You missed the point. You typically don't have to compile anything for your sound card, assuming you even have one anyone considering that motherboards have had integrated sound forever now.

I've used Linux for around 8.5 years now, and I've never once had to compile a sound card driver to get my sound working. On the half dozen or so laptops I've installed it on since then, every one of them just had sound working without needing to compile anything.

>Every time Linux on the desktop is discussed, the reaction of the Linux desktop community is predictable: defending Linux and its problems, and downplaying the difficulty that many users have. A ton of people say "it works for me on my hardware" or "I didn't need to compile any drivers" or "the games that I want to play work fine". In fact, this comment thread has good examples of this type of reaction. So what? Until it works for everyone it's just not good enough.

I'm a bit confused; have you actually had this experience when you had to compile your sound card driver in the past ten years? It would be totally reasonable for you to be unhappy if you had, but given how much you're criticizing, I have to assume that if you had this experience you would have mentioned it. Given that, it sounds like the only criticism is that someone could theoretically happen to need to do this, but that's not really any different from any other operating system; the difference is that if your sound card doesn't work on Windows, you don't have the option to compile it at all. I'm not sure how often people have driver issues on Windows these days, having not used it much since before I swapped to Linux, but I'm not going to prematurely get angry about the idea that people _could_ be having driver issues but not have the option to compile their own if I don't actually hear about anyone having these issues.

>> They are already way outside of rational territory and deep into religious territory

> Until it works for everyone it's just not good enough.

You are pretty well proving the GP point. There is no system that works for everyone. Windows can be very challenging to get up and running on hardware setups that are not the most common.

> Windows and MacOS don't make people do that

False. And it's funny that this is about sound drivers. I have a piece of older but perfectly working Roland audio/MIDI equipment that uses USB drivers that are no longer supported on modern MacOS. How did I get it working? By compiling a fucking driver the other day. (And yes it works perfectly out of the box on any Linux kernel for the past 20 years).

Now go ahead and move the goalposts about older hardware not mattering or some nonsense. This hasn't been the only frustration with MacOS. It took these clowns the better part of a year to fix VLAN configuration in the network setup window. The only way to configure them for a lot of hardware was to drop down to the command line - so much for working for everyone.

Windows doesn't work for everybody either, and I do mean actual problems with Windows not working, even pre-installed from the factory.

I don't even have to look outside the circle of people I know in person to have seen this. Googling for Windows not working with $X specific laptop instantly reveals quite a treasure trove beyond the people I know, where $X can be pretty much any Windows laptop. Everything from fingerprint readers no longer working to even simple things like the function key hotkeys no longer working.

Issues with sound drivers not working are far from unheard of on Windows laptops.

You definitely seem to have missed their point, and, in my opinion, you're being unnecessarily antagonistic.

Agreed, you definitely missed my point, but in your defense the point was implied rather than explicitly stated so I'll take the fault for not being clear.

I don't mind building my own drivers (in fact I maintain one[1]), but I would never expect the average person to have to do that. It would be entirely unreasonable.

But, the vast majority of linux users don't have to compile any drivers. Unless you have some obscure piece of hardware or one that is so new that the driver isn't mainlined yet, you don't have to worry about it.

You say you've been using linux for 20 years. which driver(s) in the last 5 or so years have you had to compile yourself?

[1]: https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver

On most machines I tried, linux had every conceivable driver ready out of the box without any configuration.

This is absolutely not something one can say about windows (though at least nowadays it will try to fetch drivers from God knows where and often succeed). And Mac supports like 2 hardware devices all together, both of them manufactured by them — comparing an OS that exclusively run on specific hardware is just stupid and not made in good faith.

I've been slowly going through sound cards (Focusrite, MOTU, Rode) during the pandemic trying to find one that my work Windows laptop will detect. All of them have worked immediately plugged into Linux.

Interesting. I have had to compile drivers for every Linux install I've done in the past three years. Ubuntu, Xubuntu, elementaryOS, Pop!_OS, etc. Maybe we can all accept that people have different experiences?

And of course, you're under no obligation to listen to any of us whine, but if, on the off chance, you happen to want more people to like Linux, it seems like taking people's experiences seriously would be a good starting point.

I didn’t say that the contrary can’t happen - but wildly inaccurate, bad-faith claims that the account made I replied to are not ok either. Linux did come a long long way, and often used hardware will indeed just work out of the box most of the time - I think it is absolutely fair to point that out because it was not this way always — there was a time when the majority of hardware needed some tinkering.

