Linux User/Developer - Hardware manufacturers to avoid?

DaSilva

I'm new to linux, so much so that I havent installed it yet on my current pc. Did so several years ago but only dabbled.

Im big into programmer, and while I'm still a bit of a novice I want to get better and start doing some more interesting and fun stuff. One of those being creating device drivers.

Now my question, is there any hardware manufacturers Linux users should avoid? What I mean is, are there companys out there who don't make drivers for Linux, and also don't provide the documentation for someone to write their own driver?

My laptops hardware is all supported allready, but I dont have a wireless card yet. What are companies I should avoid, so that creating my own driver will be hell as there is no documentation. And what are good companies, that provide prewritten drivers and lots of info for you too write your own?

bushy...

Afaik broadcom chipsets are used with a wrapper around a windows driver , and atheros chipsets ( all in radiocards btw) are accesed through a HAL ( looked after by Sam Leffler) , since the companies are afraid of getting in trouble since the cards will do stuff that is illegal in the US.

Khannie

I wont ever be buying ATI video cards again after having one of their cards when I first went to linux. Absolutely /shockin'/ driver support (it has improved a lot over the last while AFAIK, but I still wont be going back).

Jim_No.6

I can't give you any specific companies to avoid (more and more chipsets are getting supported, so it's hard to keep track) - there are many good websites where you can look up various cards/chips. Try the gentoo-wiki's hardware page for a decent-enough list.

Capt'n Midnight

A strange one this

Linksys USB200M - 10/100 USB NIC

works in ubuntu etc.

But I've given up trying to install it in XP, signed drivers and constant redetection and looking for files

Consider spending some of the savings on windows tax on hardware instead,

WiFi and blue tooth will be the hardest to get info on as many devices use software defined radios instead of tuners, if you knew the registers and commands then you could program in frequencies way outside the publicly available bands.

have a look at the knoppix cd / forums - it's got fairly good HW detection and since it's a live CD it's probably been exposed to more HW than many other distros

generalmiaow

If you're new and you have hardware problems you would do well to investigate how modules work rather than following howtos blindly like I did, since if something goes wrong you're either on your own or you have to wait for others to help you which is very frustrating. Having said that a lot of hardware does work in linux without any persuasion, and very often you don't need to download anything. The one thing I could never get to work was the Netgear WG111v2 (no 64-bit support even through ndiswrapper) but I mostly recycle old hardware which is usually well supported. I presume since you're using a laptop you will be using either a USB or a PCMCIA wireless card- ZyDas cards work ok-ish, you need to get the driver off the net. Annoyingly I can think of a load of cards that did work but I've mostly given them away...

Oracle

My Intel built-in wireless card worked "out of the box" with Ubuntu 6.06, very pleasantly surprised.

PhantomBeaker

I don't think I can tell you who to avoid but I can tell you who I've had good experiences with:

I found Broadcom support to be ok. Ok, I'm using an old kernel for better support, but the built-in drivers are actually ok for me.

I also am a committed nvidia customer - they give me drivers that just work.

When I had an intel winmodem (dialup), they were pretty good with the driver support too.

I have a Promise SATA controller, and they have good linux support. Actually I've had better luck with linux on that controller than windows - the windows driver occasionally crashes the machine on startup. Less than fun.

Overall, I think that once you don't have cutting-edge hardware, you should be ok. I remember I wanted to install Gentoo, but had to wait a while because it couldn't recognise the sata controller. A few releases later, and it was fine.

Oh, and the cmedia sound drivers were fine for me too.

Aoife

DublinEvents

Is there any particular wireless card you are planning to buy? If so, just goto the manufacturer's website and see if they have linux drivers for it. You can also contact them to see if they would share information with you that could help you in writing drivers. But don't expect them to be too forthcoming on that front. Most of them would prefer to keep their secrets undivulged.

DaSilva

DublinEvents wrote:

Is there any particular wireless card you are planning to buy? If so, just goto the manufacturer's website and see if they have linux drivers for it. You can also contact them to see if they would share information with you that could help you in writing drivers. But don't expect them to be too forthcoming on that front. Most of them would prefer to keep their secrets undivulged.

Haven't got my eye on any paticular card, but would love for any future hardware to come from companies who both provided drivers, and the info needed to build your own.

This probably won't allways be the case, but its the main reason I'm going with Linux, as I allready have WinXP lisence, the Linux will be mainly for learning and improving my programming skills, by being able to build from the ground up. And for when I need to get something done, also be able to fall back on the manufacturers windows / linux drivers, but still have the option to develop them myself.