Other Hardware Drivers - Provide Communication Between Linux and Hardware

By default, the Linux OS - and therefore Linux distributions - support thousands of different computer hardware components by including hardware drivers with the Linux distro.

In addition to the “basic” hardware drivers, such as those required to access a commonly-used graphics card, other hardware drivers are also required.

These drivers provide “support” (access) for a variety of

devices attached to your system. This might include such things as different brands of network card as well as more exotic hardware such as the graphics drawing tablets and plotters used by engineering companies, scanners, audio and video components, and other “weird hardware”.

However, there are still many hardware components that aren't supported "automatically" with the hardware drivers included with a Linux distro - and so there is still a great need for specialized hardware drivers.

A hardware "driver" is a relatively small software component that is used to allow communication between the Linux OS and a hardware component. It provides a "software interface" between the Linux OS and a computer hardware component.

If you don't have a good hardware driver for specialized hardware, then you either can't use all of the features of the hardware - or can't use the hardware at all!

For example, you may need to use a powerful and expensive graphics video card on your Linux system. The "generic" graphics card driver for you brand of video card may allow you to use the card, but may not allow you to use all of the features of the card.

To take full advantage of all of the features of this graphics card, you need a good quality hardware driver - and you may need to get a driver from the card manufacturer and install it - if there is one!

Linux Commands Training Tips: Before deciding on a Linux distro - and before installing a Linux distro - do a very careful and detailed check that ALL of your hardware components - especially video cards, modems, and printers - are fully supported! More on this later.

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