May I ask you what hardware did you install linux on?

I'm curious what drivers you've had to compile? The only ones I've ever had to compile were GPU drivers for very very recent cards. On my current laptop, the only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader (which doesn't even have a driver, makes me sad) - everything else is built into all the distros I've tried (Ubuntu, Fedora, NixOS). I am pretty curious in what places is the driver story behind?

Drivers for virtualized hardware is one big one. Parallels tools have to be recompiled for pretty much every new kernel version because Linux refuses to stabilize the kernel API. Often I have to edit the drivers by hand (example: replacing "sem" to "lock" for kernel 5.8 because apparently driver compatibility isn't as important as catering to kernel devs who don't know what a semaphore is?).

In case you don't think virtualization is a valid use case, this should hold true for any drivers distributed outside the kernel. It's also true for newer hardware - WiFi 6 has been a thing lately. And over the past couple years as laptops try to compete with Apple there have in fact been sound issues, though that one hasn't bit me personally.

Again, I want to stress that I'm not imputing some moral obligation for things to be different. But it is definitely a rough edge, it absolutely requires people to futz with compiling drivers, and it's something that makes some number of technical people say "screw it, this is too much of a pain in the neck."

In my opinion, investing in a proper driver architecture with a stable interface would be a massive step toward better Linux hardware support and broader adoption.

> Parallels tools have to be recompiled for pretty much every new kernel version because Linux refuses to stabilize the kernel API.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. Parallels comes with dkms module and while the process of installing involves compiling under the covers, it's just part of installation. It's not the late 90s "compile that driver yourself completely manually" situation.

If Parallels doesn't work with new kernel, that's their compatibility issue, but being able to fix the driver yourself just gives you more options. Linux -> you can fix the driver. MacOS -> you can on new macos, with annoying extra signing and other steps. (if the source for macos is even published - for parallels that's a no) Windows -> basically wait until the vendor produces an upgrade.

Parallels says for macos 12: "Productivity and integration features are not available to this VM yet." Even if you wanted to fix it manually - you can't. (https://kb.parallels.com/au/125561/)

Basically, you get the extra option to upgrade faster than your vendor is ready on Linux - if you use that path, why show it as "I had to do manual work to make things work", rather than something positive?

Not OP, but I do want to note, there is a difference compared to windows: Windows has a stable driver interface, which makes it at least possible to have drivers that are basically guaranteed to be future-proof. Linux has no such stable ABI, and frequently does breaking changes.

Both approaches have their upsides, but I've very rarely had drivers stop working between various windows release. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule here - Yes, I also have had some drivers stop working since Windows XP. But those are rare, and getting rarer as time goes on and MS locks the kernel up, preventing drivers from doing stupid things.

On Linux, the problem only exists for out-of-tree drivers, but those will break fairly frequently for all but the simplest drivers.

As I said in my sibling comment, I don't know how I feel about a stable ABI - I do fear it would make the situation worse with more out-of-tree/proprietary drivers. But it is worth keeping in mind that it does have its upsides.

Of course, MacOS being what it is, it chose the "worst of all worlds" scenario: Proprietary drivers with no ABI stability guarantee. It's not really worth discussing as a point of comparison, MacOS has the worst driver story from the lot, only saved by its intended minimal target hw support.

> I don't think that's a fair comparison.... the process of installing involves compiling under the covers, it's just part of installation. It's not the late 90s "compile that driver yourself completely manually" situation.

I don't understand. Do you think I'm lying or something? Because I'm not, and neither are these folks:

https://www.google.com/search?q=compile+new+kernel+site%3Afo...

It's a giant pain in the neck and it's caused by pretty deliberate decisions about Linux architecture.

Thanks for the answer, that's really informative!

> In my opinion, investing in a proper driver architecture with a stable interface would be a massive step toward better Linux hardware support and broader adoption.

Eh, I have mixed feelings about this. Part of what makes Linux so great is that most of its drivers are open source - which allows the devices it supports to stay supported basically forever (though bitrot certainly is a thing). And they achieved this by making maintaining out-of-tree drivers so damn painful.

A stable interface would sort of undermine this. I honestly don't know if that'd be preferable to the status quo.

