What hardware does not support Linux?
from ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world to linux@lemmy.ml on 29 Jun 09:30
https://lemmy.world/post/32205178
from ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world to linux@lemmy.ml on 29 Jun 09:30
https://lemmy.world/post/32205178
I never really see hardware lacking Linux support mentioned, which got me caught by surprise when a computer with a Broadcom network card couldn’t use the card. What other hardware don’t work with Linux?
threaded - newest
Many cheap chinese web cameras from non know brands,really problematic to make work printers which older from 2015 for example canon ,Lexmark cause they use proprietary communication protocols and thus drivers for inux or exist in shitty state which would not work on modern system but worked on Ubuntu from 2012 or not driver not exist at all and so on other very specific type of devices
There is the gutenprint project supplying drivers for a lot of older printer models.
From the olden days: winmodem
I remember the old ADSL modems where effectively winmodems. I had to keep a Windows ME machine as my household router until the point the community had reversed engineered them enough to get them working on Linux.
At least they where usb based rather than some random card. I think the whole driver could work in user space.
I bought an external Hayes 56k modem and suddenly Windows was a memory. Happy days.
The lack of support seems very daunting at first.
I started thinking “Oh I wish I could transition to Linux, away from Windows, but what about the latest hardware or random gadget?”
The trick is to flip the question around, namely not “Does my current hardware work with Linux?” but rather “Am I sure my next hardware work well with Linux BEFORE I buy it?” then this remove 99% of headaches. It’s typically 1 Web search away from either a lot of complaints or positive feedback… or not much, and then it’s up to you to see if you are ready for an adventure. If there is not much but there is some standard interface, e.g. Bluetooth, and no need for a proprietary application, it’s nearly sure the main features will work. If a proprietary application is needed, then safer to avoid.
So… yes maybe surprisingly a LOT of hardware does work well with Linux!
What does not work for me, to give a random example, is the LED controller of my desktop case, which I bought several years ago while Windows was still my main OS. I didn’t put a lot of effort into it, cf gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB/-/issues/1683 but the recent article posted on this instance, namely lemmy.ml/post/32389687 makes me want to give it another go at some point!
This is my plan going forward. Linux wasn’t on my radar when I bought my laptop (and my PC but that’s a different story about just being scared to try since I use it for work and I’m not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).
I got a wicked sale on a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, and of course a few months after I started cutting BIg Tech out of my life (I was an idiot for buying Samsung to begin with but too late now haha). No more Meta, Amazon, or Google accounts or devices for me, and all I have left of Big Tech is Microsoft on my laptop and PC. I tried Mint as my first Linux attempt, and put it on my Samsung laptop. It…didn’t play well unfortunately. I’ve read Bazzite may work better but haven’t tried it yet.
Moral of the story, you nailed it. Going forward every bit of tech I buy will be vetted for FOSS support first.
Neat! Two quick things :
Feel free to ask here. I might not know alternatives but others could, no matter how niche.
Same advice. I don’t have one of these but what fails and how? Any specific error message?
As far as my main PC, I’m a freelance voice actor, artist, and musician. My main concern is recording software and to a lesser extent, art software (I’ve tried Inkscape, but it’s a hard transition from photoshop). For recording I really don’t like Reaper, and I use Audition (I know, Adobe, haha) and Cubase for music which unfortunately doesn’t have a Linux option.
As per the laptop, it had some standard driver issues which were no big deal but apparently Mint doesn’t play well with Nvidia graphics cards. The webcam didn’t work but that’s a semingly standard issue. The biggest thing was Samsung chips and such from what I read really don’t play well with Linux, or at least Mint.
Even if you are not based in Brussels where we have resonance-mao.be you might have a local equivalent, namely open source and open hardware music enthusiast and profesisonals who meet monthly at least to learn and jam. They know this domain a lot more than I do. There are a LOT of software for all that but I wouldn’t go as far as advising you. That said yes it mostly likely will require a bit of re-training. Still IMHO you have done the hardest, namely you understand the concepts behind what the tools do. The interface will be different but how it is actually done should be the same. My advice is to find “your people” and discover together.
