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geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: dante on Sun, 08 January 2017, 17:34:04
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Would it be possible for Linux to utilize graphic drivers on a dual boot machine?
I'm sure there are many technical reasons why this isn't possible but from at least a legal standpoint the owner should be entitled to use the existing drivers under another operating system installed on the same box.
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My experience is that Linux (my experience is limited to Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Mint) is usually able to find and use existing hardware.
Support for recent hardware may be more limited, but support for older hardware is often better than with other OSs.
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While my linux experience is a bit limited, I've never had any issues getting hardware support. You'll need different drivers than windows or OSx use, but that's just the nature of it. Just check out your disto's package manager.
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Recently I've experienced my first Linux driver issue in years trying to use an I7's integrated graphics, and not even the shiny new model. It needs a newer kernel and version of X than any distro I tried provided so I've had to go with Debian testing and hope it doesn't break when stuff updates. When Linux works (which is most of the time) it's great but when it doesn't it's far from fun, the last time I tried to use AMD drivers every dropdown box showed as a transparent rectangle revealing the wallpaper below!
Sadly you are right dante, technically the drivers are completely incompatible much like trying to fit spark plugs into a diesel engine. The closest anything came to this idea was ndiswrapper which used to be the only way to get most wireless cards to work in Linux, it was a wrapper around Windows drivers which you had to provide. I guess this confirms it's not a legal problem though I didn't care about such things at the time.
Do you have a specific problem or is this just a pipedream to enable the latest graphics cards and games to be ported to Linux as the driver support would be there?
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Do you have a specific problem or is this just a pipedream to enable the latest graphics cards and games to be ported to Linux as the driver support would be there?
Just a pipe dream really.
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Would it be possible for Linux to utilize graphic drivers on a dual boot machine?
Did you mean using Microsoft Windows' graphics drivers on a dual-boot machine?
There are supposedly those that have been able to use GPU drivers for Windows on Linux using Wine. I heard about it just this morning an hour or so ago on Level1Tech's podcast that someone on their forum had posted about it.
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Would it be possible for Linux to utilize graphic drivers on a dual boot machine?
Did you mean using Microsoft Windows' graphics drivers on a dual-boot machine?
There are supposedly those that have been able to use GPU drivers for Windows on Linux using Wine. I heard about it just this morning an hour or so ago on Level1Tech's podcast that someone on their forum had posted about it.
The most optimal solution that there is as far as I know is making a Windows VM and setting up PCI Passthrough so that you can run games at full speed in the VM, but that takes a lot of effort to set up and you have to have compatible hardware for it to work properly.