There could be months or years between updates to the driver.
Yes, but someone still has to implement that “a thing or two” in it every few years.
Some manufacturers have great first-party Linux support. Intel is a good example - they contribute a lot of code to the kernel, and their drivers are maintained by employees.
Agreed. But, to be honest, most aren’t. Just take a look at Realtek. There’s bound to be at least one chip made by them on your board (in most cases, two, LAN and audio, two very crucial pieces of hardware).
Realtek NICs are junk (even the buggy Intel I225-v chip is better) so I try to avoid them, but I honestly haven’t ever checked which sound chip my motherboard uses. I’ll have to check if it’s a Realtek one. Realtek is generally the lower-end manufacturer for cheaper products.
Realtek is basically on every retail motherboard manufacturer. Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Biostar, ASRock, etc. If you’re talking about hi-end or server grade motherboards, yeah, but let’s face it, the chips are cheap so they’re practically in every household.
I’ve got a “ASUS ROG Strix B550-F” which wasn’t exactly a high-end motherboard when I got it (I got it because it was cheap), but it’s got an Intel chip rather than a Realtek one. The lower-end motherboards have Realtek NICs but I usually don’t get the cheapest of anything since there’s usually a pretty big difference in quality if you spend just a little bit more.
The Intel I226-V chip on that motherboard is only $2.87 each (for quantities of 1000, even cheaper for large bulk orders) and the manufacturer can likely use the same PHY chip and timing components, so it doesn’t really increase the price a lot to use a non-Realtek chip.