Regarding hardware Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian. I have an NVIDIA GPU and I play (and work) with it daily. Sometimes sleep/resume is buggy but pretty much never ever while actually working or playing. Regarding the Webcam, it’s not super convenient but until it gets supported (hopefully) you might have to rely on an external camera.
Appreciate the advice, I’ll look into it more. I didn’t even think about an external cam haha. I use the laptop cam daily to video call family, I used to use Google home hubs for that but since I’ve deleted my Google account and stopped using the hubs I switched to Signal on the laptop. I’ll consider an external cam, though it’s not ideal. I’ll start digging again for options with Samsung chips.
I actually did that on desktop recently and I enjoy being able to unplug and physically remove it as I don’t use it daily. Same for the large external microphone, it’s only on my desk when I’ll have meetings planed. Maybe you could also use a mobile phone as camera.
Anyway kudos on leaving Google! It’s a great step.
For Samsung chips maybe wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Samsung could help.
Thank you! Yep dumped Amazon, Meta, (never had anything Musk), and Google. All I have left is Microsoft for big tech, so Linux is my new focus.
FWIW because you do so professionally I’d factor in the time you spend too versus buying hardware (e.g. USB dongles) or even laptop, ideally reselling the old one. I don’t know your rate or how much you can buy VAT free or your income at the moment, only that in your context this is also a business decision so you have to consider the ROI of “just” moving on with another hardware, selling the old one and with the time earned (if work is available) get another paid task instead of tinkering.
Some useful stuff for some laptops - worth checking if you’re buying one for linux:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Category:Laptops
Also this - i guess this is the inverse question though:
https://linux-hardware.org/
Broadcom, as you’ve discovered. That’s the one brand that I’ve always had trouble with; they go out of their way to be closed source: never publishing specs, never responding to developers. They’re horrible to the point where I will not buy any product that uses Broadcom chips. Which used to be a PITA because they were also common.
Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.
One of my computers has a MediaTek wireless chip where WiFi isn’t supported but Bluetooth does.
A lot of people have problems with NVidia cards; I’ve not had trouble with either AMD or Intel GPUs (although, I think all Intel GPUs are CPU integrated?).
Multifunction printers are still iffy, and even just plain printers can give grief; I’ve come to believe that this is simply because CUPS is ancient and due for a completely new, modern printing service. It’s an awful piece of software to have to work with.
Brother printers have a good reputation in the linux world. Not sure what the current status is… My printer is over 15 yrs old
@9488fcea02a9 @sxan Almost all printers work now, since they have to support IPP Anywhere to be useable by phones
My Canon regularly gives me grief. My Epson Ecotank, OTOH, has been painless.
My experience with Brother was also good, until it got tipped during a move and came out simply covered in toner. We don’t really need a new printer, but I’d buy another Brother LaserJet in a heartbeat.
I bought a new one recently. Apparently they’re doing a subscription thing now, so look closely at which model you’re buying. But other than that, it works just the same as my old one.
I bought a Brother colour laser last year (which on the outside looks identical to the monochrome one I bought 17 years ago that lives with my parents), zero issues, which pretty much has been my experience with printers on linux (also tried a ~5 y/o & 25 y/o HP LaserJet, one being the cheapest thing I’ve ever used, other being old office equipment, think I tried the Epson ecotank and photo printer my mil has as well)
We have a wireless Brother laser MFP from 2-3 years ago that just works. I needed to scan something for the first time a few weeks ago and started to go down to rabbit hole of the official driver package but then I decided to give “scanimage” a try and it just found the scanner.
I’ll give that a try. I actually never figured out scanning on linux
Fwiw, mine has worked with no issues on any of my Linux PCs.
Intel Arc discrete GPUs released 2022
Hmm, I run an Arc GPU at work without any issues. Just using plain mesa on NixOS. The Intel devs were quite responsive when we ran into issues as well.
