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I will start this off by adding, “… with the exception of some wireless chip sets and high end graphics cards.” to appease those of you who will act like Arnold Horshack (1, 2) if that is not mentioned. If there are other unsupported devices on Linux that are supported in Windows 7 feel free to scratch your itch and tell me in a comment.
The concept of better is a subjective idea. What is better to me is possibly, even probably, not better to someone else. In my case, and in the case of some of my clients, Linux hardware support is “better”. I do not buy cutting edge hardware and tend to keep systems and peripherals until they stop working and can no longer be repaired at a reasonable cost. When a new release of my favorite Linux distribution comes out I can be 100% certain that my hardware that works with my current release will still work with the new release. That is something I just take for granted. This is not so in the Microsoft camp.
For those people who hold on to working hardware through new Microsoft versions, their hardware may or may not be supported in a new release of a Microsoft OS. Take the example of a recent conversation I had with the manager at one of my client offices. I will call her “Mrs. B” here. Mrs. B is a Microsoft fanatic and will not even consider switching to Apple, much less Linux. When I mentioned switching to Linux for her office desktop during our conversation she laughingly said, “Gene, you know better than that.”, because we have had that discussion before. This came up in our recent conversation about her HP Photosmart 1115 printer.
Mrs B recently had to purchase a new PC for her office use because her old Microsoft XP Professional based PC died. She bought a cheap, commodity PC with Windows 7 Home Premium installed from an on-line discount store. She did not check whether or not her existing peripherals were supported. Why should she? They worked before, so they should still work. Correct? Not so correct. You see, HP has, for whatever reason, decided to not make drivers for the Photosmart 1115 for Vista, much less Windows 7.
Mrs. B had asked me to see if I could help her get her printer working on Windows 7 because she could not find the driver CD. So, I went to www.hp.com and did a search for drivers for her. I already suspected that HP had not created drivers for that model, and I was correct. I informed Mrs. B and mentioned that the printer does have support under Apple OS X and Linux. So maybe we could switch her to Linux so she would not have to get rid of her still working printer just to buy one that has Windows 7 drivers. That is when I got her response above. So, Mrs. B will be buying a new printer and either throwing away or giving away the still functional Photosmart 1115 printer.
While at HP’s web site, just for curiosity’s sake, I looked at the list of unsupported products in Windows 7. That is quite a list. Then I took items from the list at random and checked to see if HP reports they are supported under Linux. Oddly, some of the items in that list do have Windows 7 drivers. It seems even HP is not sure which of their products are not supported. Some of the products are not supported under Linux according to the HP driver search for them. Those also only have drivers for Microsoft Windows 3.1, Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 2000. It is possible these very old models are “win-printer” types that are gutted of any stand-alone capability and require a driver to function at all. But the other models I looked up all had support under Linux listed, but no support under Windows Vista or Windows 7.
One problem here is that Microsoft drivers are so closely tied to the system kernel that a new release of the operating system breaks old drivers. Under Apple OS X and Linux this is not a problem because most drivers, including those for printing, are separate from and not tied to the kernel. On Linux any driver that does require a specific kernel can be, and usually will be, easily recompiled by a distribution’s maintainers and released along with the new kernel. If the driver works with DKMS, even better. Printing runs as a separate subsystem, usually using CUPS. So, if one’s printer worked with Fedora 9 it still works with Fedora 15 and will probably still be able to work with Fedora 25 or whatever Fedora releases may be called later. So, one’s beloved Photosmart 1115 printer can still be used under Linux while it cannot be used with Windows 7. In my book, that is better hardware support with Linux.
These days I will only purchase new peripherals for my SOHO that specifically state they have Linux support or are shown to be supported by open source drivers. If the package says “Linux” on it, I also try to take the time to send an e-mail to the manufacturer letting them know I chose their product because they took the effort to put on the packaging the fact they support my preferred OS. This is my small effort to keep these manufacturers interested in supporting Linux. Perhaps you can do the same.
Do you have your own “peripheral horror story” with a Microsoft OS? Feel free to post a comment about it.
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I just thought of something else after posting this article publicly. Being able to keep supporting older hardware also makes Linux more “green” than Microsoft. Those of you who care about that sort of thing and are still using Microsoft, shame on you.