I think I'd be happy with a stable API, it wouldn't have to be a stable binary interface. Wanna change the internals of a struct? Totally fine. Not make binary shims for 32-bit drivers? Totally fine.

That would encourage open-source or at least source-available drivers (to allow recompiling for ABI changes), but recompilation should be straightforward and possibly automatic if the API doesn't change every couple months.

If you ever got in a situation where your sound card wasn't supported on macOS, instead of "you can compile a driver" the answer you'll get is "throw away your sound card and buy supported hardware."

You could apply the same fix to a Linux computer and purchase known working hardware, but because you have the option of fixing the software yourself that makes it a worse operating system?

Exactly how does one get into a situation where your sound card isn't supported on macOS, other than by putting together a Hackintosh? :) You're going to have to look for some pretty edgy edge cases where you will be left rending your shirt and wailing "if only I could compile an open source driver for [insert thing] but the cursed closed nature of Apple products prevents me from doing so!" (I mean, I'm pretty sure people can write open source drivers on Macs if they want.)

Granted, as someone who's been using Linux sporadically in various ways for the same two decades I've been a Mac-on-the-desktop user, I can't remember the last time I was left rending my shirt and wailing "if only I didn't have to compile an open source driver for [insert thing] to get basic functionality working." (Although I can remember more than one time I ran desktop Linux in a VM on a Mac, and spent several hours doing web searches for how to get [insert thing] working to find little more than other posts saying "I'm running desktop linux on a VM on a Mac and I can't get [thing] working".)

Apple stops supporting their own hardware all the time. They dropped a bunch of video cards especially in recent releases of the OS.

How this translates is by Apple officially dropping support for your whole computer. I guess you consider getting trapped on an old OS that stops getting security updates and becomes incompatibility with the latest applications to be superior to the situation on Linux. I do not.

Or, as others have pointed out, having to upgrade perfectly good hardware because the OS no longer supports it. That has happened to me on both Mac and Windows.

Honestly, better hardware support is one of the reasons that I have started using Linux more and more than proprietary options.

I actually really like Windows 10 but I have had way more hardware issues with it on my primary laptop. I had odd performance problems with it sometimes and the mouse pointer would lock up frequently ( Windows factory installed ). I put Windows 11 on this computer ( new enough hardware to meet all the Windows 11 asks ) hoping it would improve things. It was a disaster. My Bluetooth headphones rarely worked. Plugging wired headphones into the port would not silence the speakers. Blue screen of death ( have not see that in years - looks much friendlier now ) all the time which you know is a driver problem. Anyway, I have since out Linux on it and all my hardware woes are in the past. As I said, I actually really like Windows but it is a relief to get it off this machine.

I've got an old Macbook Air that has to be used with a USB sound device because the internal hardware died at about 4 years but wasn't worth replacing the motherboard. In other cases, I'm sure professional (or even hobbyist) audio people use hardware other than the computer's built-in sound devices. How long do the makers of those keep updating the drivers when it's a 5 generation old product and their developers have moved on to newer projects? A driver they gave you for OS X 10.5 isn't going to do you any good today.

> Windows and MacOS don't make people do that

They don't make people compile their own drivers because their respective corporations spend some good money to pay their developers to work on company provided hardware, or harware manufacturers to make their drivers first, and sometimes only their drivers. Linux developers otoh are often forced to reverse engineer closed source drivers on hardware they purchased themselves, so Linux support usually comes later.

The upside is that nearly all Linux drivers are FOSS, which makes a huge difference as there's no such thing as planned obsolescence among FOSS. Never seen a perfectly good peripheral being supported by Windows until version x, so that you install Windows 10 and that card that worked fantastic under Windows 7 or 8 isn't supported anymore? No drivers, no party. Sometimes the price to pay for running an OS that doesn't allow you compile your drivers is the purchase of new hardware along with system upgrades; that represents one of the hidden costs of closed source software that should be stressed more often.

Edit: ...and btw, it's like 15 years I don't have to compile my kernels anymore. A couple things or so have changed since 1997.

This comment is really fascinating: not only the author completely missed the point of the original comment they are responding to (which is: ”having to compile your drivers was the state of Linux in 99, but it' hasn't been anymore for at least 15 years, so complain that Linux doesn't work using this argument just shows you're out of date by two decades at this point”) but the author just refused to even attempt to understand when other people tried to warn them and instead went completely mad.

