• Vqhm@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Even a decade ago it usually meant ticking a box that you also allowed nonfree drivers.

    Even Debian allowed you to download the specific nonfree driver you needed and add it (without Internet) at imaging so post install you could connect with wifi and not just Ethernet.

    It’s come a long way. But doesn’t anyone else remember when windows did not have drivers and you’d constantly be confronted with “have disk”?

    I mean, the amount of drivers for old hardware I still have saved… Because before win10 nothing would reliability always fetch the driver you need from the net…

    • DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      This reminds me of the big USB drive of drivers that we had at a PC repair shop. When Windows 7 failed to find drivers, we’d stick that in and give it a scan.

      • AtariDump@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I remember that, but for Xp. Downloading a “driver pack”, pointing windows at the root of the folder, and praying.

    • bjorney@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Ticking the non-free driver box was child’s play. As late as like 2012 I remember needing to download NDISwrapper so I could make the windows drivers work through a compatibility layer

        • bjorney@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          When I bought my laptop i was using windows and didn’t research Linux compatibility :(

          And yup. A decade ago was when Linux turned a corner on the wifi driver front, 11 years ago was hell

          • Cenzorrll@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I recall jaunty jackalope being the Ubuntu version that became my full time os. It was that version that my IBM x31 had everything taken care of on install with the third party drivers checked. I feel like the LTS version following that was where you could buy a generation previous of any hardware and it’d work without much fuss.

          • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            When I bought my laptop i was using windows and didn’t research Linux compatibility :(

            I apologize for my general grumpiness this morning. Totally reasonable. :-)

            And yup. A decade ago was when Linux turned a corner on the wifi driver front, 11 years ago was hell

            I lol’d. :-)