Intel Publishes Its First Modern Windows Driver for PCs (pcworld.com) 78
Intel has published its first Modern Windows Driver for several of its modern integrated GPUs, representing a new way for graphics drivers to be pushed to your PC -- and something to keep an eye on until the new driver infrastructure settles in. From a report: Modern Windows Drivers, also known as Universal Windows Drivers, are a new feature of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update that takes advantage of the UWP infrastructure within Windows 10. As Microsoft explains it, a Modern Windows Driver is a "single driver package that runs across multiple different device types, from embedded systems to tablets and desktop PCs." The first Intel driver to take advantage of this is labeled UWD 25.20.100.6444. Microsoft doesn't intend for you to do anything different to obtain the new Modern drivers. If you own a prebuilt PC, the PC maker will continue to be the first place you should check for updated drivers, according to an Intel FAQ. That's because the universal driver includes a base driver, plus optional component packages and an optional hardware support app. The latter two are written by the system builder or OEM, while the former is written by the GPU maker itself.
God damn Store (Score:5, Insightful)
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They are available separately, but they pull the GUI component from Store and it is an UWP app.
No sign-in / account required.
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Why? What in the summary makes it sound like you actually *want* these drivers? I envisage a 1.5GB download full of useless crap to do some basic thing.
Plus you just know it's going to be forced down your throat with a Windows Update anyway.
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Plus telemetry to send back to the mothership, backdoors for law enforcement, with gaming adverts popping up whenever you want to change settings.
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Universal drivers are distributed through Windows Update
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-... [microsoft.com]
Or you could read the fucking article and see that there is a download link on Intel's website.
https://downloadcenter.intel.c... [intel.com]
Oh no Microsoft is doing something, time to shit your pants in terror!
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Usually we just puke in disgust.
Re: God damn Store (Score:2)
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No, just no... (Score:2, Interesting)
No, I don't want your bloated driver code that you had to make run on all these different systems. I want the driver that was designed to be efficient on the hardware and OS that I installed.
Bleh.
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The key is that you can tweak this with Linux. If you want a really lean install, throw net install (e.g. Debian) on and only put the bits on that you need. Have a big drive, lots of RAM, and don't want to be bothered with esoteric shit? Install everything-but-the-kitchen-sink (e.g. Ubuntu). Want something that fits on your USB stick for rescuing? Download a premade image (e.g. SystemRescueCd).
You can do this stuff to some degree with Windows as well, but not as easily and not as legally/safely. What you de
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The key is that you can tweak this with Linux.... You can do this stuff to some degree with Windows as well, but not as easily and not as legally/safely. What you describe is a feature of Linux, not a flaw.
Sure it's a feature of Linux to trim things down, which is why I said the driver cornucopia is a feature of the Linux "distros." Also, generally, Linux drivers tend to introduce much less bloat than their equivalent Windows drivers. The drivers that come with the kernel, anyways.
However, it's entirely possible, legal *and* supported to slim down a typical Windows install as well:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/dism---deployment-image-servicing-and-management-technical-r
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Yes, you certainly can - with a fair amount of effort - pare down Windows. There are also embedded versions of Windows - for years we shipped equipment with XP Embedded. But these are not readily available, and for most people they are violating copyright when they acquire such an image - also putting themselves at risk for malware. "Small and Light" is a definite advantage of Linux, even if Ubuntu begins to approach Windows in bloatiness. Just for scale, a regular install of Windows is around 12 GB (16 if
Re: No, just no... (Score:2)
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Re:No, just no... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want a driver install package that only installs the files for the architecture it is running on. For example, if I'm on amd64, I don't need drivers taking up space for Sun3, MIPS, POWER, SPARC32, and ARM.
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Why would the driver be inefficient? Any benchmarks to backup your claim?
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Because it is not cost effective for a company to make a driver efficient AND work on every platform.
