this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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That sounds like a hardware issue.
Keep in mind that Linux is a monolithic kernel. It doesn't technically have drivers at all or go missing. All supporting kernel modules for hardware are always present at the configuration level. The general kernels shipped by distros are configured to work out of the box for most hardware. The only exceptions should be instances where oddball hardware can cause conflicts with the standard way other hardware works in the same space. Then there are cases where hardware is totally undocumented publicly by the chip manufacturers. That is the worst kind as some of those have poor or no support.
By contrast, Windows is a microkernel. It only creates an API layer for the hardware vendor to write a driver that interfaces with Windows. They leave it entirely up to the end user to get stuck in the middle, source and install the driver and deal with any potential issues. In other words they don't have devs to maintain or do anything meaningful in this space, and they enable undocumented proprietary crap hardware.
"Drivers" are only when you do ring 2 message passing in a hurd microkernel. Everything else is just "late-bound function call steering that happens to satisfy hardware-specific device communication and control".
/s