>1. Automatic device discovery and driver installation (e.g., with USB devices (also USB device categories, etc.)). Instead of trying to find a driver, things just worked.
I remember well when installing Windows went from "make sure you have all the driver CDs before you start" to "just make sure you have the network card driver and the disk driver (if needed)" and then it went to "as long as you can connect to the internet Windows Update will get everything".
Before you had to get on the internet and find all the driver files yourself. The last hold out was graphics card drivers IIRC.
In my experience, you'll still want to go to the NVIDIA/AMD website to download the latest drivers. What you get from Windows Update is likely 6+ months out of date.
We must have received a very different version of nvidia.ko if yours updates with no fuss.. either that, or you are using intel/amd in which case lucky you :)
No fuss in my experience. Some distros use dkms, some rebuild the driver on the build farm as a package corresponding to each kernel update. Both are quite reliable.
Sure, but from the user's perspective Linux operates in exactly the same way as Windows. A boatload of drivers available directly from the vendor but they're out-of-date (or in the case of Nvidia not the official drivers). And it's much much more of a PITA to install out-of-tree drivers on Linux than Windows.
I remember well when installing Windows went from "make sure you have all the driver CDs before you start" to "just make sure you have the network card driver and the disk driver (if needed)" and then it went to "as long as you can connect to the internet Windows Update will get everything".
Before you had to get on the internet and find all the driver files yourself. The last hold out was graphics card drivers IIRC.