Such an up and down though. I have an ancient epson scanner that cannot be used on modern windows, but I just installed the driver on linux and everything has been amazing.
Not quite that old, it is connectet via USB-B. Windows drivers only exist for 32 Bit systems, on linux the drrivers come in a deb package that works on modern installations.
He might have oversimplified to assume it was the 32-bitness that is the problem. Could be an ancient Windows Driver Model version that is no longer supported. Could have been that there were no signed drivers, or at least no drivers that are signed in a way that would pass today.
The thing is that Windows banks on extended binary driver compatibility for running “old” hardware, but breaks that compatibility ever so often, and they don’t have first-party investment in drivers for hardware and third-parties would eschew standard multiple device drivers that would have worked fine in favor of their own branded driver/app experience. In Linux, mostly those devices get covered by generic multi-vendor drivers that are better maintained.
Makes even less sense. 20 year old usb Epson flatbed scanner here that plugs into any win10/11 system and works without any fiddling, and that’s generally consistent with any usb hardware on Windows. I’m not saying linux isn’t a good solution to get problematic old hardware working, but let’s be real here.
My friend, let me be that guy that says “that’s nothing!”. In 2002 (around kernel 2.14 I think it was) notebooks had no integrated wifi (at least not the second hand notebook I could afford, and it wasn’t cheap anyway). I had to buy a cisco pmcia wifi card from across the world and recompile the kernel to include wifi support (and the driver of course). I don’t remember why, but I remember that recompiling the kernel happened quite frequently. Maybe because I was distro hopping a lot or because there were quite (relatively speaking) kernel updates.
Not good old days, but at least I learnt!
There was no DKMS back then (it appeared in 2003 and took a while longer to be adopted) so anything you wanted to add to the kernel and didn’t have a ready-made binary module for your exact machine and distro had to come as a patch + recompile.
Someone gave me an 8 year old laptop to clear down. So I figured I’d swap in an SSD and put Linux on it.
Damn thing wouldn’t even boot. Wasn’t even that bad a spec machine. 6GB RAM should have been plenty. Shame really, was actually looking forward to seeing how far it had come in the last ten years or so.
Yeah, very odd. A few weeks ago, I retired a computer that had 4 GB of RAM that was doing server duties, running Debian. It was doing a great job until I tried running a virtual machine on it (for Home Assistant); that was just killing the poor thing. The processor was a Core 2 Quad that was introduced in 2008, so I got plenty of life out of that setup.
6gb ram is plenty, especially for a lightweight distro like antix or slax.
From AntiX:
It should run on most computers, ranging from 256MB old systems with pre-configured swap to the latest powerful boxes. 512MB RAM is the recommended minimum for antiX. Installation to hard drive requires a minimum 7.0GB hard disk size.
Yeah, never had a problem with incompatible hardware on Linux.
No siree, not a once!
Such an up and down though. I have an ancient epson scanner that cannot be used on modern windows, but I just installed the driver on linux and everything has been amazing.
Like pre-usb ancient or what?
Not quite that old, it is connectet via USB-B. Windows drivers only exist for 32 Bit systems, on linux the drrivers come in a deb package that works on modern installations.
You can install 32 bit drivers on Windows 11 though, it supports both.
He might have oversimplified to assume it was the 32-bitness that is the problem. Could be an ancient Windows Driver Model version that is no longer supported. Could have been that there were no signed drivers, or at least no drivers that are signed in a way that would pass today.
The thing is that Windows banks on extended binary driver compatibility for running “old” hardware, but breaks that compatibility ever so often, and they don’t have first-party investment in drivers for hardware and third-parties would eschew standard multiple device drivers that would have worked fine in favor of their own branded driver/app experience. In Linux, mostly those devices get covered by generic multi-vendor drivers that are better maintained.
Makes even less sense. 20 year old usb Epson flatbed scanner here that plugs into any win10/11 system and works without any fiddling, and that’s generally consistent with any usb hardware on Windows. I’m not saying linux isn’t a good solution to get problematic old hardware working, but let’s be real here.
This is not a problem with Linux, this is a problem with hardware manufacturers not making drivers for Linux.
Which is understandable, honestly. Making drivers is surely not an easy task. Targeting Windows covers the 80/20 rule.
I just broke out into a cold sweat remembering trying to get wifi to function on my netbook back in 2k8.
My friend, let me be that guy that says “that’s nothing!”. In 2002 (around kernel 2.14 I think it was) notebooks had no integrated wifi (at least not the second hand notebook I could afford, and it wasn’t cheap anyway). I had to buy a cisco pmcia wifi card from across the world and recompile the kernel to include wifi support (and the driver of course). I don’t remember why, but I remember that recompiling the kernel happened quite frequently. Maybe because I was distro hopping a lot or because there were quite (relatively speaking) kernel updates. Not good old days, but at least I learnt!
There was no DKMS back then (it appeared in 2003 and took a while longer to be adopted) so anything you wanted to add to the kernel and didn’t have a ready-made binary module for your exact machine and distro had to come as a patch + recompile.
But you try to tell the young people today that… and they won’t believe yah!
https://youtu.be/ue7wM0QC5LE?si=6qGRgsuMSx7NaA_D
More likely you have issues with incompatible software.
Someone gave me an 8 year old laptop to clear down. So I figured I’d swap in an SSD and put Linux on it.
Damn thing wouldn’t even boot. Wasn’t even that bad a spec machine. 6GB RAM should have been plenty. Shame really, was actually looking forward to seeing how far it had come in the last ten years or so.
Exactly. Should have run. Something in the hardware it didn’t like. Just got a black screen with a flashing cursor. Never got past that point.
That sounds like a problem with the graphics drivers
Next step from there is to find out what graphics hardware it has and try to see if you can get a distro that’s known working with it
Technically, the next step would be retrieving it from the landfill it got sent to.
Well then, guess that clears that up
Yeah, very odd. A few weeks ago, I retired a computer that had 4 GB of RAM that was doing server duties, running Debian. It was doing a great job until I tried running a virtual machine on it (for Home Assistant); that was just killing the poor thing. The processor was a Core 2 Quad that was introduced in 2008, so I got plenty of life out of that setup.
6gb ram is plenty, especially for a lightweight distro like antix or slax.
From AntiX:
Winmodems and other cheap junk comes to mind.
But, apart from stuff made just for windows, what’ve you got?
I haven’t in a long while.