If you just want to be a consumer that does no tinkering then buy a computer that ships with a consumer focused Linux distro. Dell, Purism, System76, or even a Chromebook are more fair comparisons.

Stop claiming Linux is hard to use because it takes effort to run it on unsupported hardware... like any other OS.

> Until it works for everyone it's just not good enough.

No system is good enough by that definition. I've got a set of devices which either require lots of extra work or just don't work on all of Linux (parts of Lenovo dock), Windows (phone over bluetooth, also can't do clean install), MacOS (usb-c audio interface). We got to the level of "most things just work" on all of them.

Vouching for this, because while the topic is controversial and we could have done without the tone of the edit (true or not, it derails the discussion further), there is definitely some truth to what's said!

> "Typically" is not good enough. Windows and MacOS don't make people do that, and neither should Linux distros.

> A ton of people say "it works for me on my hardware" or "I didn't need to compile any drivers" or "the games that I want to play work fine". In fact, this comment thread has good examples of this type of reaction. So what? Until it works for everyone it's just not good enough.

I'm also someone who has run into problems with Linux, albeit with some slightly obscure hardware, as described in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29816615

The difference is probably that on Windows installing drivers is as easy as running an .exe or an .msi file, whereas on Linux the process can be more involved due to how different distros can be from one another, how the kernel versions might require different headers and how compilation of drivers might involve dropping down to the terminal which people sometimes forget isn't comfortable for people who don't necessarily use Linux in that capacity.

Wouldn't it be incredibly nice to have something like AppImage or Flatpak, but for drivers? Not the controversial distribution/update practices (though those criticisms are more about snap), but something that's as conceptually simple as clicking on an icon in a GUI somewhere to launch the installation and handle everything behind the scenes?

As for games, look at a recent video by Linus Tech Tips, "Gaming on Linux is NOT Ready... - Daily Driver Challenge Finale ": https://youtu.be/Rlg4K16ujFw

(Linus also demonstrated accidentally bricking his distro by not reading a terminal warning about problems with installing certain packages in the 1st video of the series, which is a really good example of some of the other problems in regards to usability)

There is a lot of progress, but also a lot of problems to solve.

So the benefit of Linux is that motherboards have changed? That seems...antithetical.

GPU and wifi drivers were problematic in the same era as the sound card drivers were, and really aren't anymore unless you have a nvidia card and refuse to use closed source for drivers moral reasons. Were seperate sound cards to have remained a big thing, it's likely they would have been resolved too.

Ive only got ten years under my belt, but I don't think I have ever had to compile a driver! perhaps a few times in Arch, although it would be an AUR thing and hardly and intensive manual process. But certainly not in debian-based stuff. I dont even understand what it would be like to have the bad experiences people do with it.

I can only assume its hardware disparity. I never have much money so I always get older cheaper hardware I can afford, where support has most likely had time to mature. Perhaps people with these negative impressions of Linux are trying to install distros on newer, bleeding edge stuff?

I am not going to defend the Linux Desktop as there are many legitimate reasons to criticize it ( though the laptop I use the most does run Manjaro ). I must say though that suggesting the average Linux user has to compile their sound card drivers is pretty out of touch with even remotely recent Linux offerings. At this point, Linux is far more likely to support your hardware out of the box than either MacOS or Windows—-especially for older hardware. I am far more likely to be hunting around the web for Windows drivers or even totally unable to install Windows on my hardware than I am to have to do any hardware configuration at all on Linux. And I have considered putting Linux on a old iMac because Apple no longer supports the latest OS on it and this has started to become a compatibility hassle. In many ways, Linux requires less futzing around than the competition.

One area where I am dramatically wrong about this is with regards to high performance video drivers though that is improving. Even there though, a distro like Manjaro will likely work perfectly out of the box. To get performance a gamer wants might require a fair bit more knowledge but that said gamers tend to spend quite a bit of time managing and tuning things even on Windows.

Honestly that's because of hardware suppliers. Don't buy hardware without Linux support and this problem goes away. Windows, through sheer market power and mindshare, has created a situation where most hardware just works on Windows. This is not a rational expectation for other OSes. Trying to run Linux on a random Windows laptop is more or less like trying to run OS X on it. If it doesn't work that's on you

So far, my best experience has been on a LaptopsForLinux laptop. Every feature I expect to work on a laptop works (which is surprising when you're using Linux). I did try and buy another "made for Linux"-type laptop, which was some Entroware model, but I remember experiencing a lack of Hibernate and poor battery life.

