Out of interest, which programs do you need to install via terminal that concern the average user?
For example installing the GPU driver for an older GPU. Or installing the driver for an obscure printer, touchpad or other weird hardware.
Average user doesn’t mean total noob. Installing Windows and the relevant drivers is something many users in the “Gamer class” can do. These guys usually don’t to command line (except for maybe pinging something), but they are comfortable with installing and configuring stuff in GUI.
They understand how to google the driver to their weird hardware, download the .exe or .msi, start it and navigate the install wizard.
On Linux I’ve had it a few times that you e.g. have to unload/load kernel modules and stuff to get a driver working. I once even had it, that the Linux driver for a device was only supplied in source code to be compiled with an ancient version of GCC that wasn’t available over the package manager. So then I spend an hour or two fixing compiler errors to upgrade that old source code to work with a current GCC.
Getting the same hardware to run under Windows meant downloading the .exe and running it.
And yeah, that’s not something you’ll do on a daily basis, but it is a huge roadblock for someone afraid of white text in a black window.
For example installing the GPU driver for an older GPU. Or installing the driver for an obscure printer, touchpad or other weird hardware.
That’s not quite my definition of “common”.
Average user doesn’t mean total noob. Installing Windows and the relevant drivers is something many users in the “Gamer class” can do.
The “Gamer class” is far from the average user, the average user doesn’t even know what a GPU or a driver is and doesn’t care. As long as the OS installs all drivers by default or the OEM has preinstalled them all is good.
Getting the same hardware to run under Windows meant downloading the .exe and running it.
Until there’s no more drivers for that generation of GPU. The Windows 11 drivers for AMD only go down to the Vega 64, if you have a Fury X or a 7970 you’re out of luck. Not that Windows 11 even lets you install on a machine that old.
AMDGPU goes down all the way to GCN 1.2, which means you can even run a 7970 on a modern Linux OS. Even out of the box if your distro has the legacy flags enabled.
It would be fantastic if there was more hardware that works out of the box in Linux, but that’s up to the manufacturers. Until more people switch to Linux they don’t bother and until they bother everybody complains that XY doesn’t work on Linux.
As of right now the biggest hurdle is Nvidia without drivers included in Linux. Without a distro that takes care of installing their drivers they are essentially out of luck.
Using a GPU under Linux is not common? And installing Linux on old laptops isn’t either?
As of right now the biggest hurdle is Nvidia without drivers included in Linux. Without a distro that takes care of installing their drivers they are essentially out of luck.
I can’t say anything about AMD, since the last time I had an AMD GPU is ~15 years ago.
When I installed an Ubuntu variant on my G580, which has a Geforce 635M it automatically installed the current driver for Geforce GPUs when I setup the OS, but that driver doesn’t support the 635M. That one needs a legacy driver. And getting that to work was a major pain.
I first installed the legacy driver over apt, but it didn’t do anything, because apparently installing the driver doesn’t actually load the kernel module for the driver. So I had to load it manually, and it still didn’t do anything. Turns out, uninstalling the original driver didn’t unload it from the GPU either. So I had to re-install the old driver, unload the module, uninstall the old driver, install the legacy driver and load the legacy module. Took me a few hours to figure all of that out.
No way someone without CLI experience will be able to do that.
Using a GPU under Linux is not common? And installing Linux on old laptops isn’t either?
Installing drivers for an older GPU, obscure printer, touchpad or other weird hardware is not common.
When I installed an Ubuntu variant on my G580, which has a Geforce 635M it automatically installed the current driver for Geforce GPUs when I setup the OS, but that driver doesn’t support the 635M. That one needs a legacy driver. And getting that to work was a major pain.
Which is an issue with Nvidia, they have no drivers for that GPU for Windows 11 either. Not saying that this is not an issue but there is absolutely nothing Linux can do to make every legacy GPU work without help from Nvidia. It uses the open source driver out of the box, which works sometimes but not for everything and definitely not for gaming.
Not saying that this is not an issue but there is absolutely nothing Linux can do to make every legacy GPU work without help from Nvidia.
Yes, they can. They literally have the correct (legacy) driver in the Ubuntu repo. But the autoinstaller installs the wrong driver during installing the OS. And if you try to manually install it, there is not even a text prompt in the CLI saying “You just installed that driver, do you want to actually use it to? (Y/n)”.
