[SOLVED] Do i need to install drivers just like I did on Window ??

[htetnainglynn]

Hi everyone,

I've been using Suse linux version 11 for a couple of months and it works fine for me but the only problem occurring to me is that it's being a little bit slow than my previous window XP. I tried to figure out what's happening and one question keep on bothering me is whether I need to install drivers just like on Window XP in order to booze up my computer performance. When I first installed Suse on my computer , the setup itself detected almost every single drivers on my computer ( that's what I think because the system showed all my driver names correct). Please tell me whether I need to install drivers on my linux just like on window and thanks everyone in advance.

[oz]

welcome to the forums

you might need to install certain drivers, depending on the kind of drivers you are talking about... such as proprietary video drivers for instance

[Bemk]

As you might already have figured out, Linux doesn't work the same as Windows. Windows has all of its drivers in external files (driver.inf). This slows the system down a little. Linux works different here. Most of the drivers used in Linux are in the Linux kernel, in the form of a module. Linux is free open source software so an awful lot of drivers have already been written by the Linux community.

Still Linux doesn't have all the drivers. For example the graphics driver is quite often a proprietary one, which isn't included in your distro, because that isn't permitted. If that's the case (Lucky for me, every thing works straight out of the box here) you need to install that driver.

The reason why there are no good substitutes for a lot of the proprietary drivers is because the companies like NVidea and ATI don't bring out the documents on how to talk to the hardware. This results in the fact that people need to guess what they are doing and can't write good drivers.

Most of the time when you run your system with a driver that isn't fully supporting your graphics card, there is output to the screen, the only thing is that it won't be as good as it could be when the graphics cards full capabilities are used.

So yes, you probably need to install some drivers, however, most drivers just work (unless your computer manufacturer has only used hardware with non-free drivers). That's why I want to build my next pc my self, then I don't need to install the proprietary drivers, and can stay in the world of Free Open Source Software (FOSS).

[htetnainglynn]

Now, the puzzle been solved. Thanks for the replies .