as the device has been designed to work only with a specific version of Windows without a driver. However, once you have a device driver for Linux for the device, it works with every later version of Linux or Unix, something not true of Windows.

And don't forget, there are a heck of a lot more device drivers out there for Windows systems because a device designed to work out of the box with Win XP needs a driver for Vista, Win 7, Win 98, etc and the Windows community won't always put in the effort to make them.