I don't agree with such a broad claim. We have the same binaries that run efficiently on a Xeon, a Pentium 4 and a Core i5. Those are vastly different platforms, that only look similar because of a common virtual interface (x86 ISA). In a similar fashion, the OS presents an file-system abstraction to the software you use, be it a NVMe or a Spinning Disk HDD or a network based storage device. A device driver essentially ferries data back and forth from a device (modulo obvious caveats and simplifications). I
Re: No, just no... (Score:2)
More ways to screw up your system (Score:5, Interesting)
On a regular basis, when the "updates" and "patches" are pushed out, we invariably have people whose drivers have been replaced by these supposedly universal drivers.
Then we have to go back and put in the original drivers we use in our images to get them up and running.
I wonder how many end users will be afflicted by this bug and not have any clue how to correct things?
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On a regular basis, when the "updates" and "patches" are pushed out, we invariably have people whose drivers have been replaced by these supposedly universal drivers.
I call bullshit given that this form of driver only works on a brand new Windows 10 1809 release which few people are running, and Intel's driver was the first such driver released and has been out for less than a day.
Re:More ways to screw up your system (Score:5, Funny)
we invariably have people whose drivers have been replaced by these supposedly universal drivers.
Wow, sounds like you've had a lot of problems in the last 4-5 days of these universal drivers existing. It sounds like it feels like years to you!
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Modern (Score:3)
Yup, here comes modernity.
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Once an Intel driver has been updated to a Windows Modern Driver, rolling back to the older drivers is a âoecomplex processâ that can result in system instability, particularly in regards to graphics drivers
For this reason, we're not providing the ZIP file for the next several driver releases while users transition to this new Microsoft driver platform.
We're just in a transition period where you could end up with two different driver models conflicting. So we stick to installers so that they can automagically do the necessary house cleaning for the swap. Then once we're on the new driver model go back to standard INF installations if need be.
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How can they reasonably switch everything over to the new model? My Windows 10 laptop is old enough that I don't expect any driver updates. The graphics driver I'm using now actually targets Vista, of all things. Maybe Windows 10 +1 they can fully deprecate the current driver model, but Windows 10 is going to be stuck supporting both models indefinitely. Granted, the new Microsoft doesn't really seem to care as much about breaking people's computers, but I don't think they'd get away with this one.
Is it Y2K compliant? (Score:1)
does it fix any floating-point errors?
Windows S mode (Score:3)
Remember the USB 1.0 standard (Score:5, Informative)
The original USB 1.0 standard had written into it the ability to have a universal driver system. When plugged in the device would upload a drive payload in a Java applet to allow at least partial operation until a platform specific drive could be found. For security reasons and the fact Java wasn't installed everywhere that was quickly dropped from the USB standard. Microsoft is just replicating that idea but in .NET instead of Java.
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At one point Windows machines had drivers for USB CD ROM Drives by Flash storage came out later, so they didn't have drivers for flash storage. Some flash storage drives would present themselves as a CD Rom drive and a flash storage drive. The CD Drive would contain the drives which would be installed, because autoplay, and the flash drive would work after the drivers started working. Sounds like a pretty good solution to me. It would be nice if more USB devices presented themelves as flash drives or CD d
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Some mobile phones from ZTE would do the same. The memory of the phone became a virtual disk drive, and it would even reroute your PC's routing tables to go through the mobile network.
In readiness for non-win32 windows next year (Score:1, Interesting)
Next year sees the biggest change in Windows to date, as MS launches the Xbox Two- a 24gb+, 1080TI+ class GPU, and 8+ Zen2 core CPU. For FIVE HUNDRED dollars. And it runs full windows store apps with keyboard and mouse- a full non-win32 PC as well as a console.
With this new console PC hybrid, thanks to AMD and TSMC's new 7nm process, high end gaming PCs are literally rendered obsolete pricewise. The rest of the 'independent' PC market must follow the Xbox Two's example, and finally accept the death of (thir
And on the Linux front??? (Score:2)
So on the Linux front do things get better or worse?
I almost transitioned an older laptop to Linux but tried Win10 first and the graphics drivers were much improved.
I has a nice big disk and a CDROM to rip music with... Then cygwin rsync to other machines and Bob's yer uncle.
Un-documented hardware is a global security risk.