Linux Hardware
While I was re-installing Windows on a computer for a friend I read an article at xyzcomputing.com entitled “Desktop Linux’s Hardware Woes”. The following sentence from the very first paragraph made me pause.
“Every day Linux users encounter driver and compatibility issues which Windows users have not had to deal with for years.”
To say that Windows is devoid of any hardware compatibility problems is a joke. I do not know how many times I have had to install (or re-install) Windows only to find that Windows couldn’t find drivers for all the components. The real kicker is that Windows gives you NO meaningful information to aid in determining what the device actually is (name, type, model) so that you can look for the appropriate drivers. It gets even better if you are doing an install on a machine with onboard components or generic PCI cards that have little to no labeling on them.
My usual answer to this problem is to stick a Linux LiveCD into the machine and reboot! I have always found that even if Linux doesn’t support a device it is still able to provide useful information about it. In the past I have used the lspci and dmesg commands to determine what devices were actually on the machine. Now with HAL it’s even easier. Most distributions come with some sort of Device Manager tool that you can use to browse through your hardware.
Sure Linux has problems with being compatible with lots of hardware, but so does Windows. The reason Windows seams to work better is because it is pre-installed on almost all computer systems sold.
If manufacturers pre-installed Linux across all of their hardware lines and sold peripherals that were compatible with Linux then Linux and Windows would be on the same level…until then we are fighting an up hill battle, regardless of how many devices Linux actually supports.