 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 899, 11 January 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 2nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are a lot of distributions in the world and each one has its own options, quirks, and special features. One of the most important aspects in selecting a new distribution to install is checking whether it will work with your hardware. In our Questions and Answers column this week we talk about how to quickly run a few tests to get a practical sense of whether a live distribution will work with your computer. Does your Linux distribution support all of your computing hardware? Let us know in the Opinion Poll. First though we begin this week with a look at PakOS, a Debian-based, desktop distribution. PakOS is mostly geared toward being useful for the people of Pakistan, however it is equally well suited for most people around the world and we provide an overview of PakOS below. In our News section we talk about Arch Linux improving its tools for creating reproducible builds as the Gentoo team debates the usefulness of LibreSSL, a fork of the OpenSSL cryptography software. We also discuss plans the Tails project is working on. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fabulous week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: PakOS 2020-08-24
- News: Arch improving reproducible build tools, Gentoo debates usefulness of LibreSSL, Tails outlines plans for 2021
- Questions and answers: Testing multiple hardware devices quickly
- Released last week: Linux Mint 20.1, Puppy Linux 7.0 "Slacko", ExTiX 21.1
- Torrent corner: ExTiX, GParted Live, Linux Mint, KDE neon, Live Raizo, Puppy, Snal
- Opinion poll: Does Linux support all of your hardware?
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (15MB) and MP3 (11MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
PakOS 2020-08-24
PakOS is a Debian-based distribution that is intended to be a general purpose, desktop operating system. The distribution's niche or primary audience is people who are from, or living in, Pakistan. The project's website mentions that the operating system features the WPS office suite, comes with CrossOver installed, and includes an optional Windows-like theme. There are also security tools provided including the Clam anti-virus utility, a firewall tool, and Firejail for sandboxing applications. The project further mentions supplying kernels for both 64-bit (x86_64) and 32-bit (x86) processors.
The PakOS distribution appears to be available in just one edition running the LXQt desktop. This edition is 3.1GB in size. One of the first things I discovered about PakOS is that, despite the mention of 32-bit kernels being available, the live media does not run on 32-bit machines. It seems that while 32-bit kernels may be available in the repositories I did not see any way to install PakOS on a 32-bit machine.
The live environment
The boot menu of the live disc offers to let us run the live desktop environment, run an installer, or run a graphical installer. The Install and Graphical Install options do not do anything and merely return us to the boot menu. Only the live desktop boot options work. Choosing the live boot item loads the LXQt desktop running on the xfwm window manager. A panel sits at the bottom of the display and is home to the application menu, task switcher, and system tray.
The application menu is provided by the Whisker menu, running a two-pane layout. In the system tray I found a few items running. There is a weather app which reports it cannot find weather data. I tried selecting a few different locations (the default was a region of Pakistan), but the weather app failed to load data from any location. The system tray shows audio is muted by default, which I personally appreciate. Another icon in the system tray shows a desktop lighting tone program is running in the background. We can turn this lighting tone program on or off, but there does not appear to be any other configuration option. The desktop's wallpaper changes every five minutes, displaying images of people, farm equipment, camels, and landscapes.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- The application menu on the live media
(full image size: 709kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
PakOS features several desktop icons. Clicking these, at least the first time, brings up a prompt asking if we want to launch the associated program or open the shortcut in an editor to read the file. One icon opens the PCManFM-Qt file manager, another launches the Calamares system installer. One icon labelled First Boot brings up a settings panel where we can choose the style of our application menu, adjust start-up items, and fix boot loader issues.
There is an icon for enabling Internet and this brings up a pop-up window that explains Debian enables IPv6 by default which often is not suitable in Pakistan. We are then given step-by-step instructions for manually configuring networking through NetworkManager. There is an icon which launches the distribution's update manager and I will talk more about this utility later.
One additional icon is called Sally Prayer Times which brings up a window that, I believe, lists Islamic prayer times. The window contains a countdown clock which appears to indicate the time until the next selected prayer session.
Installing
PakOS uses the Calamares graphical installer. The system installer does a nice job walking us through the usual tasks of selecting our time zone, keyboard layout, language, and making up a username & password combination. Calamares supports both manual and guided partitioning. The guided option sets up a single ext4 filesystem partition and a large swap partition.
Calamares worked very well for me and my one serious complaint with the process came on the first screen where buttons are displayed offering us access to Support and Release Notes. Clicking either of these buttons brings up an endless stream of pop-up errors saying the wrong number of arguments was given. A minor complaint I also had was that PakOS would activate its screensaver after just five minutes and this obscures the progress information Calamares displays.
Early impressions
My freshly installed copy of PakOS booted to its graphical login screen where we can type our username and password to sign in. Typing the username is a little different than the approach of many other distributions these days which tend to show the usernames of accounts and allow us to click on which account we want.
Once I got signed in the LXQt 0.14.1 desktop loaded and I was presented with the same layout and icons as I saw during the live session, minus the system installer desktop icon. There is no welcome screen and the first-run wizard only opens if we manually select it from its desktop icon.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- First-run configuration options
(full image size: 800kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
LXQt is relatively light and quick. I found the desktop tended to perform well while staying out of the way. One of the few adjustments I made was to change the digital clock in the system tray so as to not display time in seconds as the constant updating was distracting me.
