Drivers, in general

hoWlExat · 2019-11-23 06:01:58

I am running through my devices on my new(first) build and seeing if there are newer or better drivers available to update to (it's fine if there aren't).

Four questions:
1) Is there a general way to find your existing drivers via command line and know which drivers are pertinent to which pieces of hardware (graphics, ssd, network card)?
2) Are most drivers included by default in the `linux` and `linux-firmware` packages supplied by `pacman`?
3) How do you go about finding out if your new piece of hardware would obtain any new drivers/firmware from proprietary packages (not included in `linux`/`linux-firmware`)? e.g. `nvidia`
4) Are there any required steps beyond downloading drivers (via `pacman`, for example) to put them into effect? e.g. Do I have to do some manual rebuilding of the kernel, similar to re-compiling a program?

Last edited by hoWlExat (2019-11-23 06:04:41)

Trilby · 2019-11-23 12:59:02

You seem to be using "drivers" a quite a large umbrella term.

hoWlExat wrote:

1) Is there a general way to find your existing drivers via command line and know which drivers are pertinent to which pieces of hardware (graphics, ssd, network card)?

Start with `man lspci`

hoWlExat wrote:

2) Are most drivers included by default in the `linux` and `linux-firmware` packages supplied by `pacman`?

Define "most"? Quite a few are. On some hardware that may be all that's needed, so not only most drivers, but all are included in the kernel package. On other hardware there may be components unsupported by the kernel, but only supported by additional drivers. Some of these will be open source, some proprietary blobs, some may even need wrapper software to be able to use drivers only released for Windows systems. Are most drivers for your hardware included in the kernel package? We have no way of knowing ... what hardware do you have/use?

hoWlExat wrote:

3) How do you go about finding out if your new piece of hardware would obtain any new drivers/firmware from proprietary packages (not included in `linux`/`linux-firmware`)? e.g. `nvidia`

https://wiki.archlinux.org/ (look up "broadcom" in the wiki for a good example)

hoWlExat wrote:

4) Are there any required steps beyond downloading drivers (via `pacman`, for example) to put them into effect? e.g. Do I have to do some manual rebuilding of the kernel, similar to re-compiling a program?

See the answer to #3 (specifically, see the "wl" section of the above mentioned broadcom page for an example).

Last edited by Trilby (2019-11-23 12:59:50)

Arch Linux

#1 2019-11-23 06:01:58

Drivers, in general

#2 2019-11-23 12:59:02

Re: Drivers, in general

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