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Comment by dooglius | Hacker News Reader

Windows developers have access to the source code under NDA. This is much less feasible for Linux developers, obviously.

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That's got nothing to do with having a stable API. There are thousands of device drivers that were written over 10 years ago which work perfectly well on current versions of Windows and which will keep working for years to come.

Linux made the political decision not to allow this, at the expense of end users.

> thousands of device drivers that were written over 10 years ago which work perfectly well on current versions of Windows

Is that really true? A couple months ago I bought a USB to serial adapter that advertised Windows Vista support on the packaging. It did not work with Windows 10 at all, and I ended up returning it.

I have plenty of hazy memories of printers that worked fine under Windows 9x not playing nice with Windows XP.

It's unfair to use printers as an example. For one, they're still a huge problem in Linux, but for two they're universally regarded as some of the crappiest things to work with in all of IT.

Printers under Linux have also one positive feature: if the specific model is supported, it is really plug and play.

The hard part is to choose, which model to purchase.

In my experience that is not true. The few printers I've had to set up on a Linux device required me to go find PPDs.

My experience is, that I go to the printer control panel and the printer is already there.

Fedora & Ubuntu; mostly HP printers.

You sound like everyone who talks about how Linux "just works" if only they choose exactly the right hardware and distribution combination.

Well, if you choose a more hardcore distribution that doesn't "just work" and requires tinkering, it is hardly a Linux fault.

For the record, the last time I did this it was Ubuntu and I think the printer was Brother. Neither particularly uncommon. Point is, because you're an apologist it literally doesn't matter what my circumstances are, you'll try to blame me anyways.

Just like you were describing your experience, I was describing mine.

But because you experienced the not-so-ideal scenario, doesn't mean that all scenarios are like that. If I used your argumentation, you are just an hater that blames system you don't like, in the most general way possible, which unsurprisingly includes scenarios that objectively do not conform to your description.

Note that I wrote "if the specific model is supported" and "the hard part is to choose, which model to purchase."

> Note that I wrote "if the specific model is supported" and "the hard part is to choose, which model to purchase."

Yeah, but that certainly doesn't mean it doesn't have a lot of problems with printers now does it? After all, I can say that IE works great as long as you only visit pages supported by IE.

Compared to other operating systems? Not that many problems. The printer queues do not magically disappear, or refuse to work for some unknown reason, which of course they will not tell you.

There are always both more and less problematic pieces of hardware. Given the forum where we discuss, it is reasonable to assume, that we both know which are which, and make a reasonable effort to avoid the former.

If doesn't always work: at home, I have an older Samsung MFD, which uses the older splix driver, and it works great. Due to that experience, I've got another Samsung printer for the office, but this one is newer and uses the closed-source uld driver. It means, that this printer doesn't work out of the box, driver installation is necessary (after that it will auto-discover anything it should, though). Not that it doesn't work, but it is a minor annoyance. It also means, that I won't be purchasing any Samsung-branded printer in the future (not that it matters, they sold the printer division to HP).

On the other hand, at friends & family, any HP printer, both inkjet and laser, worked out of the box. When I can, I won't be getting any Brother, OKI, Lexmark or another second-tier branded printer, because they were PITA even in 90's and under Windows.

So is it perfect for every piece of hardware? No. But is it that bad, as you said? Also no, that's too much overgeneralization and extrapolation.

> Compared to other operating systems? Not that many problems.

I disagree. It's roughly the same amount of problems. That was my initial point before you went all Linux Crusader on me: printers suck everywhere.

Well, 9x and XP were two completely different operating systems that just implemented similar user space APIs. That was a one time transition. Drivers written for NT or 2k might have worked.

That seems the exact opposite of my experience. Most hardware drivers break after one or two Windows versions once the vendor stops updating the driver, eg. audio hardware, printers. On Linux things generally keep working. As an end user, having drivers in-tree is one of Linux's best features.

Having drivers in-tree is great, but a lot of drivers can't or won't be in-tree. My webcam (using qc-usb), PDA (using synce) and TV capture card (I can't remember what the project that supports those was called) all stopped working on Linux, even though the drivers were open-source and seemingly high-quality, because that's not enough for Linux - you have to be in-tree or you'll get broken.

At the time when I had TV capture card (Hauppage PVR250; it was analog TV tuner with MPEG-2 hw encoder), it stopped working in Windows way before Linux: in XP, the driver installation was showing HRESULT errors, but once a blue moon it would succeed. Forget anything newer. With Linux, I think it should work with the current ivtv driver, but I don't have it anymore to try.

Another example are scanners. Does your driver for Windows use TWAIN? Well, then it won't work in Windows 10 anymore, which made WIA the only option. Lot of fun for folks, who were automatically updated.

Tell that to my Brazos GPU that lost capabilities with AMD driver's reboot.

Being open source didn't help at all.

> Linux made the political decision not to allow this, at the expense of end users.

There are many pros and cons of having a stable API, and it can be technical and political and more. Saying it's just a "political decision" is plain wrong.

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