On my Job I regularly have to install Windows PCs and sometimes even install the USB Drivers for Mouse and Keyboard to work. Why dont I have to do that on Linux ever? Seems weird not to have them installed on Windows.
You’ve probably figured this by now, OP, but the computers at your job are weird. Needing to install USB drivers for mouse and keyboard to work is not normal behavior for Windows. Like another person commented- check the BIOS settings.
Yea for mouse and keyboards that is very weird, the only times I had to do this when I was using adb for my google pixel
Windows ME didn’t have the ability to automatically install USB drivers and it was fucking bullshit even back then.
You can’t install a flash drive driver if you need the flash drive in order to transfer the driver to the computer, everything is always 0.1mb too large for a floppy drive so CD has to be burned which is clunky and stupid and time consuming.
Only not normal behaviour for a pre installed system. Windows out of the box install often requires chipset drivers installing for all but usb1.1 speeds as well as drivers for many 3rd party peripherals.
On Linux, all those drivers are already included in the kernel out of the box. Linux has much better hardware support than Windows in general, the only issue are proprietary drivers from third parties that don’t support Linux.
Can you explain what you mean by this. I have only a bit of experience with a few distros but hardware issues have always been a bugaboo for me with Linux. This statement seems quite the opposite of my experience. I mean I guess it’s because of the third party proprietary drivers, but that’s a decent chunk of the hardware pie and it’s hard for me not to include that in “better hardware support”
Linux runs on a LOT more different systems than Windows. The stuff it doesn’t run well on is mostly built into desktop computers, so that’s what the average user notices.
Not my experience at all. Always having to deal with hardware compatibility with Linux, for mundane stuff that Windows never even blinks over.
My best example is a Logitech mouse, arguably the most prolific and popular mouse out there, they don’t work in Linux at all, until you find a third party tool. In Windows, they work immediately, albeit without Logitech’s fancy management utilities. But they just work.
I see this all the time on Linux, with mundane stuff.
Which mouse? HID is all but guaranteed to work on linux
That’s odd. I can’t remember the last time I’ve installed USB drivers on Windows. It either works or it doesn’t (like a 75% chance of it working though).
Windows 7 lacked USB 3 drivers, and if you have a bleeding edge system windows might not have the chipset drivers which is like half of your system. (EX windows 10/11 lacked 11th Gen. chipset drivers until 22H2)
Outside of that I’ve never had the basics work. Especially a mouse and keyboard.
Drivers are included in the kernel, you will always have them.
Because many 3rd party hardware providers are lazy, while Linux maintainers are not.
Ms provides a way to have drivers deployed over their windows update channels when needed but the hardware provider has to do it.
Linux allows basically anyone to provide a driver.
It’s always drivers with Windows. smh
I’ve had the opposite experience - nearly everything works out of the box on Windows, yet not even a Logitech mouse works on Linux unless I go find some third party tool to make it work.
A mouse that works instantly on XP (probably on Win95).
Logitech doesn’t put their software to Linux, but all my Logitech dongles and wireless devices worked fine, just couldn’t change their settings. But, there’s this software that does everything you need and actually works better than Logi Options+ imo.