I also tried a Dell XPS, but there were some BIOS problems, the keyboard layout was awful (which is not a Linux problem), and Hibernate was spotty at best.

Bad keyboard layout was also a problem with the Entroware.

Hibernate works perfectly on my LaptopsForLinux model. :+1: I just wish there was a keyboard protector in case I spill coffee on it.

Maybe laptop nirvana will finally be reached with the Framework when it finally reaches these shores. [EDIT] It has arrived.

Comparing the experience of porting an OS to hardware that did not ship with it to an OS that comes with the hardware is arguing in bad faith.

I have personally ported Linux to many devices the manufacturer never intended it to run on and I even have code in the kernel. I can generally make Linux run on anything by compiling a custom kernel or drivers with maybe a custom patch or two.

I love having that freedom but that freedom is too often confused as the default end user experience of someone that goes to a store and buys a computer that ships with Linux.

When comparing Linux vs Windows or MacOS for end users then talking about porting to unsupported hardware is silly. If you want to run MacOS on unsupported hardware it will take some hacking too.

I have helped hundreds move to Linux many of whom are elderly and non technical. I have them go buy a computer that ships with Linux and is supported so they never need to open a terminal and everything just works. Dell, System76, and Purism all have fantastic offerings here and I do not know of anyone who has switched back.

Yes and no.

I've found numerous times Ubuntu just doesn't want to work. Ether Wifi or Bluetooth is broken.

Fedora seems to be a bit better, it's my daily driver on my old lightweight laptop. My big gaming PC runs Windows.

I make music and play games with it, no matter what the FOSS community wants to think , Linux doesn't come close in these aspects.

Each OS does different things well. Linux is very good for running on older hardware, or small computers like a PI.

Windows is exceptional at gaming and game development ( really any C# dev). Visual Studio is the greatest IDE ever made. If I had to write C# in note pad I'd give up coding.

Mac OS is best for creatives. Logic Pro is only 200$ , and easily replaces an entire studio. With Logic and a 300$ mic you can make something very nice. Your also forced to own a Mac if you want to make iPhone apps.

The music creation ecosystem on IOS is miles ahead of Android. It's at the point where I'm considering am iPhone in addition to my iPad for on the go music creation.

At the same time, as a phone, my Pixel 6 is everything I could ever want. Automatically letting me screen calls saved me hours per months.

I'll forever love Linux for giving a stable NodeJS dev environment when Windows wouldn't. Without desktop Linux I would of never been able to develop the apps which got me my first job. But you need to be open to hopping in the terminal.

Ubuntu is the only distro where my Bluetooth headphones reliably connected and auto-switched to stereo audio (not headset) mode. It's gotten a lot better, though perhaps only with quality hardware.

As far as WiFi is concerned, I'm more likely than not to blame the crap connection on the access point. I've had great success replacing rubbish APs with something basic but good, but for work I want wires if at all reasonable.

> Windows is exceptional at gaming and game development ( really any C# dev). Visual Studio is the greatest IDE ever made. If I had to write C# in note pad I'd give up coding.

Have you tried out Rider? https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/

It's one of the JetBrains commercial IDEs, but since i got the Ultimate package of their products for Java development and some other stuff, i also tried out Rider and found it to be pretty pleasant for everything from web development, to game development (with Unity in particular, though Godot also works obviously, as would other engines like Stride, or NeoAxis or whatever).

They have some pretty nice features for Unity, like giving you hints about methods which are slow and are used every tick, or maybe alternative methods that could be a better fit in some cases: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/dotnet-unity/

Now, some people say that Rider's a bit sluggish like some other JetBrains products, but in my experience it's pretty close to Visual Studio (faster startup, slower when indexing project, faster for many code hints, slower for autocomplete), though maybe because of me enjoying messing around with the memory limits and usually increasing them slightly.

Nonetheless, for enterprise projects, i'd probably just continue using Visual Studio for consistency's sake. Heck, last i checked, Visual Studio even had plugins for supporting Python and other languages, which was interesting to behold. Apart from that, i'm not really aware of many other IDEs for .NET/C# out there, maybe MonoDevelop which is free, but also kind of abandoned: https://www.monodevelop.com/

Just figured that i'd mention JetBrains products in the first place, because they're my toolbox nowadays for which i reach whenever i want to do some development with the IDE helping me out regardless of whatever tech stack i'm dealing with (at least the common ones), so it has largely replaced Visual Studio for me. Though i still reach for Visual Studio Code for more rapid/lightweight editing of scripts, confguration files and such (or other text editors for when an IDE isn't necessary).

