On 10/30/2017 06:14 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote: > My camera doesn't work, my scanner doesn't work,
To some extent, as I'll say below, this is due to whether the manufacturers of these devices choose to provide device drivers for Linux. Or if some clever Linux users manages to write one themselves (more likely). So one does need to be a bit careful about what NEW hardware one uses. Older stuff is usually supported. > WLAN made problems (see below), CAD is not working well... > > I realized that Linux's monolithic kernel is a problem. Every device > driver needs to be part of the kernel. This is a confusion. Linux supports kernel modules, which are the exact Linux equivalent of a device driver, and which can be installed separately from the kernel itself. Any given *distribution* (Ubuntu, whatever) can choose what drivers it includes in the kernel and which it requires to be installed separately, however, so yours may give the impression of a more "monolithic" kernel than there really is. If a given driver is compiled into the kernel, then it can only be updated by updating the kernel. But this is entirely dependent upon the distribution. If you want something more flexible than what you have, I'm sure it's out there. > This is hard for small manufacturers of e.g. USB microscopes. They can simply write a kernel module (= device driver). If they choose not to do so, then one cannot blame Linux. > Also for CAD the monolithic kernel is a problem. Same point. There's not a monolithic kernel. > An example: I bought a laptop with a built in Wifi chip from Intel. In > Linux kernels 4.8 to 4.12 the Wifi driver iwlwifi had a bug. A fix was > already available and I could download it. But I could not get it to > work. Someone in a forum explained me that the kernel needs to be > compiled using the fixed driver before it will work. But compiling the > kernel as a normal user? No chance. In the Windows world, you do not even have this option. You have to wait until Microsoft or the manufacturer decides to issue a patch. You have the same option with whatever distribution you are using: Wait until they issue a patch. I'll bet that Linux distros are faster to do that than Windows is. My sense is that kernel updates for most distros tend to happen about every week or so, so you probably don't need to wait very long. It only seems slower with Linxu, because you actually can SEE the source code fix. Microsoft will not let you see that. Who knows how long bug fixes there wait until they finally release an update? > And indeed I had to wait until Linux 4.13 was released until I had a > stable WLAN connection with my laptop. So, as with Windows, you can choose to do that. In the Linux world, however, you have a different option: You can recompile the kernel yourself. Yes it's non-trivial to do that, but in the Windows world you can't do that, even if you want to do so. Richard