Arc support was added after release to Linux Kernel 6.2 and it’s steadily improved since. Older Linux distros, or “LTS” oriented distros that favour stability may still not have support for them. I know Unraid was very slow to pick up on it and I had to settle for passing the pcie device through to a VM to get it working. Intel is keen to made these viable though, and I love having the AV1 encoder from my A380.
Ah I see, haven’t been on “stable” distros for a long time so I wasn’t affected. I’ve enjoyed the good support and the video stuff is definitely nice. On the AMD side, still no idea how to encode or decode anything on my Framework 16, meanwhile Intel is acing it.
I’ve run AMD, Intel, and Nvidia on linux and I would say my intel experience was by far the best. I use an a380 in my server for transcoding, and I had an a750 in my desktop but switched to a b580. AMD gets the graphics stuff right, but intel does the graphics and compute right on linux where AMD ROCM is a major pain in the ass. It may not be great if you do tons of gaming, but it works quite well for me.
I have spent literal hours of my life trying to get the fingerprint reader on a latitude 7400 to work and i just gave up lol. Passwords are underrated anyway.
Cups is so much better then everything printer related that is available for Windows and it works so good that even Apple was not able or willing to create something on their own and are using it their OS on all devices. Yes, the web interface is dated but nearly every Desktop comes with a modern integrated interface for printer setup and configuration. It is ages that I had to use the web interface. Cups comes with a boatload of printer drivers out of the box. And if not then there are often PPD files on the homepage of the printer manufacturer.
Multifunction printers are a special case and if they are supported or not depends either on how the device is build (are the parts addressable Independently as printer, scanner, modem/Fax) or is it all a integrated mashup that needs special software or drivers from the manufacturer. In the first case can the printer part often be used with cups and the scanner with sane. Well in the second case there is not much that Linux developers can do without support and goodwill from the manufacturer.
Not sure if it technically counts as fingerprint readers but using my YubiKey Bio daily, for login on my desktop and WebAuthN and… 0 problem.
I think that’s because Yubikey handles the fingerprint reader part, not Linux, right? As far as Linux goes, it’s a black box security fob - but I might be wrong about that.
Indeed hence my warning. I’m only sharing this alternative because in practice it works and it’s secure (AFAIK).
Edit :
IMHO that’s a feature, namely I do not want to OS to mess with this specific part of my setup. I do also have NitroKeys and FPGAs to tinker with but that’s different. FWIW if there is an OSHW&FLOSS alternative to the YubiKey Bio please do share.
Yeah, I wasn’t saying it was bad; I meant only that Linux didn’t have to worry about device drivers for it, because the fob handles reading the fingerprint chip.
I have been fine with both Canon and Lexmark and also a Brother unit that someone in my family owns that their new Win11 machine refused to talk to; I opened up my ASUS t-pad with Ubuntu and printed in five seconds.
But yeah CUPS has actually caused many a headache to the point that I’ve disabled it on some units.
CUPs is simply ancient. It’s due for an overhaul; I keep expecting someone to come along and Poettering it, only I’d hope without also making it take over cron jobs and logging.
I’m not Linux-savvy enough to understand everything you said lol. But I’m glad at least that I don’t have to rely on CUPS I just have two printers with static IPs so it’s easy-breezy George and 'Weezy.
i had a microsoft branded reader that had its software discontinued in windows vista. it cant be used with windows anymore.
last i tested on linux it just lights up and works straight away.
On the peripheral end, ElGato. You can usually get their stuff to work but they provide little to no support, usually have issues to work out, and you’ll always be relying on third party replacements for their software.
I got a stream deck plus with the xlr dock, since even though I quit content creation I like what it provides and have no reason to downgrade my mic, but the thing has been a headache and a half ever since I switched to cachyOS.
iPhones
doesn't it have a unix like core like os x?
That’s bsd based.
Unlike Linux.
no, linux is a unix-like. macos is an actual unix.
