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Comment by elsjaako | Hacker News Reader

Linux had a different model than windows. It doesn't really have separate drivers. This has a number of upsides and downsides, let me mention just one.

Windows used to have a really bad reputation for stability. I'm sure a lot of this was windows's fault, but a lot of this was bad third-party drivers that crashed.

You might remember that nvidea does have a driver for Linux. The approach they took isn't really supported, which is one of the reasons why graphics drivers are always such a nightmare under Linux.

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> which is one of the reasons why graphics drivers are always such a nightmare under Linux.

One of the reasons proprietary drivers are a nightmare. Intel works flawlessly (though obviously with different trade offs).

Intel, and modern AMD. So really it's just nVidia.

I've been using the default open source drivers on my ThinkPad at work with Nvidia gpu and never had a problem with multiple screens etc.

It really is propriety drivers that's the problem

You are likely not even using the nvidia gpu or the driver (nouveau) if your thinkpad is new. Or you are using just the nvidia gpu if you have discrete mode. For older designs with weird wiring and optimus, nouveau is very problematic for even basic use with external screens. Problems range from screen tearing (reverse prime, no solution), stability, poor performance, and fundamental usability issues such as screen not coming back on after suspend. Not that this is nouveau's fault, for it is a reverse engineered driver afterall.

Sounds like my experience with AMD Vega from my Thinkpad A485... its a nightmare, using ubuntu and amdpro or mainline kernel...

AMD should, in theory, be quite good these days, especially with a new kernel. Note that amdpro drivers are generally not recommended despite the word pro in them. The newer amd drivers are all free and being merged upstream continuously. pro (afaik) is the older proprietary driver with specific optimisations for things like CAD, but otherwise doesn't have much use these days.

D'oh! That's what I meant to say.

These days I use AMD, and I just haven't had to think about it. Before this I had Nvidea, and even there the open drivers were fine until I wanted to play games.

>Intel works flawlessly

Kernel DRI drivers, yeah sure. Xorg's xf86-video-intel is a buggy pile of shit that hasn't seen a stable release in 5 years.

Currently the best you get on linux with intel is modesetting driver with glamor for 2daccel. Or use wayland, I guess...

Interestingly, Windows improved its stability problem through a combination of moving drivers into userspace and formal verification. Unlike in Linux, when your video driver crashes it usually just results in a momentarily blank screen instead of a core dump.

I would not say its true. Crashed gpu driver on linux will most likely leave you with locked out screen that does not accept any user input.

On the contrary, windows GPU(WDDM) drivers are restartable and can handle crashes even without restarting the user graphical apps. This've been so since at least windows 7.

edit: s/WDM/WDDM/

I think you two are in agreement :)

Since Windows Vista even.

There's a kernel:user space split of Linux GPU drivers as well. Mesa, libdrm, libgbm, all have hardware-specific junk in them last I checked.

The kernel drm/gpu side is all about mode setting and managing resources.

One upside is simply the fact that you don’t need to hunt down drivers and install them.

I’ve had to install wifi drivers for a Windows machine before. Hunting for the right driver, downloading it and transferring it from my phone was quite a pain, as opposed to the wifi just working on Linux.

That's not entirely true. It works that way because your distro maintainer built a kernel with nearly every module turned on to support the widest range of hardware out of the box.

Sure, but that is the default configuration that most Linux users will encounter.

It would still be reasonably easy to lspci and then compile the drivers into your kernel as needed

Hell, I've had to install Ethernet drivers for Windows before (though thankfully that's been a lot more rare under Windows 10).

I've found that it still happens almost every time I try to install a consumer Windows edition on server hardware, or server Windows on consumer hardware, even for Intel Ethernet. And it's often necessary to edit an INF file so that a perfectly functional driver won't refuse to load on such an "unsupported" configuration.

It supports separate drivers in the form of dynamic kernel modules (DKMS). But this is about default upstream support. Good upstream support is always preferable to chaotic dkms mess.

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