Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant’s lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows’ user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.
That’s an anecdote. The majority of devices have full driver support. Over half of the code in the Linux kernel is just device drivers.
The linux kernel has good support for server hardware like, drive controllers, network cards, etc but bad support for things like touchpad, bluetooth, fingerprint readers, cameras, nfc readers, wifi cards, power controllers.
There are a small handful of laptop devices that have “full driver support” and these are still a 3rd party managing the linux drivers framework, system 76, lenovo. This is usually fixing issues as they arise instead of releasing fixes and patches before the disclosed issues go public. That makes them really hard to support in a secure environment.
If there are majority of devices then give me one machine thats not a framework or system 76 laptop and we can look at the device drivers.