3 ms·
Not only pen drives but also keyboards and mices. At home I often switch my keyboard from one laptop to the other and while it's always enabled near-instantly o
by simias 11y ago
Not only pen drives but also keyboards and mices. At home I often switch my keyboard from one laptop to the other and while it's always enabled near-instantly on linux it always takes a few seconds on windows (and especially the first time). It always annoyed me.
This is actually one of the few areas where linux is significantly superior to windows from an average "destktop" user's perspective. For instance getting PS3 controller to work on windows is (used to be?) very painful. On linux I plug it and it just works. Same for network-over-usb "RNDIS" devices but that might be more of a niche.
- rplnt 11y agoIsn't it caused by different kernel designs? Or is it only user-space implementation that causes this? I mean how long does it take to recognize and initialize a device.
- deckiedan 11y agoSame here. I normally work exclusively on macs & gnu/linux boxen, and when recently doing a stint in a windows 7 pro environment was in utter disbelief that plugging in a USB keyboard or mouse could occasionally require waiting over a minute before it became usable, often with a popup saying, "new drivers installed, you should probably restart" or similar. The environment is a bit odd - on a ship, so restricted internet and permissions, but even still. What the hell does windows need to go looking for drivers for a bog standard USB mouse???
- sp332 11y agoIt doesn't really know it's bog-standard until it looks up the USB VID&PID in the Windows Update database, right? I mean sure it could initialize as a basic HID device in the meantime but it would have to make you wait later when it uninstalled the HID driver and installed the new one, which seems like a pain as well.