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Comment by 1tw | Hacker News Reader

"it runs on every piece of hardware you throw at it"

That's what continues to impress me about Ubuntu - I've installed it on everything from PPC-era Macs to dodgy little netbooks and it invariably 'just works'.

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There was a time when you had to carefully choose your hardware to work with Linux. These days, you have to carefully choose your hardware in order to experience problems.

I am surprised by how many people do the latter.

If 95% of components work on Ubuntu, and your computer life involves 25 components (start counting, you'll hit it pretty quickly), Ubuntu is totally broken for about 75% or so of users. If Mom's camera or wireless doesn't work, she does not perceive the computer as being mostly functional.

I actually did install Ubuntu on my mother's system and haven't had any such gadget shortcomings.

What kind of life of bizarre peripheral addiction do your loved ones live? I can count for myself wired USB headphones, a mouse, a printer, speakers, wireless headphones, a camera (if putting the card into the built in card reader counts), an iPod and... and.. well, that's only seven. They all work with no problem on Linux. What on earth are the other 18 that the average person uses?

We did have a problem with a USB GPS device, but overall the computer is actually lot more functional compared to back when I had to go over and uninstall a new virus and spyware suite every 30-40 days. My mother seems to like Ubuntu a lot, and when I took the computer the other day, she was complaining about using my Father's windows laptop. It was pretty classic, she wrote and said she missed her computer with the 'mozilla fox operating system.

I think the 25 component number is a bit of an exaggeration. Also, you assume a perfectly even distribution among component pairs and that's not the way computers are designed these days. You won't find an AMD box with Intel GMA graphics, for instance.

That said, if 95% of all components work on Ubuntu, maybe 99% of common components work on it, maybe 99.99% of things Dell sells work on it. You're still stuck by that $15 webcam Mom bought at Walmart, though.

all those components come with drivers provider by the vendor of that component for windows(mostly) machine only. Linux doing a great job catching on all those components but the thing is linux is mostly behind. if Vendors helps linux community a little we should be going hand in hand.

Every vendor publishes their own buggy version of drivers for what is essentially the same hardware, all neatly packaged with some buggy "value added" crapware that introduces new and unpredictable behaviour mom has to deal with.

No. I really prefer the Linux way.

I don't think it takes that much effort to have trouble with suspend/hibernate. I've found it to be the rule rather than the exception.

True, that used to be a big problem for me as well until about 1 year back. I think it was Karmic that finally solved it on all my laptops.

Suspend works perfectly for me on a Dell Studio XPS, an EeePC, and a MacBook.

What kind of notebook computer have you been using?

On this Dell Mini 10, X will eventually crash following a resume from hibernate, then I drop to low-graphics mode and avoid doing an actual reboot for as long as possible, just hibernating my low-graphics state.

The only bit of hardware I've had problems with recently is Broadcom wireless cards. Worse Drivers ever. I still won't ever buy one intentionally and when I find one will replace it with an intel or something else that works with out a giant hassle.

Nevertheless, I'd advice reading the release notes before installing. My mom's laptop happened to have the precise laptop configuration that Lucid Lynx release notes warned I'd have trouble with ... and I hadn't read it :)

My mom's been using Ubuntu! 'Nuff said I think.

Mine too! I just reinstalled 10.04 for her on a random old Dell laptop yesterday, as we'd been upgrading all the way since 8.04. It has been so much more trouble-free than XP for her.

I was having trouble configuring the wireless, I thought... then I noticed my Mac wouldn't connect, either! Rebooted the router, and indeed everything Ubuntu installed worked out of the box.

Not all hardware. I couldn't even get the install disc for 10.04 to boot on my 2010 13" MacBook Pro. I'll give it another try when 10.10 comes out, but Ubintu definitely does not "just work" on all hardware.

Well the way OSS drivers developpment works means that you're far more likely to experience problems with new hardware than with old hardware. That, plus the mac pro, even if it is an intel based machine, is the most closed hardware you could find on this platform. So, "couldn't even" may not be the right choice of word for your situation .

I wasn't expecting it to work 100% flawlessly out of the box. But not even able to boot? I feel sorry for Canonical as 10.04 is an LTS release, so they're now stuck with this rather glaring incompatibility for years.

LTS versions have stable patch-level releases every 6 months while they're supported (e.g. 10.04.1 was released in July, and there will probably be a 10.04.2 in January), so they're able to add drivers to the installer when they become available.

Installing Ubuntu on a MacBook feels wrong. It was designed to run MacOS X. Even the chassis finish matches the window chrome...

In my interesting computer collection, I have a couple IBM PPC/POWER machines. When I acquired the first one, it took me some work to procure a set of AIX disks (DDS tapes would do) that would install on the machine. Several friends of mine suggested I should install Debian and be done with it, but I felt that would make them less interesting and opposed it. When I finally installed AIX, I felt they were complete, with the system they were designed to run, it all its CDE glory.

Last time I plugged a Mac keyboard on my Linux netbook, not even the function keys worked. It muted the speaker when I tried a search...

Considering they have problems with two of the three graphics card vendors and wubi doesn't work if you have more than one hard disk partition, just works isn't how I would describe it. Good when it does and mostly works pretty much describes it.

Not every hardware. There's still problems from time to time but in 95% of cases it works. And that's still better than having to deal with Windows and its problems.

Odd, I regularly see complaints here on HN of this or that not working, and the response seems to often be that you have to pay attention to what hardware you buy and you can't expect everything to work... often with a snarky comment about OSX only being made for Apple hardware.

The new ubuntus do not work with intel graphics cards. I do not want to go through workarounds just to get rid of the screen freeze when it boots. I used Ubuntu for like 7.04 but after 8.10 I think the gfx started to break and by 9.10 they are totally unworkable, I have to restart (hard) several times to start xorg.

I would rephrase that "[some] Intel graphics cards do not work with the new Ubuntus". The problem is that Intel has chosen to prevent Ubuntu from supporting those graphics cards, not that Ubuntu cannot support them and not that Ubuntu choses to not support them.

In the cases that I looked at, Intel licensed graphics "IP" from third parties that had severe restrictions on what technical information could be published openly, making it incompatible with GPL.

I am using the same computer which used to work with 7.04. How come something that was working in 7.04 suddenly break in 8.10?

You don't say what Intel graphics chip you have problems with, but your problem matches the GMA 500.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_500_on_Linux

"GMA 500 support on Linux is not optimal. The driver is developed by Tungsten Graphics, not by Intel, and the graphic core is not an Intel one, but is licensed from PowerVR. This has led to an uncertain mix of open and closed source 3d accelerated drivers, instability and lack of support."

Read the rest of the section, it gives some hope that the support has improved since 2008.

It is just the onboard graphics that used to come with intel boards. I used the i810 driver with it as far as I can remember.

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