Why do people even install 'drivers' for things like monitors. (Or usb devices running 'standard' protocols). The OS handles these just fine by itself.

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wccrawford 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In this case, they aren't.

I woke up the other day to a notification that my LG monitor driver was installed, with a little window on how to use the on-screen crap.

Absolutely useless, since the buttons for the monitor are right there on the bottom of it, and probably easier to use than the software.

	▲	Joel_Mckay 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed, our Windows 11 offline Steam box also needed to disable LG & Switch App in taskmanager, and set LG apps to manual start in Services. Apparently the 3 applications have some sort of screen partitioning/sharing capabilities, but it is still unclear if the LG App was remote access or not. So far, LG is earning a lot of justified bad press. Should have returned it when I had to turn off the screens power-save mode to get it to stop fading out randomly. =3

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subscribed 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The article is about people NOT installing it but getting it installed anyway :)

As to why people do install such software? It sometimes provides additional features, controls and settings. For example with touchpad you could set the sensitivity, hot corners, set the scroll behaviour the way you like it, etc.

With monitors you might get a better colour profile (P3 instead of just sRGB), I don't know. I don't use monitors like this.

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functionmouse 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

the OS handles these now by installing the malware. Zero click.

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embedding-shape 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like this malware gets installed even if you don't manually install anything.

> Connecting some LG monitors to a Windows PC may automatically install software that promotes McAfee subscriptions

I too have a LG monitor, but haven't booted Windows in some days, guess I'll stay put in my Arch environment until they've fixed this shitshow.

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onaclov2000 6 hours ago | parent [-]

But this assumes you plug in USBC .... Right? HDMI and display port can't....install over right?

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embedding-shape 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't see any details in any of the texts I came across, but in theory the implementation could be that Windows sees the ID of the monitor once connected through any sort of connection, then when matching ID is found it installs the malware. Rather than the installer is sent from the monitor to the computer. Would make updates a lot easier, and if they really want to spread this malware, can activate it for a lot more monitors.

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onaclov2000 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That makes some sense to me, I think for some reason my brain assumed they were like actively controlling the PC to download things other than updates, (and low key assumed part of this update was supposed to be for software on the monitor not the desktop)

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jdw64 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Most commercial solutions are Windows-based and use the Windows API. HDMI and DP also have two-way communication channels. This is something you learn when you do hardware coding.(Of course you already know this, but this is for the other people reading this comment.)

Typically, the Windows update server downloads packages mapped to hardware IDs in the background. Since LG's business in Korea has been failing and their AI efforts are stagnating, they exploited their McAfee partnership marketing as a pipeline. Windows' Plug and Play does make development convenient. The DX experience is good.

Linux is quite fragmented. That's good from a 'my computer' perspective, but not from a 'product' perspective. And then there's the jitter issue. Windows has stable paid solutions, while Linux has version discrepancies.

In fact, the reason Linux is considered secure is simply because hardware vendors haven't standardized enough to build automatic deployment pipelines.

In programming terms, we all know singleton is bad, but for Plug and Play, it's overwhelmingly convenient.

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zahlman 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> simply because hardware vendors haven't standardized enough to build automatic deployment pipelines

Wouldn't it require cooperation from the distros anyway? You say "HDMI and DP also have two-way communication channels", but that doesn't force the OS to communicate over those channels. And it also doesn't force the "mapping of packages to hardware IDs" to be what the hardware manufacturer wants it to be.

	▲	jdw64 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Your point is idealistically correct, but realistically it's not. Because when people install Windows, they don't want to go through the process of installing drivers for other hardware devices. And usually the driver versions depend on the OS version too. Right away, with numerous distributions like Ubuntu and Arch, it's hard to account for all the possible cases from a production standpoint. But Windows has very few versions. As long as you pass Microsoft's standard specification, it just runs on Windows. That difference is huge. What you're saying is ideal, but when selling a product, time is money. In other words, to summarize our conversation: 'As you said, separating them is the right thing to do. But UX Uesrs basically wanted that kind of deployment authority, and in the process, the problem of abusing it arose.' It's a beginner level problem, but at the same time, it's also a difficult one.

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chmod775 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Windows automatically tries to download and install drivers for some hardware you plug in, including monitors. That's what is happening here.

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Someone1234 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The monitor itself isn't installing anything, Windows detects the device by unique ID, and uses Windows Update to get the driver which itself triggers a Windows Store application (malware) to install.

The monitor only sends a unique device ID, everything else is handled by Windows.

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Joel_Mckay 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We have an offline account Windows 11 Steam box, and the stupid popup still hit our machine a few days back. It did ask for screen access (said no), but there is no obvious button to opt out of the adware popups (select don't show, and click X to close).

Disabled LG & Switch App in taskmanager auto start, and set to Manual for all 3 LG process names in Services.

A lot of bad karma, for such an buggy monitor that doesn't even work properly till you turn off the silly power-saver auto-dim mode. =3

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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