On Windows and Hardware-support

I visited my sister the other day. After a nice dinner, when we were sitting down talking, they mentioned not getting their TV-capture-card working correctly. I offered to have a look at it, but warned them that I really, really haven't got much clue about windows (they run WinXP on the machine) these days.

The symptoms of the card was that all capture programs kindof worked (they detected "a USB video device"), but none of them could use it's builtin tuner. I tried almost everything. Reinstalled the program, reinstalled the driver several times, changed USB-port, downloaded new drivers, and an updated version of the program, read the manual, tested some switches on the hardware and so on.

Some 4 hours troubleshooting later, I detected the problem. When installing the driver, I had been ignorant enough to let windows "search for the driver". I had pointed out extra locations on the CD, and in the download directory, and the driver installation guide probably saw those drivers.

Here's the problem; when the driver install guide saw the drivers I were provided by the manufacturer, it did not find the "Microsoft approved" signature on them. It then silently ignored them, and fell back on some internal half-ass driver for some similar device that happened to have a similar video-chip but no tuner. No mention whatsoever.

This case gave me two points:

• Many people have real problems installing even simple USB-devices on their windows-machince as well. (People are constantly asking me to help them get their Ipod connected, for instance)
• Linux, when trying to install drivers, either installs the right driver, and it works like magic or it falls back to a half-working driver and tells you that you're not running optimal config, or it doesn't manage to install at all.
  

In the not-at-all case, I'd say the "hand-compile-sing-praise-to-torvalds-and-then-insmod-method" is roughly equivalent to the trial-and-errors I've had in Windows with "Let me select my driver" followed by a list of some 16 similar devices, none of them named like the device I'm trying to install. Both in Windows and in Linux it's mostly a game of chance.

The one difference is that in Windows, if the hardware is even remotely old (older than 1½ times it's warranty), it'd probably save you a lot of time to just give up now and buy a new equivalent. In Linux however, if the hardware is very new, you may have to sit patiently and wait for months before a working driver is established. That, for most people here in the rich western world actually sucks more than throwing away a web-cam just because it's some three years old and I were foolish enough to install XP SP3. I dont know if that says more about western culture than Windows vs. Linux, though.

Really, I've had WinXP ask me for USB-mouse-drivers, with a silent note in the task-bar that it did not recognise my mouse, and I've had to walk all the way through my computer -> properties -> device manager -> the device -> the install wizard BY KEYBOARD, before getting the mouse up and running. (Guess if I missed Linux command-line that time?) I wonder what would have happened if the keyboard had not been an old and tried PS2-one. :S

So, for anyone claiming that "Windows have much better driver support than Linux", I would guess they're turning a blind eye towards their windows-related frustrating experiences, as I probably am regarding my Linux-related annoyances.