What is so fundamentally different about drivers in Linux and Windows?
Specifically, video card drivers have always frustrated my understanding of what's going on under the hood. Say I have a nice video card from ATI. I need to install some cool drivers from ATI in order to make the card work at its best and in order to do any cool things like dual monitors. I download these drivers from the company's website, install them on my machine, and I'm off and running. Assuming all goes according to plan.
That's all fine. Now, this is what confuses me. In Windows, I'm done forever at this point. I've never had a problem, nor heard of a problem, where I had to mysteriously reinstall the drivers for my video card after an Automatic Update. Not so in Linux. Every kernel update has me wondering if I'll have to reinstall the drivers for my video card. It seems like sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I just reboot and pray that my video card is still working afterwards.
Not knowing a great deal about how drivers really work in Linux or Windows, I can only really conclude that either Microsoft never updates the Windows kernel (at least not in a way that screws with driver interfaces), or there is something very different about how the two operating systems handle drivers. Can anyone shed some light on the subject for me?
Thanks, bit