After painstakingly installing printer drivers for a thermal printer at work I realized I still don’t truly understand what I was installing. (Bonus points if you can cover video card drivers too cause idk what drivers are In that sense either)
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There are a lot of great answers here, but I don’t know how ELI5 they are. Here is a more ELI5 version….
There are hundreds of thousands of different peripherals you can hook up to your computer. Your computer wasn’t made to know how to use all of them. Even common things like printers, there are dozens of manufacturers who each make dozens or even hundreds of different models that each work differently and have different functions. The same is true of video cards. That’s why they have drivers, to tell it how this particular model works.
As an analogy, let’s say you go out and buy a new vacuum cleaner. You know in general what vacuum cleaners do, even if you don’t know the specifics of how it works. There are some basic vacuum cleaners that are very simple, no specific settings for different floor heights, a very simple on/off switch, a standard easy to see canister that has a simple latch to remove it. You could probably figure it all out without having to read the instruction manual. But what if the on/off switch isn’t simply on/off, but has multiple settings? And it has a different setting for tiled/hardwood floors than for carpet. And how does it store the dust and dirt it cleans when there’s no obvious bag or canister? How do you empty those? And how often? What do I use these 3 attachments for and how do I use them? Are there filters on it? If so, where? How often do I need to change those? What does it mean when it is making a certain noise? There’s a light that comes on sometimes, what does that mean? You might have even bought a Bissell, just like all of the other ones you had previously, but the buttons and lights and switches are in different places.
To understand any of those things you need to use the vacuum in anything more than the bare basic means, you need to read the instruction manual. The instruction manual describes all of the components, how each works, what kind of maintenance schedule each piece needs, what different types of noises or odd behavior means, etc.
The drivers are basically an instruction manual for the computer to tell it how this specific model of this specific peripheral works. Without the driver, the computer wouldn’t know how to use the peripheral attached to it. Just like with the vacuum, if it is a very simple device, there’s probably a generic driver that will work fine to do the basic things. But for any advanced specific feature, your computer needs the instruction manual/driver to know how to use it.
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