Microsoft started this really. In Windows 95, they built a filing system so that applications went in specific folders in the Start menu. MS Office installed all its icons in the root of the Start menu, because self-importance. Can't expect everyone else to respect the conventions after that.

Or they could bundle a basic driver or police the driver they're curating while allowing people to download and install drivers directly from the vendor website with no policing, no signature checks, etc.

Distributing malware is negligent or malicious, yes. Not stopping users from seeking out their own malware is neither. Nothing stops you from running malware on Linux. The curated repos are simply good enough that there's not much reason to go looking elsewhere.

You forgot the 3rd current option: Microsoft does police HIV, but does it poorly -> "MS is a negligent evil monopolist"

Well yeah, when you spend a significant segment of your corporate life being both negligent and an evil monopolist, people tend to assume the worst. Don't like it? Behave better.

There's also the option of "MS asks you if you want to run stuff your monitor wants to run". It's not that hard.

The fault here is definitely LG's, though.

Poor Microsoft, what have they possibly done to deserve such lack of faith??

Well… they’re putting their signature on the stuff and blocking everything lacking it…

Strawman

On the contrary, they learned to make malware authors pay them first before getting access.

I don't know that Microsoft is without significant blame here. They provided a mechanism for LG to do this without the necessary checks. They could just as easily make part of the WHQL process and related agreements state pretty clearly that such behaviour is forbidden and will result in anything from financial penalties to driver decertification.

If anything, as shitty as LG's behaviour is, Microsoft gave them the tools to eke out a little more money at the expense of the consumer, and a company like LG is not likely to leave that money on the table out of the goodness of their hearts. As the scorpion told the frog - "It's my character".

> People do expect their hardware to just work. That means installing drivers and the like.

A display, of all things, shouldn't require installing anything to make it "just work." It just needs speak standardized protocols over standardized cables. That should require no more than generic drivers shipped with the operating system.

What part of "software needed to control a peripheral" could POSSIBLY be defined as: "software that shows you ads, and/or uploads private data to vendor without even asking for consent"?

Easy fix: freeze their developer signing accounts like they did with VeraCrypt and WireGuard, demand that they remove spyware to regain access to sign their future updates.

Why do monitors need drivers to work?

>I have an LG TV that I've never allowed to connect to a network, and I'm definitely keeping it that way.

I'm starting to think that is what I need to do with my computers.

> No, this is LG making a choice to abuse an OS feature in order to shove ads down people's throats and spy on them.

Meh, give a company something they can feasibly abuse for money, and they'll probably do that. I'm not sure that this is practically feasible on Mac or Linux; Macs enable fairly constrained but powerful userspace drivers that generally need approval, and I've never seen a piece of hardware automatically download anything that can run in the background, but that could be an anecdotal experience. Maybe printers would be the exception.

The tradeoff is that even software like Zoom doesn't completely work by default

Surely Microsoft have the expertise and resources to make a platform of driver signing that separate addon software and basic driver needs? Why should a USB headset plugged in be allowed to auto install audio software, recording software, antivirus software and adware, and not even from the device itself but fetch it from Windows Update platform) without the users consent? Surely it would just install the needed audio driver to pass sound as signed by Microsoft, with an option for the rest?

The proposed solution to this huge issue in windows isn't to let average users fend for themselves, no one is arguing that.