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I recently installed Ubuntu 14.04 to a spare SSD on my computer, and I'm working on the setup now. I have installed Win7 on another drive in the same computer, and after that I used a thing called SlimDrivers to update all my drivers. Is there a similar thing for Ubuntu? Do I need to do anything special? The Software and Updates program said (under Additional Drivers) that no additional drivers are available. Can I trust that and just assume I'm done with my setup?

I'm really sorry I'm so clueless with this. I've toyed with Ubuntu before, but only in VMs. This is my first time fully installing it onto a computer.

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Is there a similar thing for Ubuntu?

No.

Linux (and so Ubuntu too) uses generic drivers. This means we have 1 specific driver for similar devices. So we have 1 open source driver for nVidia, 1 for AMD etc. Besides that one driver there might also be a driver created by the manufacturer itself (that one is called proprietary). Same goes for printers, scanners, wireless, usb.

Downside of this method: if the generic driver does not include that specific piece of hardware it will not work out of the box.

Do I need to do anything special?

After installing you should update your system and then check additional drivers. It is not needed to use a different driver. Sometimes they are even better than the proprietary.

The Software and Updates program said (under Additional Drivers) that no additional drivers are available. Can I trust that and just assume I'm done with my setup?

In general yes but you need to supply more information about your setup for a more detailed answer. If you do not have an nVidia or AMD graphics card (but an build-in Intel for instance) there will be no proprietary driver. Same goes for wireless: only a few wireless chipset have an extra driver (broadcom for instance).

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  • Thanks for the detailed explanation! It's a desktop I built myself. The wireless card was able to work out of the box, it's an nVidia GTX 670, CPU is an i5-3570K, and my motherboard is an ASROCK z77 extreme4. I figure that means there won't be any additional drivers. The manufacturer websites don't list anything under linux.
    – Rstevoa
    Apr 14, 2014 at 13:44

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