General question - drivers
by vinifera from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6F4A6)
hello all
before i start, just have in mind i am not yet a linux user (yes i tried alot of distros last year in VM)
my question this time, is how does Linux/distros "use" drivers ?
example on Windows, for lets say GPU and MBO/Chipset drivers exist for maybe
2 or 3 generations (if it worked on Vista then it worked on 7 and 8)
but then they drop support and you're FUBAR
so basically if i have hardware from certain "OS version" era it will
work on next 2 OS versions
but what about Linux ?
if i switch to linux with my ~12-15 old machine, how does Linux handle this ?
because on Windows with generic drivers you can't do anything, it is just barebones just so much you can get things running
i doubt Linux is saving so many manufacturers for so many HW components
for so long, yet it is always praised that Linux can run on any PC
so how does that work then ?
before i start, just have in mind i am not yet a linux user (yes i tried alot of distros last year in VM)
my question this time, is how does Linux/distros "use" drivers ?
example on Windows, for lets say GPU and MBO/Chipset drivers exist for maybe
2 or 3 generations (if it worked on Vista then it worked on 7 and 8)
but then they drop support and you're FUBAR
so basically if i have hardware from certain "OS version" era it will
work on next 2 OS versions
but what about Linux ?
if i switch to linux with my ~12-15 old machine, how does Linux handle this ?
because on Windows with generic drivers you can't do anything, it is just barebones just so much you can get things running
i doubt Linux is saving so many manufacturers for so many HW components
for so long, yet it is always praised that Linux can run on any PC
so how does that work then ?