I'm being oppressed! Tea **There! So enamoured, I was, that I remembered how to hand code XHTML, that I put in the wrong linky. No extra charge for excessive commas.

NT4 was great. No, seriously, no blue text or anything. Then they gradually added a plethora of features and STUFF which, while useful and welcome in various circumstances, just made Windows Server more and more of a thickly woven jungle.

And therein lies my problem with Windows, especially the Server versions - it's become very feature rich, increasingly easy to use and maintain, however it just doesn't seem to do modular or (if you're particularly unlucky) will break in such an obscure way that you'll end up wanting to perform an exorcism.

I also get really annoyed at how things install - they spread tentacles into EVERYTHING which makes it pretty much impossible to figure stuff out. I get that on the other hand they're trying to make it piss easy to maintain, but it's not working.

Edit: having said all that, I've had relatively very few issues with 8.1, I actually like it, but I won't be touching 10 for a while. I'm quite keen on the whole Continuum idea though.