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[–] 25 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Even a decade ago it usually meant ticking a box that you also allowed nonfree drivers.

Even Debian allowed you to download the specific nonfree driver you needed and add it (without Internet) at imaging so post install you could connect with wifi and not just Ethernet.

It's come a long way. But doesn't anyone else remember when windows did not have drivers and you'd constantly be confronted with "have disk"?

I mean, the amount of drivers for old hardware I still have saved... Because before win10 nothing would reliability always fetch the driver you need from the net...

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Ticking the non-free driver box was child's play. As late as like 2012 I remember needing to download NDISwrapper so I could make the windows drivers work through a compatibility layer

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    I mean, if you buy broadcom you reap what you sow. And 2012 was 11 years ago. ;-)

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    When I bought my laptop i was using windows and didn't research Linux compatibility :(

    And yup. A decade ago was when Linux turned a corner on the wifi driver front, 11 years ago was hell

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I recall jaunty jackalope being the Ubuntu version that became my full time os. It was that version that my IBM x31 had everything taken care of on install with the third party drivers checked. I feel like the LTS version following that was where you could buy a generation previous of any hardware and it'd work without much fuss.

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  • When I bought my laptop i was using windows and didn’t research Linux compatibility :(

    I apologize for my general grumpiness this morning. Totally reasonable. :-)

    And yup. A decade ago was when Linux turned a corner on the wifi driver front, 11 years ago was hell

    I lol'd. :-)

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