Fix your drivers : Safely Update All Your Drivers in Minutes

In my previous posts, I have been dwelling much on Microsoft Windows drivers and although I had written something on Linux drivers in a previous article, I have not given Mac drivers much attention. With the recent developments in Macs, I felt it’s important for me to talk a little about Mac drivers if there are any.

Mac OS X ranges of operating systems are based on the Mach kernel platform and include the versions: 10.0 – cheetah, 10.1 – puma, 10.2 – jaguar, 10.3 – panther, 10.4 – tiger and 10.5 – leopard. The latest version is the 10.5 – leopard that was released in October 26, 2007. Mac OS X range of OS’s are generally built to with Macintosh products thus cannot work with processors made by other companies.

Currently after Microsoft Windows operating system, Mac OS X is ranked second in terms of general purpose functionality. Mac OS X range of operating systems’ are not backward compatible and unlike windows are rarely attacked by bugs because the OS’s are frequently updated. To curb the bug - attack problem antivirus programs for Macs are available in the market.

Though it is not an open source operating system like Linux, it has open source components and is the most successful UNIX-like operating system released, reaching a penetration of more than ten times that of Linux.

Since Mac OS X supported only the full line of Macintosh components, other hardware manufacturers did not dwell on making hardware compatible with the Mac OS X thus issues such as device driver problems were scarce. However, third parties have developed tools such as XPostFacto and patches applied to the installation discs that enable newer versions of Mac OS X to be installed on systems not officially supported by Apple. This has caused an increase in the number of device driver problems.

Other tools have also been developed by the company itself such as Boot Camp, which contains Mac-specific Windows drivers, and helps install Windows XP and Windows Vista and also enables dual boot of the operating systems. Boot Camp does not however contain all the necessary drivers required for all the Mac hardware to be compatible with Windows. More of the drivers can be downloaded from the Apple website.

With the talk of a new Mac OS X (10.6 – Snow Leopard) set to hit the market in September 2009 together with the Apple transition from PowerPC to Intel, most of the current PowerPC compatible software are predicted to become obsolete. Apple however, decided to let Rosetta (a layer which enables software compiled for PowerPC) to be installed additionally onto the Snow Leopard so as to allow such software to be compatible.

Given the fact that Apple stated that Mac OS X would not run on Intel-based personal computers aside from its own, a hacked version of the OS compatible with conventional x86 hardware was developed by the OSx86 community. This prompted Apple to announce on June 8 2009, at its Worldwide Developers Conference that Snow Leopard (version 10.6) would drop support for PowerPC processors and be Intel-only. Whether Rosetta is still supported is unclear.

I guess Mac driver issues will become more frequent in the future in line with these recent developments and hence users will need to be more aware of the need to update their drivers frequently.

admin Uncategorized driver problems, Linux drivers, mac drivers, update drivers, windows drivers

Linux is an open source operating system that is quickly gaining popularity day by day mainly because it is free. Commonly used in servers, Linux is now also been used to run laptops, desktops, mobile devices e.t.c. Linux by itself is a generic name referring to operating systems that are Unix like and are based on the Linux kernel. These operating systems are distributed under different names such as Ubuntu and Netbooks. A Linux based system is developed using the development principles established by Unix in the earlier years and the underlying concept of modularity.

Linux operating systems come with a number of applications such as the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice.org office application suite. Recent developments allow users to use Microsoft Windows based applications on Linux and hence with a Linux operating system one can be able to use Microsoft Office applications. Linux is also very compatible with many other software applications from different software vendors. So in essence Linux is very similar to other operating systems in terms of functionality and the only difference is that it is free.

So the question then is what about drivers when running on Linux? Even when running on Linux, you still need to have the right drivers installed on your computer. Most hardware device manufacturers know that Linux is fast gaining popularity and hence as they manufacture their devices, they are providing Linux users with the necessary device drivers. It is possible to then find Linux drivers in the websites of the hardware manufacturers and for those manufacturers that do not have the drivers on their websites; you may find useful information pointing you to where you can download the drivers.

Another source of Linux drivers in the Linux drivers’ website, this is a website that lists all Linux compatible devices and the drivers’ download location. This is a very useful resource for most Linux users because it has a search facility and within one or two clicks it is easy for one to tell if your device is compatible or not. The website is updated on a daily basis and this makes it the best place for someone to find Linux drivers. The website is maintained by a Linux user with the support of the Linux developer community. As with Linux itself, Linux drivers can be downloaded from the website for free.

Linux operating system also comes with some device drivers installed in it and it is easy to tell whether your device is supported or not. To find out if your device is supported, you need to go to the Linux kernel help files, from the kernel help files you would be able to search and know if your device is supported or not. If you find that your device is not supported, then you may need to look for the right drivers for your device and install them yourself. So Linux like any other Operating System requires to have device drivers installed and it is good to know that Linux drivers are also readily available.

admin Uncategorized device drivers, driver downloads, Linux drivers, search drivers, unix drivers, windows drivers

If you are one of those people who upgraded to Windows Vista from an earlier version of windows, you may have encountered a number of problems with your new operating system. This should not have come to you as a surprise because every time you change your operating system, you are also required to update the device drivers for compatibility with the new operating system. As is the case with any new software in the market, Windows Vista had a number of problems and was not very stable at first. This meant that every user needed to keep up with the frequent Vista release updates that were done to solve the problems. It also became important to update some device drivers every time Microsoft released an update of Vista. This is what became such a problem to many users who ended up complaining too much about Windows Vista performance.

Some of the challenges people encountered when upgrading to Vista was finding that there were no available drivers for their device that were compatible with the new operating system. This was mostly the case for those who had old hardware that was no longer supported by the manufacturer or the manufacturer had already stopped operation. If you encountered such a problem, you had to choose between upgrading to Vista and thus be forced to replace your device with a new one or keeping your device and forgetting about the upgrade.

There was also the problem of delays in driver releases from manufacturers, this meant that some users had to stop using their devices and had to wait until the new drivers were released. This also required users to keep close contact with the device manufacturers so that once the new drivers were available; they would be informed about the release. This not only demonstrated the importance of registering your device with the manufacturer but also the importance of choosing a device from a manufacturer who maintains good customer support for their products.

From the upgrading to Vista experience, we can learn that solving Vista driver problems was not something that could have been left to Microsoft alone but it was important for the users and the device manufacturers also to play a proactive role in ensuring that their devices were working well with the new operating system. Users should therefore make sure that their devices are registered with the manufacturers and for the manufacturers by making sure they have the drivers ready by the time the new software releases are made.

While Windows Vista may still have a few bugs here and there, the lessons learnt have helped both Microsoft and device manufacturers see the importance of better coordination when doing new version releases and I hope that we will not see similar problems with the next version of Windows to hit the market. I hope that by the time the next version of Windows will be with us there will be ready drivers for download on the internet and with the use of driver updating tools, within a couple of clicks computer users will be able to update all their drivers in an easy and convenient way. At the end of the day it is the end user who will benefit from the lessons learnt.

admin Uncategorized driver downloads, driver releases, driver updates, vista drivers, windows drivers, Windows Vista