Finally ready to move from Windoze to Unix, suggestions of flavor of Unix to use

[Adrien Monteleone]

Avoiding updating the kernel can leave you with security vulnerabilities. Last summer there was a bluetooth vulnerability that was patched and some patches for Spectre and Meltdown have recently been released with more pending.

There is a solution to rebuilding drivers, however, called DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) Essentially, you install the dkms package first, then create a small .conf file with the instructions to build the driver using the modules instructions. You then copy the module files into the kernel source tree directories and then install the module using dkms. From there on out, each time you update the kernel, dkms will be called and it will re-compile and install any modules you set up this way. (note, this is generally how the custom drivers function of Ubuntu works. Virtualbox and Vmware also take advantage of dkms so their kernel modules survive kernel updates)

Instructions can be found here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DKMS

If the RTL drivers that are pre-installed don’t seem to want to work with your hardware, double check dmesg and look for any related warnings or errors about not loading firmware. Some hardware requires proprietary firmware even though the drivers are open-source. The message might even give you a web address to download it from, but you can most likely easily find it by doing a web search. All you have to do then is unpack the firmware and copy it to the /lib/firmware directory. (on *buntu and Debian systems) This will survive a kernel update as the firmware files don’t get zapped. (the driver is already in the kernel anyway)


Regards,
Adrien

> On Mar 17, 2018, at 3:42 AM, DaveC49 <davidcousens at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Jeffrey,
> 
> I have been using Linux Mint which is a Debian/Ubuntu distribution for 4-5
> years with no major problems. The interface is fairly easy to transition to
> from Windows particularly if prior to Windows 8. 
> 
> The RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express controller should work with the standard
> Ubuntu distribution drivers. It works fine on my AMD desktop with no
> inetrvention.
> 
> Some wireless 802.11ac wireless usb adapters are not supported by the
> inbuilt drivers. The list of supported drivers is widening all the time and
> there are prefeerred adapters for use with Linux. I have a Netgear A6100
> which is based on the Realtek 8811 chipset which is not supported by the
> inbuilt drivers. It uses an RTL8812 driver for which versions modified from
> Realteks sources for the Windows drivers for Linux need to be used . There
> are a number of repositories on Github which support drivers for chipsets
> which are not supported by the distribution's inbuilt driver  (e.g. for RTL
> 8812 driver https://github.com/diederikdehaas/rtl8812AU). They are not very
> difficult to compile and install. Sorting out which drivers need to be used 
> can be a bit confusing at first. Ubuntu maintains lists of USB adpaters,
> chipsets with some references to respositories but not always completely
> upto date.
> 
> One way to simplify things is to avoid updating the kernel version as you
> generally have to rebuild the drivers with a new kernel version. It is
> generally better to stay with the Linux kernel version that the distriubtion
> you use is based on. Linux Mint has a default option to not install kernel
> updates to new versions automatically. Sometimes the kernel changes require
> the drivers to be patched particularly changes in the major and minor
> version numbers. This generally happens reasonably quickly on most driver
> repositories. I try to use repositories which are being updated fairly
> frequently like the above. When there is an enforced update as with the
> Sceptre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, the kernel versions on which the
> distributions are based are usually patched fairly quickly.
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
> -----
> David Cousens
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