• Sergey Kozharinov@lem.serkozh.me
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    130
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Windows: “We dropped support for that thing you bought brand new 5 years ago”

    Linux: “We are considering dropping support for something that has existed for longer than you had”

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      34
      ·
      1 year ago

      Linux: “We’re dropping support for this device because we’re fairly sure we had the last one in existence and it just died.”

    • DrWeevilJammer@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hell, I can get a 30 year old HP LaserJet 4 printer working just fine on almost any version of Linux with the official HPLIP CLI software provided by (shockingly) HP, which was updated 2 months ago with support for over 50 new printers and the following OSes:

      • LinuxMint 21.1
      • MxLinux 21.3
      • Elementary OS 7
      • Ubuntu 22.10
      • RHEL 8.6
      • RHEL 8.7
      • RHEL 9.1
      • Fedora 37

      I HATE HP and their printers (PC LOAD LETTER WTF FOR LIFE) but I will admit that this is impressive support.

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      True, but getting that thing that’s older than you to actually work is going to require recompiling your kernel with some specific options, downloading a driver from an obscure git repo, running a tool to generate a config file, manually editing that config, and then running another tool to install the driver and then troubleshooting what went wrong.

      Oh, wait, that was me trying to use my relatively new Sound Blaster sound card when experimenting with Linux 20 years ago. Linux had terrible support for ISA Plug and Play cards for some reason.

      By comparison my solution to windows dropping support for a thing was to grab the cheapest PC I could find that might hypothetically work and stick an old version of windows on it that still had support and just not connect it to the Internet.

      • LeFantome@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        20 years ago? Try installing Linux on that same hardware now. Now try installing Windows?

        Try the same experiment with any hardware 5 years old or older. Linux wins every time.

        People will say that on newer hardware, Windows is better. Partially true. New hardware that was designed to ship with Windows will work better. A fair comparison would be hardware that ships with Linux.

        Proprietary firmware has always been an issue ( like Broadcom and like NVIDIA ), especially on distros like Debian that could not ship non-free firmware. The situation has improved though. Even NVIDIA will ship out of the box soon. And Debian will shop non-free firmware now so those old Broadcom cards should work.

        One of my favourite things about Linux is how much easier it is to get it running on random hardware, especially “out of the box” without having to track down drivers or install stuff after. With older Apple hardware, it is not just easier but it may be the only way to use modern software at all. I confess though that I am mostly speaking about older hardware.