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Comment by jjuhl | Hacker News Reader

To me this reads as "I can't use hardware xyz on linux". Well, that's no surprise. There's "wxy" hardware that you can't use with Windows or OS X as well.

Today Linux supports the same amount (or more) hardware that Windows does. Hardware support is not a reason to use or not use Linux. The software ecosystem is much more important - not to mention the freedom aspect...

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I often see people proposing others install Linux without actually considering hardware, and that easily and quickly loses potential adopters.

No, Linux does not support every piece of computer hardware ever made. You cannot blame Linux for that, if in the case of - ex - Broadcom, the company does not want to provide any documentation, support, drivers, or anything whatsoever, there is nothing you can practically expect this community to do about it. It is insane to think that if a hardware vendor won't support their own products its my job by telling you you should use Linux to then reverse engineer drivers for everything, and somehow magically break the signed firmware bullshit on a lot of modern hardware. In the same way your 1998 Lexmark printer probably doesn't work at all with Windows 8+, <insert arbitrary random thing from a decade ago> won't get support in Linux if it isn't already there.

But I also blame the advocates who sell false promises about supreme compatibility - its an operating system. It supports a lot of hardware. A lot of companies support it. That does not mean all companies support it, or that all computers can work with it. But there is a difference between not supporting any hardware in a product class (ex: I have great experience with Epson xp-XXX printers and always buy them for Linux clients because they work out of the box with gutenprint in scan, print, and ink levels on Cups and do rotation / double sided properly no problem / I use Atheros ar9462 Wifi cards everywhere because they have great bluetooth + wifi that are stable as hell out of the box without configuration) and supporting enough to be functional, and Linux is absolutely functional.

No, there's no consumer-level desktop hardware you can't use on either Windows or OS X or both. That's false.

Hardware support is indeed a reason not to use Linux, but the question is who needs to pick up the slack. With other operating systems, manufacturers put (more or less) effort into writing device drivers that are functional. With Linux, they really do not. It's a large and moving target, and the market value of doing so is not clear to them.

Really? There's plenty of old hardware which no longer works in recent Windows versions. It's not in a manufacture's interest to update a driver to recent OS versions. In Linux drivers usually remain for a long time.

Example: Sony VIAO laptops

http://esupport.sony.com/LA/perl/os10upgrade.pl?stage1=24&st...

"IMPORTANT:

Drivers for other hardware components such as Network cards, etc..., may be available on the manufacturer's web site. Sony software applications that originally shipped with the computer may not work after installing Windows 10. Sony cannot guarantee your system capability after installing Windows 10."

Had a friend with this. Sony sold division to some other corporation. Which leaves Win10 qualified drivers for such optional things as, oh, WIRELESS NETWORKING in limbo after a Win10 upgrade.

Sure, you or I would pull the wifi card model, go to the manufacturer's site, and use the drivers from there. But Joe, Sally, Bob, or Jane public aren't going to get past "Wifi stopped working, and it wasn't on the update screen".

Probably, but I'd also wager that the majority of those devices use physical connections that any machine capable of running recent windows versions do not have. E.g. DB-25 ports.

I will also wager that the only real "wall" that would prevent old hardware from working was the removal of 16-bit support from x64 versions of windows.

Yeah. GP's point was overstated. But there's a weaker claim that is just as important and, I think, indisputably true: Windows supports virtually all hardware that is popular among desktop users. Or, even better, Windows supports far more hardware than desktop Linux, especially if you weight hardware by popularity.

It's understandable, of course--Windows has a greater consumer installed base resulting in greater manufacturer interest in supporting the platform. For Linux desktop users, unfortunately, the dynamic is often the opposite: the manufacturer has no interest in supporting the platform, and users/volunteer developers have to do all the work...which the manufacturer may then break at will.

But that doesn't mean that hardware support is not still a major problem for Linux desktop adoption.

Sure, there's lots of old hardware that the manufacturer no longer supports. That, to me, seems like a very different problem, as the older hardware /was/ supported by an older version of windows. It's true that this traps you in an un-patched OS, but (as pointed out many other times in this thread) patching Linux components also risks creating hardware incompatibilities.

Whether there's continuing support for a product is a very different issue. At some point, all consumer hardware was functional in a version of Windows or OS X, since it was released precisely with support for one or both of those OSs. Yes, updates break things, but that is a very different problem than the one facing Linux. The problem facing Linux is that manufacturers are not supporting (or not seeking with much vigor to support) any Linux distribution upon initial release of the hardware.