They could have even gone so far as to make a CLI wizard (like many other packages do) or even a GUI wizard. But no, the package just installs and does nothing by default.
It uses the open source driver out of the box, which works sometimes but not for everything and definitely not for gaming.
Also that is not correct. All the *buntu installers ask you when you install the OS whether you also want to have closed source drivers installed, and then it installs the closed source Nvidia drivers. Just the wrong ones.
For example installing the GPU driver for an older GPU. Or installing the driver for an obscure printer, touchpad or other weird hardware.
Average user doesn’t mean total noob. Installing Windows and the relevant drivers is something many users in the “Gamer class” can do. These guys usually don’t to command line (except for maybe pinging something), but they are comfortable with installing and configuring stuff in GUI.
They understand how to google the driver to their weird hardware, download the .exe or .msi, start it and navigate the install wizard.
On Linux I’ve had it a few times that you e.g. have to unload/load kernel modules and stuff to get a driver working. I once even had it, that the Linux driver for a device was only supplied in source code to be compiled with an ancient version of GCC that wasn’t available over the package manager. So then I spend an hour or two fixing compiler errors to upgrade that old source code to work with a current GCC.
Getting the same hardware to run under Windows meant downloading the .exe and running it.
And yeah, that’s not something you’ll do on a daily basis, but it is a huge roadblock for someone afraid of white text in a black window.
That’s not quite my definition of “common”.
The “Gamer class” is far from the average user, the average user doesn’t even know what a GPU or a driver is and doesn’t care. As long as the OS installs all drivers by default or the OEM has preinstalled them all is good.
Until there’s no more drivers for that generation of GPU. The Windows 11 drivers for AMD only go down to the Vega 64, if you have a Fury X or a 7970 you’re out of luck. Not that Windows 11 even lets you install on a machine that old.
AMDGPU goes down all the way to GCN 1.2, which means you can even run a 7970 on a modern Linux OS. Even out of the box if your distro has the legacy flags enabled.
It would be fantastic if there was more hardware that works out of the box in Linux, but that’s up to the manufacturers. Until more people switch to Linux they don’t bother and until they bother everybody complains that XY doesn’t work on Linux.
As of right now the biggest hurdle is Nvidia without drivers included in Linux. Without a distro that takes care of installing their drivers they are essentially out of luck.
Using a GPU under Linux is not common? And installing Linux on old laptops isn’t either?
I can’t say anything about AMD, since the last time I had an AMD GPU is ~15 years ago.
When I installed an Ubuntu variant on my G580, which has a Geforce 635M it automatically installed the current driver for Geforce GPUs when I setup the OS, but that driver doesn’t support the 635M. That one needs a legacy driver. And getting that to work was a major pain.
I first installed the legacy driver over apt, but it didn’t do anything, because apparently installing the driver doesn’t actually load the kernel module for the driver. So I had to load it manually, and it still didn’t do anything. Turns out, uninstalling the original driver didn’t unload it from the GPU either. So I had to re-install the old driver, unload the module, uninstall the old driver, install the legacy driver and load the legacy module. Took me a few hours to figure all of that out.
No way someone without CLI experience will be able to do that.
Installing drivers for an older GPU, obscure printer, touchpad or other weird hardware is not common.
Which is an issue with Nvidia, they have no drivers for that GPU for Windows 11 either. Not saying that this is not an issue but there is absolutely nothing Linux can do to make every legacy GPU work without help from Nvidia. It uses the open source driver out of the box, which works sometimes but not for everything and definitely not for gaming.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/results/180339/
Yes, they do.
Yes, they can. They literally have the correct (legacy) driver in the Ubuntu repo. But the autoinstaller installs the wrong driver during installing the OS. And if you try to manually install it, there is not even a text prompt in the CLI saying “You just installed that driver, do you want to actually use it to? (Y/n)”.
They could have even gone so far as to make a CLI wizard (like many other packages do) or even a GUI wizard. But no, the package just installs and does nothing by default.
Also that is not correct. All the *buntu installers ask you when you install the OS whether you also want to have closed source drivers installed, and then it installs the closed source Nvidia drivers. Just the wrong ones.