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RE: Now, be honest, please.
by mabhatter on Thu 9th Apr 2009 19:48 UTC in reply to "Now, be honest, please."
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"So yes, it's great, there are so many drivers with Linux, while there are almost none with Windows. Problem is most of the time, the driver you need isn't available for Linux, especially for peripherals (video boards, printers, scanners, specialty boards, DVB boards). And if your default Linux install doesn't provide the driver, you're pretty much out of luck because the hardware manufacturer only provides drivers for Mac and Windows. If you use Windows, it works out of the box most of the time. But you don't even have to bother using the driver that ships with the OS (it's old-dated already), just head over to the manufacturer's web site, download the driver, install it, and that's it."

Don't forget that those same vendors all cashed in to make people buy new hardware when XP (and later Vista, 7) was released even though the hardware was 6 months old and perfectly serviceable. Once a driver is in "Linux" it typically stays out there until nobody cares to maintain it. Things do fall off for lack of use/developer interest, but they could be fixed if you wanted to. Proprietary drivers not so much.

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