5 Oct
2018
5 Oct
'18
2:01 p.m.
On Friday 05 October 2018 04:37:43 E. Liddell wrote:
On Fri, 5 Oct 2018 02:48:35 -0700
William Morder <doctor_contendo(a)zoho.com> wrote:
Yes, thanks, I do know what drivers are, and also that we have them in Linux.
It's just that I don't usually think specifically of drivers, because I just
install the packages I need, and they come with them as dependencies, or they
come bundled with the kernel, or other packages. I rarely have found myself
thinking about drivers, except in those cases where I need them for something
like my Brother printer.
I assumed readers would know I meant that, in Linux, drivers are packaged in a
such a way that quite often we "never notice them", as you put it; except,
that is, when it comes to third-party, proprietary stuff. In Linux, I rarely
read about drivers, even though I know that they are there; whereas when I
ran Windoze (nearly fifteen years ago now), drivers seemed to occupy much
more of my attention. Except for my printer, I don't use proprietary
anything; and if I can get my printer to work without it, they I will have
all free/libre software.
The wording of that earlier thread (which has now been lost) reminded me more
of a Windoze discussion, so I was just guessing, perhaps wrongly, that the
user had recently switched from another platform to Linux.
Thanks for the message, as I am glad to see that your address is not getting
marked as spam.
Bill
On Friday 05 October 2018 00:19:47 Felmon Davis
wrote:
Um, no, "driver"--a piece of software that makes it possible to communicate
with a piece of hardware--is the correct term, and you're using them all
the time in Linux, too. It's just that most of the more common ones are
treated as part of the kernel (or of CUPS and its supporting packages), so
you never notice them.
There are a lot of drivers that are or have been maintained outside the
kernel, though, and these often have to be installed separately. The
printer drivers and the proprietary 3D acceleration drivers for nVidia and
AMD are the most common, but there are others: drivers for network
equipment, modems, smartcard readers, crypto dongles, game controllers, and
other oddly specific hardware that most people never run into. They may or
may not be in your distro's repositories, depending on who wrote the
driver, what the distro's position on proprietary code is, and other
factors.
I'm currently running an externally packaged driver for my motherboard's
internal sensor chip, because support for the it87 family of chips has been
slow in reaching the kernel.
TL;DR: drivers have always been in Linux, too, and they're not going
anywhere.
E. Liddell
On Thu, 4 Oct 2018, J Leslie Turriff wrote:
Maybe what was meant was dependencies rather than drivers? Brother
printers, and other such items, are special cases, because one doesn't
get the deb packages (or rpm, yum, etc., according to the distro) from
the standard repositories, but must download them from the manufacturer's
website. (I, too, wrestle with a Brother printer.) There, perhaps, one
means to say drivers, even if they are deb packages.
When I read the word *driver*, however, I immediately thought that it
sounded more like a Windoze or rotten Apple user, who had recently
switched to Linux, and was unfamiliar with the repositories, or how to
use apt. If we knew more, we might be able to make suggestions, or offer
other help. On 2018-10-01 14:21:14 Kate Draven wrote:
[ ... deleted ... ]
> As for drivers,what do you mean? I've never had to install drivers.
> I HAVE had to install them in Apple and MS. That's a nightmare.
> Perhaps I'm mistunderstood (which is likely).
The only ones I know of are the video drivers (which are optional).
Leslie
not sure what counts as a 'driver' but I have had to install some
package for Brother printers and 'firmware' for wifi (Intel).
if this is just a matter of semantics then let's not fuss.
the fact remains that for some it's not all "out of the box" or
whatever to call it.
f.