Drivers?

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If you've read my previous thread in this forum, you'll be aware of my troubles with trying Ubuntu for the first time. The people who responded to the thread said a lot of my problem could have to do with a lack of drivers. My uncle who is a big shot working with computers said the same thing when I asked him.

My new problem is, I don't know anything more about computers than just the basic functions, not the actual workings of a computer. I don't even know what a driver is and what it does, so if I wanted to go online to find the software I need, I wouldn't know what I need nor the first place to look for it.

Where do I start, as far as the drivers?

As always, thanks in advance.

drivers are sort of 'helper programs' that tell the Operating System (windows XP, Vista, Ubuntu, you name it) what to do when you want to use some bit of hardware; sound, video, printing, etc.

Essentially there should be one for every device that performs a distinct function. When you want to play a video, a driver tells your sound card what the file you're using (wav, mp4, whatever) is, then puts the data in a form the sound card can understand. Instant sound.

What you'll need to do is figure out what devices you have in your system. If you have a Windows Operating system, try going to Control Panel, System, and then Device Manager. If you click on the + signs, you can find out what each device is called (there's other ways to do this, but this is the simplest one I could think of at the time...past my bedtime...

Then you'll need to find out which companies' sites might have the drives. Or, there's Linux forums all over the net, they might have a way to tell you where to go to get them.

I wouldn't call them programs. More of translations and instruction sets that are loaded to help the operating system deal with the file better, whatever it is. The driver will only function if the hardware exists.

I've used Ubuntu and it has managed to get most of the drivers through the internet for me

Let us know what devices you have and we will be happy to help as best we can.

Googling the issue helped me with my issues in Ubuntu, I never had any driver problems with my laptop

Note that "drivers" is a bit of a misnomer. To a large extent, "generic" drivers are used. I.e. similar hardware from different manufacturers will actually all use the same driver. This is extremely true on non-Microsoft OSes and open source - and unusual in Microsoft and other proprietary software. Good programmers far prefer to "tweak" a generic driver to handle the particular vagaries of a new (or old) piece of hardware (sometimes merely by adding it to a list of devices that that are handled identically) rather that reprogramming from scratch.

Unfortunately, some manufacturers still think it is somehow clever to conceal how their hardware functions, and produce proprietary code for their "Windows compatible" drivers. Hence the difference - with an MS OS, you need to use the manufacturer's disk, or search the internet, looking for a driver. With other OSes, it is sometimes the case that a novel piece of hardware may not be supported, immediately, but a minor update to an existing driver eventually (fairly quickly, usually) will come along and all will be sorted.

Sometimes, if you can't bear to wait, the fix for a piece of hardware may be known, and a "beta" version may be available, but the distribution has not yet accepted it as stable enough. In this case, on Linux, say, you can (and might be impatient enough to want to) download the generic driver's source code and recompile it yourself, along with any "hot off the press" patches. I haven't done that for some time.

One massive tip for Ubuntu. Go to System, Administration and then Software Sources. As the name suggests, this is where you decide where to download from. Make sure you tick multiverse (basically meaning the internet), or basically any attempt to install anything not officially designed for Ubuntu will not download. This took me so long to work out. Namely because none of the guids I read mentioned it. I think it is usually on multiverse as normal, but my version (Ubuntu netbook) was not.

Depending on what version you have, go to applications, then ubuntu software center or it could be called add/remove in the resulting search box popup, type in restricted extras. check mark the one(of three) that most closely matches your version of ubuntu: xubuntu/ubuntu/kubuntu. Once you apply this, it will turn on universe automagically, and install a lot of things that will make your computer run happier, such as support for flash, mp3 and whatnot.

For your early trouble with wine and itunes, might i suggest the linux native application songbird instead? It should take care of your ipod quite nicely.

well, I know...I was trying to convey the information for someone who only knew the basic functions of computers...

The main purpose of a driver is to hide the differences between similar devices and present a common interface to the applications.

This way e.g. the text editor only has to know about the common interface for printing, it does not have to know every detail about the way every print device thats on the market has to be controlled. You don't need to update your text-editor just because you bought a printer which is younger then the editor, etc...

By abstracting the specifics away into the driver, the application only needs to support the generic interface.

Check this out http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=326 this is the 'absolute beginners forum for ubuntu. You will find the folks that reply to your dilemma's are really helpful and patient.

This is the link on the above page for "new to Ubuntu'' heeps of stuff to help you here and it is laid out for easy use no having to search around

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=801404

much of it is for an older version of ubuntu but that should not be too much of a problem, unless you want to use code laid out here, then you will need to get the specific instructions for your version