The last time I gave Linux a serious go on the desktop, I had an ISA Sound Blaster card that supported PnP. Under Windows, it was automatically detected and would at least play sound out of the box, without installing any additional drivers and had a few special features that you had to install SB drivers to make work. Under Linux, in order to get any sound at all, I had to dig around online to find out that you needed to download a driver package, install it, then run a tool from a shell that would generate a config file for the driver with every configuration the card might possibly have, then manually edit that config to tell it which config you actually had, then restart the driver and then you'd get actual sound out of it.

I don't doubt it's drastically improved since then, but it's always made me a bit gunshy about trying it again.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure the blame is on the device manufacturer here

[–] desconectado@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Although that's true, it's still an issue. I don't think anyone is blaming Linux for this, but the issue is still there.

I've never had a finger print reader working on Linux.

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

How long ago was this exactly?

[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

ISA cards? That's not even comparable. That's 90s era, 30 years ago, 20 at best. Things have changed.