this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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The only real hardware problems I come across these days with Linux is WiFi cards being shit. As far as I'm concerned, carefully selecting hardware is a problem for the *BSDs at this point. Am I missing something?
Yep, really new hardware is still an issue.
My new Zenbook (AMD CPU/GPU) had pretty major issues until the chip family was around a year old.
Previous to this laptop, I always got older hardware when it went on sale (usually from Dell), chip sets and CPU's that have had a while to "mature" I never had any issues with. Except of course with Nvidia drivers, those are always shit.
If you stick with older hardware, you very likely wouldn't ever experience hardware issues.
I've been running various distributions at my primary OS since around 2006. Hardware support these days is amazing.
Doesn't that depend on the distro? In most cases they should be supplied as a (meta)package and only require installation through the package manager, kernel modules should be built automatically then.
While this is ofc only anecdotal evidence: I haven't had problems with different models of Nvidia GPUs on different distributions (OpenSUSE, Debian, Pop!_OS, Elementary, EndeavourOS) in the last years. With a small workaround, even Wayland works flawlessly - the problem with missing GAMMA_LUT support and night light notwithstanding here.
To be fair I haven't had a Nvidia card in about 4 years.
So things could have changed, but over the preceding 15 odd years, no other thing caused me more issues than Nvidia drivers. But I put up with it, that is what you had to do to get good graphics.
The AMD GPU I have now, has been great, no issues at all. I had chipset issues mainly on the new laptop.
I bought a new PC recently and put Linux on it. It didn't work with the on-board Bluetooth until I did some research and digging through the logs and compiled and installed a kernel driver and edited some config files as root.
Also the fps on my Nvidia graphics card is really bad in games.
So it does still have driver issues, I'd say.
Are you sure you have the official Nvidia driver installed? Most Linux distros, if not explicitly configured otherwise*, use the open source "nouveau" driver by default. Since that driver doesn't support some vital aspects - such as frequency scaling - of the hardware, the performance is bad.
*Some distros, like Pop! OS and EndeavourOS, offer a "Nvidia install", meaning that the official driver will be installed and configured upon OS installation.
I would place the blame for poor driver support directly on the chip/device manufacturer and not on Linux (whoever that is).
No. I think you are correct and mostly even wifi hardware works fine, at least compared to *BSDs. I use Linux across a wide-range of machines, both desktops and laptops, with mostly very recent components. The only other unsupported hardware I have personally come across is some gaming hardware (e.g. Thrustmaster racing wheels) and an add-on sound card (Soundblaster AE9). And of course, some things like DLSS3 with Nvidia do not work.