ubuntu drivers

[Disco Boy]

Well this afternoon I am spending downloading and installing drivers for my DELL laptop because I have just installed 64 bit windows 7 (it came with 32 bit).

I am having to do the downloading on my desktop, because on my laptop nothing works, neither wifi nor ethernet.

This came as a bit of a shock to me because I installed ubuntu on it previously and everything worked straight away, including my bluetooth card (didn't test that, but it showed up so I assumed). Whereas windows 7 is completely useless.

And I am going to have a problem coming up with signed drivers for my wifi card in windows 7.

So, basically, well done ubuntu

 

[Huw]

So, basically, well done ubuntu

It's less Ubuntu, and more the hordes of free-software hackers who work tirelessly to reverse engineer these drivers for the world to use.

But yeah, good point. This is one of the major advantages Linux has over Windows. Intel no longer supports my mobo for Windows 7 and as a consequence I cannot put my PC into standby when using Windows. With Linux, using what I assume must be a reverse-engineered mobo driver, it works flawlessly.

 

[Disco Boy]

What's the story with sleep? My laptop doesn't have a sleep option despite my having installed the chipset drivers... uh oh...

 

[Huw]

It's been months since I looked into it, but basically when I was using the powercfg commands and various tools to trace what was preventing my PC going into sleep mode, I was able to isolate the problem to my mobo's USB sockets. For whatever reason they were refusing to go to sleep, which in turn prevented the rest of my PC from going to sleep.

Linux manages it just fine, and indeed even Windows XP before I upgraded to Windows 7 managed it just fine, on precisely the same hardware. The only hope I had, really, was getting support from Intel who resolutely refuse to support my mobo for Windows 7.