Not quite. FreeBSD, where much of macOS originates after the merge from NeXTSTEP, is merely “UNIX-like” as well.
macos is a certified unix.
So is Inspur K/UX, which is a Linux distribution. There is a difference between Unix (the software) and UNIX (the certification).
oh?
wiki.postmarketos.org/…/Apple_iPhone_X_(Global)_(…
I stand corrected.
“Working” is not what I would call that. The “Features” list is full of broken stuff and only 1 works and 1 partial.
Booting, yes. Working, not really.
If you mean interoperability there is libimobiledevice.org but honestly compared to what KDE Connect can offer with Android phones it’s just … lame.
I had issues with brand new hardware. Had to use testing on debian to get proper resolution.
nvidia cards are always giving people grief, especially on Wayland. Technically supported but practically not recommended if you want an easy time
If you have a GTX 10xx card or later, their are virtually no issue with Wayland anymore. I have two PC with nvidia cards and had almost 0 issue with gnome plasma and hyprland in the last two years.
Sadly I bought my PC before switching to Linux was on the agenda. And I don’t have the money to change to AMD.
Don’t be too sad, I’m playing and working daily with an NVIDIA for years now and it’s just working.
I always hear this, but I’ve been using Nvidia with Linux since 2004 and have never had any issues.
I’ve had mixed experiences myself. Sometimes it works, sometimes it randomly breaks. I just wouldn’t recommend it to someone who wants it to “just work” and be stable and not do maintenance. For me, I’m someone who’s happy to do maintenance, but I don’t want that to extend to my graphics card, which in this day and age ought to just work.
i have more problems with them on x11 honestly
The touchpad in the Lenovo 300e is not supported; although the touchscreen does work. I use mouse which is fine most of the time, but it would be nice if the touchpad would be supported one day.
Also my Ricoh SP211SU Laser printer is not supported, my workaround is using Windows via VirtualBox if I need to print anything.
I had an issue with an old Lenovo X260 laptop. The onboard bluetooth device was showing as not being present if the wireless device was loaded. I could have one or the other, but not both. BT/Wifi was being supplied by the same M.2 card, so as soon as a module loaded (the wireless loaded first I guess) it prevented it from being used by another module. I'm not sure if there was an actual fix to that, though. I had a spare USB bluetooth dongle so I just ran that instead.
There’s this printer that I wanna use for my job but when I went through the process of connecting it the driver wasn’t listed among the massive amount of options. So I gotta print using a work computer instead of my laptop 😪
Probably not the kind of hardware you’re thinking of but I have an old Roland synthesizer, an Edirol SD-90, that did not work on Linux. Now, I didn’t expect it to given the hoops I had to jump through just to get it to work on modern windows. So Linux seemed out of the question already. But can be a big deal depending on what you use your computer for.
Not technically hardware itself but Nvidia + Intel hybrid graphics have never really worked for me
So far I’ve been playing with Linux on my old work laptop and they’ve been playing together nicely. Almost everything else about the laptop? No. But hey at least graphics works.
A common issue with those hybrid graphics is that it simply doesn’t switch and only uses one. Are you sure you’re not just using either integrated graphics or your dedicated GPU all the time?
Oh trust me, I know pretty quickly when that 3080 turns on and when it turns back off. Hybrid graphics is what I’ve been fiddling with the most.
That was a nightmare I’ll never recover from. That laptop is now running windows 11. It’s what made me promise myself to never ever touch Nvidia ever again. I’m now all Red on my desktop and life is so much better.
Similar story here. I had a laptop running nVidia/Intel dual graphics for a few years and it was so fucking finicky. Primusrun this, optirun that. Ugh. Once upon a time, whenever I heard the word Optimus, I thought of transforming trucks with laser guns. Hearing that same word now puts me in a fetal position.
To any GeForce owners that are considering going Linux full time: do a test run first and see how it works out, because nVidia support on Linux is spotty at best.
