On Friday 05 October 2018 04:37:43 E. Liddell wrote: > On Fri, 5 Oct 2018 02:48:35 -0700 > > William Morder <doctor_contendo@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Friday 05 October 2018 00:19:47 Felmon Davis wrote: > > > On Thu, 4 Oct 2018, J Leslie Turriff wrote: > > > > 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. > > > > 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. > > 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 > 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: trinity-users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: trinity-users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Read list messages on the web archive: http://trinity-users.pearsoncomputing.net/ Please remember not to top-post: http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/mailing_lists/#top-posting
