this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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What on earth are you guys doing having to search the internet for drivers for Linux??? You not buy things that have Linux support advertised? Not looking for good reviews by other Linux users?
Yeah, with the exception of some network printers and surely some other corner case I'm not thinking of now (is broadcom/realtek wifi still a problem?) - drivers are generally already there or don't exist.
Having said that, I remember in my early days fully not comprehending that manual driver installs were generally not a thing with Linux.
Printers these days tend to be driverless, so that's pretty much a solved problem.
Manjaro on my 2 year old build detected my network printer and installed it driverless - and I've never had a problem. On my more recent build (different system) it sees it, but always gives "unable to locate printer" when I try to actually print. I haven't cared enough to troubleshoot it further, but I did install the applicable drivers from the AUR to see if that helped, and it did not.
So my current experience is pretty mixed, but at one point it was flawless, and I have no doubt it's flawless for plenty others.
Regardless I literally can't remember having to even think about drivers for any other bit of hardware in at least the last ten years, so (as someone who supports Windows at work) I still think Linux wins on the driver front hands down.
Printers should probably be connected by USB for security reasons anyway.