Yes, that and bbswitch. Never got it working.
I just bought a laptop yesterday (NVD GPU+AMD APU), and graphics hybrid work just fine for me, maybe AMD is that good that it make NVD GPU work on Linux.
Certain less well known smaller brands might not work as too few people know the HW
Same goes for very specialized hardware, if it wasn’t on Linux to begin with, it probably won’t work
Internal HDMI capture cards are barely supported, there are some professional brands like blackmagic that have support but nearly all consumer grade capture cards are not supported at all, because the companies who make them don’t care about Linux.
USB based capture cards often work because they use the same standard protocols as USB cameras.
Some MediaTek WiFi cards are not supported. I had to replace one in a laptop.
Yeah I got a USB wifi dongle that’s a bit tricky. It doesn’t work out of the box in most distros but there is drivers for it that do work, fairly well.
I replaced a Realtek one because it constantly dropped connections. Luckily, this was one of the type of fixes that actually turned out to be easier than it looked.
Mediatek chips sucks anyway
Is there a broadcom firmware package you need to install? I have NEVER gotten away with neglecting that step on a broadcom card.
Anybody ever get Winmodems to work or did they all give up on it?
Back in the day, it was hard enough getting dialup internet working on Linux (especially before you had internet in your pocket, so you had to print out HowTos or write down a bunch of notes before you tried to do it).
But it was downright impossible with a class of modems that was designed essentially as a softmodem, heavily reliant on closed-source firmware and drivers, making them practically impossible to work on Linux.
My two biggest issues have been HDR and simulation hardware.
It’s been a good few years since I’ve tried it but every time I’ve tried HDR my saturation just gets cranked to 11 and it looks like those nature photos that are edited to hell and back. Not sure why, and I’ve heard other people got it working so idk. I think it’s just the Nvidia drivers doing their thing and not working.
But controllers for flight and racing Sims are the biggest headache to get working. And then when you do get them working you’ll have issues with games running well and detecting them (I think this is actually due to proton/lutris), issues with force feedback, issues with the various buttons and sliders that aren’t the primary axis. And then, after you spend hours getting them to work, it’ll just break again the next time you want to play. My sims and FPS games are the only reasons I still have a windows install.
About 10% of the hardware in my 2016 MacBook Pro. Twice I’ve tried to install Debian on that Satan spawn using various gists online, and each time I ended up deciding it wasn’t worth the time
Every other piece of hardware I’ve tried in the past works without fail, that MacBook irks me.
the new one😂
I am surprised to unable to find this type.
Honestly, Linux has better support for the old hw, even better than m$ win.
Depends. If you have a 32bit CPU, app support is surprisingly much worse on Linux than on Windows. While the kernel and core systems still support 32bit, there are a ton of apps that are only offered for 64bit Linux while 32bit Windows support is still available.
One example: Anything running on Electron.
Fingerprint sensor on most laptops
This has been a real issue yeah.
And Elan touchpads if you are unlucky enough to own one.
Racing wheels lacks Linux support. It’s the biggest, actually only, reason why I’m dualbooting with Windows.
I’ve been trying to get my Thrustmaster TX to work on Linux Mint but no success so far. I’m still a little bit newbie with Linux so that might be the reason why my wheel doesn’t work (yet).
For debian / arch / fedora based distros: github.com/Kimplul/hid-tmff2
Looks like it’s not perfect however looks to be a good starting point.
Not going to surprise anyone but Windows Mixed Reality VR headsets aren’t great on Linux, at least with controllers
Although that is improving!
For the curious lvra.gitlab.io/docs/hardware/#xr-devices according to which quite a few WMR VR HMDs are supported via the Monado SteamVR plugin.
At least when I tried it 2 years ago, Meta Quest 2 PCVR wasn’t really great on Linux either.
Often the hotkeys on laptops for screen brightness, mute, etc will either not work or be wonky, on my HP Elitebook on Debian distros the brightness keys both mute the speakers instead, they work fine on Fedora though.