[ajanuary]

What happens when you need to reinstall Windows? You use the restore disc that they give you with all the drivers installed. It comes with them more often than one may think.

More seriously though, I don't know a huge bunch about drivers on Linux. What makes Ubuntu better than Windows and the array of drivers it comes with?

[gizmo686]

Ubuntu has most of the drivers included in the kernel, while windows installs new drivers as needed. For normal computer use, this is an icon in the taskbar saying 'installing device drivers', but when you are on a fresh install, you need to install them yourself.

I recently reinstalled my Dell Inspiron 1420 (after having deleted the recovery partition). They did provide a drivers cd, but I had to click through them 1 at a time.

Obviously, this isn't Microsofts fault, as they do not have the rights to most of the drivers, but in Linux, the norm is to GPL drivers, and put them in mainline kernel, where they will be enabled on all general purpose distributions.

[ajanuary]

Hadn't thought about the impact driver licences have on their integration with the kernel. Cheers.