“Linux supported hardware” is an outdated phrase only used in windows propaganda today.
Absolutely not.
Signed, owner of half-supported hardware.
Out of curiosity what hardware are you using that’s not supported?
Certain fingerprint readers and touchscreens
ex. Goodix
It’s not the fault of Linux, it’s the hardware manufacturers. Still, you need to consider it before buying the device
Printers 🤣
BS, I have gotten HP printers to work on Linux with no problems.
My Epson inkjet is a paperweight without w*ndows
Epson seems to supply Linux drivers according to their website and some Linux users when I searched around
Yeah, there’s some drivers but I never could get it quite work.
I was able to get mine working by setting it up as a network printer via windows and then just accessing it like that through Linux. But yeah, if I ever change wifi ssids I would need to factory reset it go back into windows and configure it again. (ET2400)
Edit to be clear the windows instance is only needed for setup, it can be shut down or removed entirely after setup
I also had a windows server for that for a little bit, but dumped it in the end. Realistically only my wife is using it, and she is still stuck with windows on her Thinkpad
If I were already using Linux when I bought a printer like that, it would be returned immediately lmao
How old is it? Almost all relatively recent printers should support driverless network printing by now.
Maybe 5 years old, haven’t tested in a while but it’s USB only with no network connectivity
They work better on Linux ,more prints than on windows ,same Cartwright. Installing was plug play (Office jet 6950)
I supported Hp Web Jet Admin on a slew of print servers for a large healthcare org after it got dropped in my lap from a round of layoffs. I’ll never own a printer again. Granted I never print anymore but I would rather drive to office depot a thousand times than to bring that evil back into this house
my brother laser was easier to set up in linux . windows needed a big ass download , linux just printed.
HP Reverb G2 for me. Still waiting on Monado to get it fully working but no such luck yet. Hugely appreciative to the dev team for all of their amazing work, of course.
Audio gear.
Broadcom hardware (WiFi cards an webcams in particular). Plus there are quirks with some proprietary driver version not building against some kernel version…
With unsupported hardware and closed drivers you are always on the lookout for some breakage.
And it’s not a Linux problem nor a complaint on distro maintainers. It’s manufacturers that are shit.
Peripheral devices, mostly. I have some half-supported, like Logitech mouse (G-shift doesn’t work), and for some I rely on open-source devs (like Corsair keyboard for certain keys/modes/connectivity fix). Sure, you can say just buy compatible devices, but it’s not always viable to replace everything you owned before moving to Linux.
I’ve got some LianLi case fans that aren’t supported by anything Linux that I’ve been able to find. I run a barebones VM just to control their features.
What case are you using? I’ve got a LianLi Lancool 216. It’s a little loud but it runs just fine for me.
Off the top of my head, my case is a LianLi O11, but I was talking about my case fans, which are… Oh lord, their naming is so obnoxious, the… TM LCDs I think?
I’ll be honest, A lot more of it works than I expected. Linux runs and is quite stable.
Keyboard Backlighting? Had to write some Python. Windows driver manages this, proprietary. I still can’t get backlight to work in bluetooth mode.
Trackpad Palm Rejection? Had to write a service. Windows driver manages this, proprietary.
Function keys on the keyboard in wired mode? Not supported, no work-around that I can find. I have to remove the keyboard and put it into bluetooth mode. Windows driver.
ohh shit, now that this reminded me to look, someone’s done something about it
https://github.com/zakstam/zenbook-duo-linux
Now I just need to figure out how to wedge that into nixos
Lenovo thinkbook 16 G7 iml
Yes it’s a POS. It wasn’t my choice. Work laptop.
What Linux kernel are you running which isn’t supporting your hardware?
My case: I have an nvidia GTX 980. It’s old but it’s what I have.
Nvidia dropped its support from driver version 595.
Driver 580 is what I need, it worked until 7.0 but no longer in 7.1 (was using Fedora 44). Since my hardware is old I switched to Debian Trixie.
Another example is the facetime HD Webcam of macbook pro: to make it work you have to install OSx or download a recovery image, compile a C program to extract a specific binary blob, then use that blob to recompile the driver on your kernel.
There are lots of examples: it’s a big world, with lots of hardware and mostly no producer interested in the Linux world.
This depends a bit on the distro you are using. Like in arch you should not use the proprietary drivers for older cards but the open ones. My guess is there are some community drivers you should use instead.
😆😂🤣 Are you kidding? Have you tried using nouveau? It works, sure, but you can’t play games that are even vaguely modern and if something uses up a bit too much RAM the entire display system starts jittering/lagging or becomes unresponsive. Source: I ran nouveau with a GTX 2080 for years. I was only able to fully ditch Windows once I fully ditched Nvidia (by switching to an AMD GPU and scrubbing every last vestige of Nvidia’s bullshit off my PC).
Psht. I wish! This is wrong and will set people up for failure. There is absolutely hardware that will work well with Linux and hardware that will not.
I tend to run into problems with brand new laptops. Microphones don’t work, web cams don’t work, fingerprint readers don’t work.
I have a Dell Dell Pro next to me with a web cam that doesn’t work. Arch, btw.
I also have a Lenovo T14 where everything does work.
The point is you have to RESEARCH before you buy. Otherwise, you’re gonna get mad a Linux for not supporting your hardware, instead of being mad at yourself for not researching first.
Hardware that’s too old is problematic and hardware that’s too new can be problematic.
And unsurprisingly my framework laptop works perfectly under Linux
Wait, it isn’t the point to nuke “spy equipment” with a new OS?
