William L. Maltby wrote:
On Wed, 2007-12-26 at 12:06 -0500, Bit wrote:
What is so fundamentally different about drivers in Linux and Windows?
<snip>
Not knowing a great deal about how drivers really work in Linux or
Windows, I can only really conclude that either Microsoft never updates
the Windows kernel (at least not in a way that screws with driver
interfaces), or there is something very different about how the two
operating systems handle drivers. Can anyone shed some light on the
subject for me?
Thanks,
bit
<snip sig stuff>
It really comes down to the difference between the "business models".
Windows: closed, propietary, major market share; *IX (a lot of them)
open, non-propietary, lesser market share.
The developers of the hardware almost always provide drivers for W*dows.
They know their hardware intimately, they have full-blown develpment
teams and systems with access to necessary source in W*dows, etc.
For *IX, only some hardware developers provide drivers. The rest are
developed by community members. These are often based on only specs from
the hardware developers and often no specs at all. Specs may be
erroneous, incomplete and/or late. No in-house development systems or
teams.
W*dows drivers available upon release of the hardware, *IX often
necessarily have to come late due to the items mentioned above.
You can avoid a lot of this by just running all your video adapters in
VGA mode, which is relatively static and supported with very little
change needed as new kernels and hardware become available.
Thanks to both of you for the reply. Good information, but that still
doesn't really answer my question. I'm more interested in the technical
side of things. What I really want to understand boils down to this:
Why is it that in Windows I can install ATI drivers once and never worry
about it again, while in Linux I may have to *reinstall* the drivers at
a later date after a system update to get my card working with them
again? Experience has proven to me that in Windows I can install the
ATI drivers once, leave those same drivers on there for eternity, update
the system over and over with Automatic Updates, and never worry about
it breaking my video card. In Linux, every time I see a kernel update,
I've learned to be braced for impact and just be ready with my ATI
drivers to reinstall to get my card working again. I've never
understood this. I'd like a technical explanation for why this is so.
Thanks,
bit
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