The only difference is whether they’re included in the OS or if you need to obtain them separately.
Back in my days of dos games, you didn’t download a driver for your sound card, instead, you told the game where to find the device, and what device it was, and the drivers were built into the game.
Baked into the kernel or not, the drivers are there.
But Windows supports so many different and strange configurations that the generic drivers included with Windows may not work with the specific audio device you’re using.
On Windows you need audio drivers. Why? We will never know
Every OS needs drivers for every device.
The only difference is whether they’re included in the OS or if you need to obtain them separately.
Back in my days of dos games, you didn’t download a driver for your sound card, instead, you told the game where to find the device, and what device it was, and the drivers were built into the game.
Drivers. Drivers everywhere.
Why can’t you just bake them into the kernel? Windows doesn’t need a separate keyboard driver.
Baked into the kernel or not, the drivers are there.
But Windows supports so many different and strange configurations that the generic drivers included with Windows may not work with the specific audio device you’re using.