No, the point is not to nuke it. One point is to have control over your own hardware and (in principle) be able to make sure the software/OS is not using your devices to spy on you.
There’s still tons of devices where Linux doesn’t work properly with them.
My Intel wireless cards cannot maintain a 6ghz wireless connection for shit despite some of them being over 5 years old. And Intel. Latest stuff, older kernels, none work well. Oddly whatever version of Fedora I had worked the best. My wifi wasn’t unusable when 6ghz was an option. It only dropped to 5/2.4ghz once a minute instead of every 5-20 seconds.
My guess is that you are noticing the difference between new and old kernels
Sure, but that doesn’t change that it’s regressed since that one version and still hasn’t been re fixed.
If the old (or LTS) version of the kernel doesn’t support something newer, and the new version of the kernel does, that would not be a regression.
I learned this when Skylake first came out. Ubuntu LTS didn’t work on it because it was an old kernel and this was new hardware. If you have new hardware, use a new kernel.
This Fedora version was a year+ ago. Even on 7.0 wifi is unusable on my machines if I have 6ghz enabled.
Different disks if you must at all.
i’ve quadbooted a lot before (linux/freebsd/osx/windows), it works pretty well these days with uefi. was pretty hard to handle with legacy bios though
Put Windows in a virtual machine where it belongs!
Microsoft’s boot killing shenanigans convinced me to just scrub the taint of 11 off this time.
If you are on a desktop, there is always the option of throwing a GT 1030 in the secondary pcie slot and jumping through the 100 hoops to get Looking Glass set up.
Windows can’t fuck the bootloader if you lie about its HDD access.
Or just use QEMU/KVM wirh VirtIO extensions if you don’t need hardware rendering on Windows. Problem is most dual-booters I know use Windows to play games with kernel anti-cheat. Not much you can do to virtualize that
Yeah, I can’t think of anything I need windows for that doesn’t also need a real GPU to be useful.
And even then its only really 1 game, setting up looking glass was as much for tinkering amusement than actual use.
The newer GPU virtio stuff is all happening in Linux guests right now, but that is of course also not useful for the Windows gaming use case.
This might be the most dweeby thing I’ve seen. I love it :)
I wish Linux wasn’t so god damn complicated so everyone would use it.
I have normie family using it without issue, as do many.
I love Linux, but damn unless you use Amd video cards. It’s a hard sell, especially if you’re a gamer. Not to mention, how often games break because they’re designed for windows. So dual boot is reasonable, in my opinion.
Why? I have an nvidia card and haven’t noticed any major issues. It hasn’t even bricked the system on a driver update in years now.
I wasn’t talking about bricked systems, just the games themselves have issues and glitches. Especially with Nvidia. Not all games mind you. Plus the performance tax on Nvidia with Linux.
When running the games through Proton I never had issues because of Nvidia.
I have issues because of Nvidia, but none are related to gaming.
If you have the newest propertary drivers it should work just fine.
I’ve been on Nobara for a year or so now with my nvidia 4090. I can’t think of a game that I couldn’t get running that wasn’t related to the anti-cheat or VR. I had a hankering for Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. Getting the EA play app going through Lutris worked but was not consistently great at launching. ProtonDB said it ran fine through Steam so I ended up buying it last sale for $5 and it does run fine that way. Helldivers 2 has a single pixel white boarder around the window but otherwise it runs fine. Heck even Ultima Online works (and Outlands!) I’ve been gaming on Windows PCs for 30 years. It’s pretty close if not the same performance to me.
For the most part it’s fine for me too. But just recently ran into some major issues with Blizzard games. So I definitely like to keep a dual boot for that reason. As well as compatibility and troubleshooting issues.
It’s actually the opposite if you’re trying to use your GPU for compute tasks, though.
Having tried both, nvidia GPU compute just worked, right out of the box, as soon as I installed the nvidia drivers. With AMD, though, I could never get GPU compute working, despite months of screwing around with it, trying different drivers from different sources, trying different methods to install them, trying different configurations – nothing could get GPU compute to work. And … that’s kind of a problem when I want to use software like Davinci Resolve, which requires GPU compute to run.
Which is a perfect argument for dual boot scenarios. Which unfortunately are necessary for optimal use.
With an nvidia GPU, I’m using Davinci Resolve just fine on Linux, no need for Windows at all.
The argument for dual boot is mostly for gaming, as far as compute is concerned your AMD graphics card would have been fine on Ubuntu or an RHEL/CentOS operating system. But honestly in my experience, it’s always good to dual boot just in case. There are many scenarios where it saves you headaches and precious time.
as far as compute is concerned your AMD graphics card would have been fine on Ubuntu
I was on Ubuntu. And it was not fine.
It used to be much, much worse. While some people still struggle a little with Nvidia on Linux, it seems perfectly usable in most distros and games by now.
I agree it has improved, but I still have enough issues to where for me anyways. To justify dual boot, that is until I get an AMD video card. Believe me if I didint have to constantly find Nvidia workarounds, for performance and bugs. I would be on Linux 100 percent of the time.
Now that Windows isn’t being updated anymore (unless you enroll for extended security updates), can this still happen?
I think that’s why peeps install stuff like gnu/linux and then slap Nvidia & Steam on them for lolz, they often can’t live without pretending they are a wizard or a soldier in some novel machine generated propitiatary hallucinations from an app store no matter the cost, Gabe needs better yachts.
What if I dual boot 2 Linux distros?
