this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Those have gotten a lot better in recent years. Last time I had an issue with WiFi drivers was in 2016.
Graphics drivers, on the other hand, especially Optimus...
Some of us are still recovering from the trauma
I never have. Just thinking about WiFi and Bluetooth drivers on random laptops still puts me into a full flashback state. (My first experience was back in 2002, I think?)
However, getting all of that stuff working was the best learning experience I ever had. At the time, I was just learning about IT security and WiFi pcap was all the rage back then.
Same, flashbacks to being in college trying to get Wi-Fi working in Fedora on my laptop and then struggling to get it to work with my uni's new Wi-Fi system. Frustrating, but a great learning experience as you said.
With you on that. I remember struggling in 2004 with WiFi drivers, ugh.
I sometimes still think about the time I was trying to print in 1996.
Iwlwifi firmware-a0-gf has not been detected… 😔
Even a decade ago it usually meant ticking a box that you also allowed nonfree drivers.
Even Debian allowed you to download the specific nonfree driver you needed and add it (without Internet) at imaging so post install you could connect with wifi and not just Ethernet.
It's come a long way. But doesn't anyone else remember when windows did not have drivers and you'd constantly be confronted with "have disk"?
I mean, the amount of drivers for old hardware I still have saved... Because before win10 nothing would reliability always fetch the driver you need from the net...
This reminds me of the big USB drive of drivers that we had at a PC repair shop. When Windows 7 failed to find drivers, we’d stick that in and give it a scan.
I remember that, but for Xp. Downloading a “driver pack”, pointing windows at the root of the folder, and praying.
Ticking the non-free driver box was child's play. As late as like 2012 I remember needing to download NDISwrapper so I could make the windows drivers work through a compatibility layer
Oh god, why did you have to trigger that memory???
I mean, if you buy broadcom you reap what you sow. And 2012 was 11 years ago. ;-)
When I bought my laptop i was using windows and didn't research Linux compatibility :(
And yup. A decade ago was when Linux turned a corner on the wifi driver front, 11 years ago was hell
I recall jaunty jackalope being the Ubuntu version that became my full time os. It was that version that my IBM x31 had everything taken care of on install with the third party drivers checked. I feel like the LTS version following that was where you could buy a generation previous of any hardware and it'd work without much fuss.
I apologize for my general grumpiness this morning. Totally reasonable. :-)
I lol'd. :-)
The nvidia driver has had this bug for a year now, still unfixed. Games will randomly crash with an Xid 109 error in dmesg. Some people (including myself) are unable to play games like Cyberpunk, Resident Evil 2-3-4-7-8 and Metro Exodus. And it’s not linked to proton either, it sometimes also crashes xorg itself, forcing a reboot. I’m starting to think nvidia will never bother fixing it.
3% desktop marketshare, it's stop to pick up money, not go out of your way money.
I just had to deal with nvidia breaking xwayland and making it unusable with an update