On Friday 05 October 2018 04:37:43 E. Liddell wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Oct 2018 02:48:35 -0700
>
> William Morder <doctor_contendo@...> wrote:
> > On Friday 05 October 2018 00:19:47 Felmon Davis wrote:
> > > On Thu, 4 Oct 2018, J Leslie Turriff wrote:
> > > > On 2018-10-01 14:21:14 Kate Draven wrote:
> > > >
> > > > [ ... deleted ... ]
> > > >
> > > >> As for drivers,what do you mean? I've never had to install drivers.
> > > >> I HAVE had to install them in Apple and MS. That's a nightmare.
> > > >> Perhaps I'm mistunderstood (which is likely).
> > > >
> > > > 	The only ones I know of are the video drivers (which are optional).
> > > >
> > > > Leslie
> > >
> > > not sure what counts as a 'driver' but I have had to install some
> > > package for Brother printers and 'firmware' for wifi (Intel).
> > >
> > > if this is just a matter of semantics then let's not fuss.
> > >
> > > the fact remains that for some it's not all "out of the box" or
> > > whatever to call it.
> > >
> > > f.
> >
> > Maybe what was meant was dependencies rather than drivers? Brother
> > printers, and other such items, are special cases, because one doesn't
> > get the deb packages (or rpm, yum, etc., according to the distro) from
> > the standard repositories, but must download them from the manufacturer's
> > website. (I, too, wrestle with a Brother printer.) There, perhaps, one
> > means to say drivers, even if they are deb packages.
> >
> > When I read the word *driver*, however, I immediately thought that it
> > sounded more like a Windoze or rotten Apple user, who had recently
> > switched to Linux, and was unfamiliar with the repositories, or how to
> > use apt. If we knew more, we might be able to make suggestions, or offer
> > other help.
>
> Um, no, "driver"--a piece of software that makes it possible to communicate
> with a piece of hardware--is the correct term, and you're using them all
> the time in Linux, too.  It's just that most of the more common ones are
> treated as part of the kernel (or of CUPS and its supporting packages), so
> you never notice them.
>
> There are a lot of drivers that are or have been maintained outside the
> kernel, though, and these often have to be installed separately.  The
> printer drivers and the proprietary 3D acceleration drivers for nVidia and
> AMD are the most common, but there are others:  drivers for network
> equipment, modems, smartcard readers, crypto dongles, game controllers, and
> other oddly specific hardware that most people never run into.  They may or
> may not be in your distro's repositories, depending on who wrote the
> driver, what the distro's position on proprietary code is, and other
> factors.
>
> I'm currently running an externally packaged driver for my motherboard's
> internal sensor chip, because support for the it87 family of chips has been
> slow in reaching the kernel.
>
> TL;DR:  drivers have always been in Linux, too, and they're not going
> anywhere.
>
> E. Liddell
>

Yes, thanks, I do know what drivers are, and also that we have them in Linux. 
It's just that I don't usually think specifically of drivers, because I just 
install the packages I need, and they come with them as dependencies, or they 
come bundled with the kernel, or other packages. I rarely have found myself 
thinking about drivers, except in those cases where I need them for something 
like my Brother printer. 

I assumed readers would know I meant that, in Linux, drivers are packaged in a 
such a way that quite often we "never notice them", as you put it; except, 
that is, when it comes to third-party, proprietary stuff. In Linux, I rarely 
read about drivers, even though I know that they are there; whereas when I 
ran Windoze (nearly fifteen years ago now), drivers seemed to occupy much 
more of my attention. Except for my printer, I don't use proprietary 
anything; and if I can get my printer to work without it, they I will have 
all free/libre software. 

The wording of that earlier thread (which has now been lost) reminded me more 
of a Windoze discussion, so I was just guessing, perhaps wrongly, that the 
user had recently switched from another platform to Linux. 

Thanks for the message, as I am glad to see that your address is not getting 
marked as spam. 

Bill