A good point was made in a comment on reddit. Occasionally a piece of hardware, such as an old graphics card, may be left behind when a distribution updates to a new release of the software that requires that type of hardware. In that case, switching to another current distribution that still supports older hardware may be the only option. It is good that that option for Linux is there for those who may need it.
I run vista on a shared laptop computer and for years relied on very expensive dialup internet. I was surfing the net on a nokia fone for one year and due to the crippled browsing experience realised I needed a secure proper os as I couldn’t see pdf’s nor many forums wouldn’t render correctly in the fone browser. I had a data cable for the fone and tried downloading several hundred megabytes of different drivers and nokia pc suites to use the fone internet on the laptop. None of them worked and I had to get a slow bluetooth dongle to get it to work. The drivers would also make the computer freeze often. After trying several live cd distros I settled on puppy525 on a usb stick a week ago and I havent looked back since. It worked perfect with the fone and high speed data cable ever since and I need not worry about my little brother installing keyloggers either.
On my brand new AMD C50 ASUS 1015 eeePC, everything worked right out of the box, no need for drivers, I enabled the option to install latest Catalyst but I didn’t really need that. OTOH, the Win7 this machine came with made it crawl, programs would take forever to open even after defragmenting. Updates would make the system crawl. Worse of all, every driver had to be individially wheras in Ubuntu, I had to download nothing. This laptop is relatively new and yet, it works right out of the box with Ubuntu and not with Windows so who has better h/w support may I ask?
If I were given a box of unknown hardware and told to build a computer, but it HAS to be fully functional when I was finished, I’d put XP on it. Not because I have any love for XP, but it’s a Windows world, and I have more confidence I could get everything working from the start. Linux /generally/ is a more pleasant experience for a new install but when things are painful, they can really be painful.
I suppose you are not locking me in a closet with no way to research the hardware?
If so, I would handle that scenario by researching the hardware to see if each piece had Linux / Unix / W7 drivers. Then I would look at the use for which the system were intended. If the drivers were available and the use would fit with Linux, then I would install a Linux distribution, or if *BSD a *BSD, with my last choice being a Microsoft OS. I always try to pick stability and security over Microsoft.
If you have the drivers for the hardware, or the hardware uses drivers from the windows install disk (unlikely) then your okay with a windows install. Or if you at least know what hardware you have so you can go download the drivers. but . . . I can only imagine the headache you would have installing Win XP on a box of unknown hardware since it does not identify the devices. Yes, it recognizes it, it just does not ID it. It you are lucky if will give you some kind of generic name like ‘PCI Audio’ giving no clue of the brand much less the model. If I had a box of unidentified part I would install Linux. Don’t believe the Microsoft lie. Here is the truth. Windows is hard, Linux is easy.
I wonder if you could have used virtual box, passed the USB printer through, and then used a cups client in windows in order to print.
I have used linux for years and still use mandrake linux on my old pentium 3 laptop. Linux saved me money, time. life. blood and further reduced my nuances related to everything and im belated such a thing exists and im glad i got to see it in my lifetime.
[...] Linux Hardware Support Better Than Windows 7 The concept of better is a subjective idea. What is better to me is possibly, even probably, not better to someone else. In my case, and in the case of some of my clients, Linux hardware support is “better”. I do not buy cutting edge hardware and tend to keep systems and peripherals until they stop working and can no longer be repaired at a reasonable cost. When a new release of my favorite Linux distribution comes out I can be 100% certain that my hardware that works with my current release will still work with the new release. That is something I just take for granted. This is not so in the Microsoft camp. [...]
I had a video camera that was officially supported on Windows. Every time I plugged it into a windows machine (via IEEE 1394) BSOD. Tried it on several machines. Tried with and without the software that came with it. ARGGHHHHHH!!! Plugged into Linux. Not only did it work, but I could control rewind, fast forward, play, etc. Those features weren’t even offered on Windows. This was not a cheapo online special either, this was a high end consumer model from a major manufacturer.
I have recently bought a HP multifunctional printer and I have to say, I am very much impressed with the level of support HP provides.
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I have an older version of Linux (Ubuntu Karmic) but HPLIP works like a charm after installation.
Way to go HP.
I am so impressed that I may even buy a HP Touchpad