It is a very different issue but can be very much in favor of GNU/Linux distribution when they work on a given piece of hardware: they are far more likely to be able to get version N+1 of said distribution than Windows N+1. Now Windows 10 might bring the best of both worlds for the Windows world, but for now it does not work well that much.

> No, there's no consumer-level desktop hardware you can't use on either Windows or OS X or both. That's false.

Oh, I can show you multitude of printers, scanners, tv tuners that do not work with Windows or OSX. Or they work with exactly one Windows version and that's it.

Maybe old printers, old scanners and old tv tuners?

The reality is that when a new laptop is released, Windows will support everything it has from day one. If that's because of Microsoft's or the manufacturer's efforts, that doesn't matter for regular users.

On Linux, you buy the laptop and wait 1-2 years for bugs to be ironed out or even for things to barely work for the first time. Afterwards, Linux will continue to support that for a very long time while Windows may drop support after 2-3 versions because the manufacturer has no interest in upgrading drivers for the newest Windows releases. Specially for something that is not selling anymore.

Most people I know in the open source world barely use any fancy features like tv tuners, fingerprint scanners, touchscreens, or even printers. From reading some comments here, these are usually the people saying "everything is fine". I do think everything is fine for open source developers but no so much for regular users. And if the focus can be on the latter, then I guess everybody will benefit at the same time.

EDIT: typing this from Fedora 23 on a laptop with a NVIDIA card that is disabled because I got tired of bugs in nouveau and the constant hassle of updating the kernel and the GPU drivers stopping to work. I'm happy with the ingrated graphics though so my next laptop won't have a dGPU, probably.

I think just the opposite - most of my software runs on Linux, but hardware is the main obstacle.

I've installed Linux many times on desktops and laptops, and I have yet to simply install a graphics driver and have it work first try. My laptop locks up the cursor after two minutes of use, doesn't support two-finger touchpad scrolling, and exhibits constant graphical artifacts, all under multiple driver and kernel combinations.

Speaking as a big fan of Linux, the hardware support is abysmal, except where the money is: server hardware.

That used to be a problem, but I don't think it is any more. Linux "just works" on both my laptop (including sound, multitouch touchpad, wifi, and graphics, also when I'm not using it, I only ever put it to sleep by closing the lid, and I've never had a problem) and my desktop, which has an AMD graphics card (Radeon HD 7950) and an external USB audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 2i2).

I haven't tested but I suspect there is still a distro issue - I haven't had any hardware compatibility problems on Ubuntu, but there are plenty of groanworthy desktop distro recommendations on the net.

The parent is correct, modern Linux supports a lot more hardware than any single Windows version. The difference is that Linux is much better at supporting old hardware, and Windows is slightly better at supporting new hardware. Try using a 20 year old non-generic printer on Windows 10, for example.

As it so happens, I'm pretty sure the marginal Linux laptop installation is on a new machine. So from the universe of possible hardware installations, Linux might be superior; from the universe of actual installations in 2015, it lags well behind Windows.

No, funtionality is important. It doesnt matter how free the software is if it doesnt work. I don't know where you live, but in both the countries I live in you cannot buy linux compatible wifi adaptors over the counter. I can't close my office or loungeroom doors at the moment, because none of the three wifi adaptors I own work with ubuntu, so theres a massive network cable snaking through both. The hardware compatibility lists for distros are regularly out of date and rarely comprehensive. If you expect the average citizen of the world to trawl forums for compatibility info and pay hundreds of dollars in shipping and wait weeks to get compatible hardware that only seems to be sold in the US, you've got buckleys. To be frank, your attitude is what holds back desktop linux. We need to admit these flaws and fix them, not blame the world for being insufficiently hardcore.

"I can't close my office or loungeroom doors at the moment, because none of the three wifi adaptors I own work with ubuntu, so theres a massive network cable snaking through both."

Homeplug[1] devices any good?

I used a pair of those for a bit to save putting cat 5 in the wall (I'm lazy about DIY). Worked OK but I didn't need super-fast.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug

They're very expensive compared to wifi, especially compared to their performance, and based on anecdotal reports their lifespan isn't very good. How's your mileage been?

I used a couple of slower ones (German make, around £30 for the two from PC World, not the most economical outlet) for about three years until I got rid of the desktop PC. No issues. Just worked. Throughput fine at 4 mb/s Internet speeds which is all I used it for.

If you need AV speeds, and if you have 'unusual' wiring, best ask on an appropriate forum supporting home networking or something.

Driver availability is only a small portion of that list.

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