Join , subscribers and get a daily digest of news, geek trivia, and our feature articles. By submitting your email, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Windows needs manufacturer-provided hardware drivers before your hardware will work. Linux and other operating systems also need hardware drivers before hardware will work — but hardware drivers are handled differently on Linux. You may sometimes need to install drivers, but some hardware may just not work at all.
Windows does try to help. Microsoft bundles a lot of these manufacturer-provided drivers with Windows, and hosts many of them on Windows Update.
Unless you have an ancient device that only works with older versions of Windows, the manufacturer has done the work of making it work with Windows. Things are different on Linux. Most of the drivers for hardware on your computer are open-source and integrated into Linux itself.
These hardware drivers are generally part of the Linux kernel, although bits of graphics drivers are part of Xorg the graphics system , and printer drivers are included with CUPS the print system. That means most of the available hardware drivers are already on your computer, included along with the kernel, graphics server, and print server.
These drivers are sometimes developed by hobbyists. In other words, most hardware drivers are included out-of-the-box. Your Linux system should automatically detect your hardware and use the appropriate hardware drivers. Some manufacturers to provide their own, closed-source, proprietary drivers. Some Wi-Fi drivers are also still proprietary, so your wireless hardware may not work until you install them.
How you install proprietary drivers depends on your Linux distribution. It will detect which proprietary drivers you can install for your hardware and allow you to install them. Every Linux distribution handles it in a different way. You may need to install drivers for printers, however. These files are often part of the Windows driver for PostScript printers, and you may be able to hunt down a PPD file that makes your printer work better.
Printers can be a headache on Linux, and many may not work properly — or at all — no matter what you do. Searching for a guide to making a specific piece of hardware work on your specific Linux distribution might help.
Such a guide might walk you through finding a manufacturer-provided driver and installing it, which will often require terminal commands. Linux works best when manufacturers contribute their drivers to the kernel as open-source software.
The drivers may not actually work properly with the latest software in your Linux distribution. Image Credit: Blek on Flickr. Customize the Taskbar in Windows What Is svchost. Browse All Buying Guides. Best Lightning Cables. Best MagSafe iPhone Accessories. Best iPad Accessories. Best iPhone Charger. Best iPhone 13 Pro Case. Best Bluetooth Headphones for Switch. Best Roku TV. Best Apple Watch.
Best iPad Cases. One of the most daunting challenges for people switching from a familiar Windows or MacOS system to Linux is installing and configuring a driver. This is understandable, as Windows and MacOS have mechanisms that make this process user-friendly. For example, when you plug in a new piece of hardware, Windows automatically detects it and shows a pop-up window asking if you want to continue with the driver's installation.
You can also download a driver from the internet, then just double-click it to run a wizard or import the driver through Device Manager. Our latest Linux articles This process isn't as easy on a Linux operating system. For one reason, Linux is an open source operating system, so there are hundreds of Linux distribution variations. This means it's impossible to create one how-to guide that works for all Linux distros.
Each Linux operating system handles the driver installation process a different way. Second, most default Linux drivers are open source and integrated into the system, which makes installing any drivers that are not included quite complicated, even though most hardware devices can be automatically detected. Third, license policies vary among the different Linux distributions. For example, Fedora prohibits including drivers that are proprietary, legally encumbered, or that violate US laws.
And Ubuntu asks users to avoid using proprietary or closed hardware. If you are new to Linux and coming from the Windows or MacOS world, you'll be glad to know that Linux offers ways to see whether a driver is available through wizard-like programs.
Ubuntu offers the Additional Drivers option. What if you can't find a driver through your nice user interface application? Or you only have access through the shell with no graphic interface whatsoever? Maybe you've even decided to expand your skills by using a console. You have two options:. Before jumping further into installing a driver in Linux, let's look at some commands that will determine whether the driver is already available on your system. The lspci command shows detailed information about all PCI buses and devices on the system:.
The dmesg command shows all device drivers recognized by the kernel:. If nothing is recognized by the dmesg or lscpi commands, try these two commands to see if the driver is at least loaded on the disk:. Tip: As with lspci or dmesg , append grep to either command above to filter the results. If a driver is recognized by those commands but not by lscpi or dmesg , it means the driver is on the disk but not in the kernel.
In this case, load the module with the modprobe command:. There are different ways to add the repository through yum , dnf , and apt-get ; describing them all is beyond the scope of this article.
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