Just created an account on HN to say that all the JetBrains Products I used are outstanding! I switched from Atom to VS Code and since nearly 4 years I have a IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate subscription which is worth every penny.

By the way: JetBrains is also working on a more lightwheight editor called Fleet which seems to be comparable with VS Code, at least visually. There's already a product page for that at https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/

I actually really like Android Studio, which is of course a Jet Brains product.

Visual Studio is going to be the best supported IDE for C#. I'm fine with having a Windows PC for that.

I still Dual boot on my old laptop

Ha, that's amusing, because at the same time i hate Android Studio with a passion - it seems like the worst JetBrains product by far, though maybe because Android isn't a particularly nice platform to develop for.

Admittedly, most of my complaints there would be about the different Android SDK versions and how sluggish and slow everything feels at times, as well as about how Android seems to have a stripped down JDK inside of it, which causes weirdness with certain libraries, as opposed to just having something like OpenJDK.

But hey, whatever works for you! I don't really think that there are that many (if any) alternatives for Android development, to be honest.

You can still use Eclipse for Android dev, or just run your own builds with cli tools.

I'll agree Android dev is pretty frustrating, it's much better than it was just a few years ago, but it's still nowhere close to iOS. iOS users also tend to be much more willing to pay money, so there's that.

Heh, i'd say that Eclipse is universally even more horrible, because while Android Studio feels sluggish for Android development and other JetBrains products are generally pretty good, Eclipse has been slow, laggy and even buggy for me in every single one of its forms - be it using it for Java, PHP, or even more obscure tools like 4EM for enterprise modelling or EMF for model driven development.

It excels at having a large plugin ecosystem, moreso than JetBrains products have (probably close to what Visual Studio Code has, just look at https://marketplace.eclipse.org/category/categories/programm...) and being a common base for a variety of other tools out there, due to its modular nature, but there are plenty of disadvantages to that approach (loose coupling that ends up being brittle and worse runtime performance come to mind) and the workspaces concept feels shoehorned on.

That said, some out there swear by it and admittedly the customized versions of it, like Spring Tool Suite (STS), provide a lot of value to them and numerous other people, so everyone should probably just use what fits their needs. For Android in particular, however, i haven't found an IDE that's as pleasant to use as for other languages. Oh well, high expectations be damned~

Preaching to the choir!

I legit quit a job since they wanted me to use Eclipse.

I've been using GNU/Linux on the desktop for about 10 years now, must have used at least 10 different distributions, and I've never had to compile my own driver for anything. WiFi, Ethernet, sound, graphics, etc., pretty much just works. I don't use Bluetooth, so I can't say about that, but it's my understanding that Bluetooth gremlins are common everywhere.

For the past several years I've been recycling Windows 7 and up laptops by giving them a second life with GNU/Linux, and everything Just Works most of the time, including sound, videocard, power management, etc. The only thing I've had occasionally not working is the volume and brightness buttons, but they work most of the time as well.

When my partner's Windows 8 laptop shit itself after an unconsentual upgrade, I installed Ubuntu on it, and it worked just fine out of the box, for years. This person is not a computer nerd by any means.

I'm not saying your experience is not valid, but it is the complete opposite of mine.

Echoing the commenters pointing out that you leaned into the irrationally.

Separately:

> If you want normal people to use Linux you should never, ever, ever ask them to even use a terminal

What about Alexa or Siri? Would it be acceptable to ask them to use a voice-activated digital assistant to accomplish what people use the command-line for? What about a text-activated one, without the voice recognition problems?

I was going to say that I have not compiled a driver in years but I remember that I did compile a driver in 2020. It was to add support for a Xbox controller so that I could use it to play Steam games on my laptop. It was pretty straight-forward but I did have to run a compiler ( maybe via a script - I cannot remember ). I am not sure how easy it is to use an Xbox controller with Mac or Windows.

I am not a big gamer on any platform. In fact, I was using my son’s Steam account. He uses Windows himself but I was running it on Linux. I only played a few titles but they all played pretty well given that it was on an older laptop. Steam itself installed from the standard Manjaro repository but I did have to compile a driver for the controller.