The last time I had an issue with Linux drivers was in 2002, trying to set up a pppoe connection. I had no smartphone and there were no YouTube, Reddit, wikis, forums etc.
Back in 2016 I helped install some wifi drivers on a friend’s laptop in Ubuntu 16.04, which was not really a big deal.
I feel like these memes are made by Windows users :)
What killed my interest in Linux in highschool. Kept trying to get Ubuntu working but couldn’t get the internet to work for anything. Given that every help guide boiled down to “Go to this website and download x” and I didn’t have internet because… no wifi, I ended up getting frustrated enough to quit the whole thing. Maybe someday.
That’s different. Lenovo supports the kernel, but doesn’t ship some laptops with Linux. Two of mine (P14s Gen 1 and Gen 4) don’t. I always have to work for NixOS, as does my friend for Arch.
Try Windows. It regularly breaks drivers (not only WiFi) on some hardware (mostly HP). I’ve never had issues with WiFi on Linux on HP, Dell, Microsoft Surface and even a Macbook.
I didn’t say I couldn’t fix the issues, but the fact that some of those issues exist even since XP is pretty bad. Just search around online and you’ll find many posts about these driver issues. And then there’s all of the ui inconsistencies and issues. Most of those are small, but still annoying once you see them. Especially when using Windows on a tablet, even Microsoft’s own Surface line.
For HP ZBooks for example there was an issue that completely prevented you from installing some updates like Windows 10 20H2 without any warning as to why it wouldn’t install. It just failed at 61%. It turned out to be audio drivers for the audio chip in the dock. The only way to get it updated was to connect the dock, finding the audio device in device management and removing it. Then disconnect before Windows reinstalls the driver again.
Hey, as long as I ignore the thousand of entries in the error log I get every day from the iwlwifi kernel module crashing and restarting every 10 minutes its fine.
I’ve never had an issue with any drivers on Linux, everything I use just works. Even some old obscure drawing tablet from 2005 that said it required you to install its driver worked instantly.
This is true today. Had you tried that back in 2005, you’d very likely be fiddling with drivers. I specifically remember making a disk that contained all the drivers I’d need if I had to reinstall for any reason. Without it and without a network, you’d have to have another computer available to grab drivers from the internet.
You had to do this with windows in 2005 too… In fact I’ve had to use a different computer to download drivers as recently as 2017 for a Windows 10 computer…
Well, yes. I wasn’t really intending to make a comparison. I was just explaining the meme. There was a time when getting your wifi/network card going in Linux was somewhat of a hassle for many.
Installed Ubuntu on my first netbook and had to sit in the stairs to the second floor jacked into the single Ethernet cable we had for a few hours to troubleshoot it.
I haven’t used every distro, but it seems like most of them are plug and play these days.
I just installed mint on a new laptop. The wifi surprisingly didn’t work on the liveusb, but switching to the Edge release with a newer kernel worked fine.
Lots of people saying this is an old problem , but I have a new IdeaPad I bought a few months ago and any non-rolling release distro I find, the wifi hardware isn’t detected.
Until just a few weeks ago I couldn’t find any solution. Fortunately I finally found a way to build the drivers, but it still requires me to tether my phone to get internet long enough to download the source.
So the problem might be better but it’s not the non-issue some people are pretending it is.
generally speaking brand new hardware wont usually have proper support unless you are using newer versions of the kernel, thats not really limited to just wifi
Funny that my brand new laptop just arrived today and its own wifi card wasn’t recognized in Windows, so I had to use my phone via usb-tethering. It’s a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (14APU8) by the way, Ryzen 7th gen, full AMD, OLED etc. It came without any OS (no way I’m paying for Windows lol) and my first Win11 experience on this laptop was “please choose a network to continue” and no networks were displayed at all, because wifi card had no drivers (Realtek btw). Windows setup wouldn’t let me continue without a network, but there was no way to have a network. Funny Win11 moment right there. After some hours configuring everything I then installed my usual dual-boot Fedora and everything worked even in the live-usb. This meme is not valid for Linux anymore. Windows however, now thats a meme.
Trust me, it is. There is some obscure hardware out there. Plus, a lot of us still use hardware that was late XP time released and ndiswrapper was still around. So, for some of these cards, there is still no drivers for Linux (or buggy/unstable ones).
I understand, but seeing this post right after my experience today was the biggest coincidence ever and kinda funny that it worked right away in Linux while in Windows I had to manually go get the drivers for it. Linux used to be bad, but it evolved A LOT in terms of drivers support while windows just kinda stayed the same. I remember facing the same problem of booting a new Windows install and having the wifi option completely gone (no drivers) in Windows 8… many years ago. Windows 11 and the experience is still the same. And it’s a modern Realtek card, not even close to being obscure. This post + this experience today was just a nice internet moment
Linux used to be bad, but it evolved A LOT in terms of drivers support while windows just kinda stayed the same.
Agree on that part. It has gotten a lot better.
Still, I was hoping that they’ll eventually solve some of the problems with the WiFi hardware back in the ndiswrapper days. As it turns out, it’s 50/50. Some of it has drivers, some don’t. Sure I could go hunting for untested unreliable alpha stage drivers and compile them myself, but I was kinda hoping that we would be passed that on over 95, 96% of the hardware there is out there.
Well I myself have no patience at all to compile stuff myself, I can say I am half casual half linux nerd. I’m in the middle. Compiling stuff is too much, especially drivers and low level stuff like that. At that point I will just give up on the hardware or the OS/distro. That’s mainly why I still dual boot. I have a SIM Racing setup and even with drivers that exist already and many awesome community made GUI tools (like Overdrive GUI) that get updated almost daily (which is impressive), it still is very hit or miss and most of the times it is either not detected at all or just half working. Even after using linux myself since the Ubuntu 7 and Gnome 2 days, I still dual boot Windows because well… sometimes life is just more peaceful when you can just reboot your pc and have funcional hardware again. I work under linux and play under windows. That’s peace for me. Except nowadays I am staring to play non-Sim Racing stuff on linux too because Proton is amazing. But it still requires a lot of manual labor to make it work. And when I teach linux to other people I always teach the dual boot way and how they can easily jump back to what they are used to. In your case… I think I would just get a different wifi card if possible. If its an embedded one, well… maybe I would just get a new motherboard/device anyway, or just use another OS and call it a day. Sometimes it’s the better way. In your case probably the amount of people that need drivers for hardware like yours is diminishing day by day, so the probability of it ever getting fixed also diminishes. I found out that in the Linux world it’s always better to stay with mainstream hardware as much as possible.
Nah, I don’t currently have any problems with my hardware. I just happen to have acces to a lot of old hardware (at work) and play with that when I have some free time.
Of course, I also (still) dual boot. Mostly because of software that just doesn’t run in Wine… and for work. But other than that, I’m mostly on Linux.
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