For some vendors or kernels, certainly
However, this completely disregards the work companies like Intel and AMD do to upstream their drivers, or the leagues of individual maintainers
In many cases there is no difference, the driver in the kernel is the upstream one
Nvidia has been a notable exception, but they're slowly improving by going (partially?) open source
Realtek specifically has problems due to their shared driver core. For example, it often can't reliably tell the difference between an r8125 and r8169
For some vendors or kernels, certainly
However, this completely disregards the work companies like Intel and AMD do to upstream their drivers, or the leagues of individual maintainers
In many cases there is no difference, the driver in the kernel is the upstream one
Nvidia has been a notable exception, but they're slowly improving by going (partially?) open source
Realtek specifically has problems due to their shared driver core. For example, it often can't reliably tell the difference between an r8125 and r8169