Hardware
I explored running PakOS in a VirtualBox environment and on my laptop. In both situations the distribution performed well. The desktop was responsive, boot times were good, programs tended to open quickly. All of my laptop's hardware was detected and, when running in VirtualBox, the PakOS guest desktop resized dynamically to fit its window.
The distribution uses a rather large amount of resources when we consider it is, at its heart, Debian running the lightweight LXQt desktop. PakOS consumed 11GB of disk space for a fresh install and quickly gobbled up a few more gigabytes for refreshed repository information, updated package archives, and configuration files. Logging into LXQt consumed 435MB of RAM. For comparison's sake, the last time I tried Lubuntu (which has its roots in Debian), when running LXQt the system used 280MB of RAM.
Applications
PakOS ships with a lot of software installed for us. Many of these are common items such as the Firefox browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, a calendar application, and the Transmission bittorrent client. There are some less common applications though like the Franz messaging application, the WPS office suite, and the FBReader e-reader.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- The WPS office suite
(full image size: 122kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Rounding out the selection are some popular tools like the GNU Image Manipulation Program, Audacity audio editor, and Kdenlive video editor. We are also given the Audacious music player and SMPlayer multimedia player, along with a full range of media codecs.
There is a graphical file synchronization program called Grsync, a printer manager, and the CrossOver suite for installing and running Windows applications. The Firejail sandbox software is present and works for limiting system access to selected programs.
In the background we find the GNU Compiler Collection and systemd provides the distribution's init software. Version 4.19 of the Linux kernel keeps things running smoothly.
Generally speaking, the software included with PakOS worked and ran well. The mainstream applications like the multimedia player, Firefox, and image editor all worked as expected. I was a little surprised by the choice to use WPS instead of the more popular LibreOffice suite. I am guessing WPS offers some advantage in format compatibility the developers hoped to include.
There is a small settings panel included to tweak the desktop configuration. The panel includes simple configuration modules for handling the desktop's theme, wallpaper, and display resolution. There are also launchers for accessing printer settings and launching the Synaptic package manager. The LXQt settings panel worked well.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- The LXQt settings panel
(full image size: 1,002kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
I tried to use CrossOver to install three different Windows applications. The wizard which downloads and configures the environment for these programs failed each time. CrossOver may be useful in some areas, but the programs I selected from the list of known items, each carrying five-star ratings, failed to install properly.
Another issue I ran into was with networking. For the first day or two everything ran smoothly. Then, mid-week DNS stopped functioning on my PakOS system even though all other devices on the network continued to perform lookups properly. Switching to manually supplied DNS servers fixed the issue. I ran into this problem later in the week when I took my laptop to another location. Again, networking started out fine, but DNS stopped working after an hour. Manually supplying DNS servers fixed the issue on the second network too. The issue occurred both when running the distribution in a virtual machine and on my laptop.
Software management
For most software management actions PakOS provides the Synaptic package manager. Synaptic is a classic, low-level package manager and works quickly. It's not a modern, beginner-friendly software centre, but it usually does its job well. I did run into some problems this time around where Synaptic would sometimes report it was unable to verify the security of remote repositories. I discovered this was due to the intermittent DNS issue mentioned above and found Synaptic worked properly after I manually set my DNS servers.
PakOS 2020-08-24 -- The Synaptic package manager
(full image size: 868kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
There is a separate update manager which can be launched from its desktop icon. When we launch the update manager it opens two windows - a terminal which opens in the background and a smaller window which provides us with a list of available updates and progress information. The update utility worked, though its output and list of available package updates were a bit unpolished. I further found that the foreground window would occasionally appear to lock-up for periods. I found when this happened it was because the terminal window in the background had prompted me for a password. The update process would wait until I switched to the terminal window and typed my password. This is not ideal because if the terminal window is behind something else (or minimized) we have no way of knowing the update process is waiting for something rather than just being slow.
Conclusions
On one hand, PakOS does a lot of things well for such a young project. The LXQt desktop is nicely arranged and looks fairly polished and elegant. The distribution ships with a large collection of useful applications. Perhaps, if anything, there may be more applications than most people will need. However, the documentation does hint that this may be an effort to provide as much functionality as possible in remote regions where Internet connections are slower.
While the distribution is intended to be used by the people of Pakistan, the operating system seems well suited to any region. I did not notice any situations where locale settings or language translations were a problem. Only the weather application was specifically configured to look up data for Pakistan.
Speaking of the weather application, my main recurring issue with PakOS is that parts of it feel unfinished or unpolished. The live media still has entries for Debian's installer which do not work. The installer has buttons for support and documentation which bring up an infinite loop of error messages. The weather application cannot look up data for any region. The DNS settings, for some reason, keep failing though other devices using automated DNS settings on the same network continue to work. The update manager, along with a few other tools, feel like they could be made friendlier.
None of these issues were terminal, the distribution mostly continued to function and I could work around the problems I encountered with a little effort. However, these sorts of minor "paper cut" problems reveal areas where the distribution could (and hopefully will) be improved.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
PakOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 10/10 from 2 review(s).
Have you used PakOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Arch improving reproducible build tools, Gentoo debates usefulness of LibreSSL, Tails outlines plans for 2021
Reproducible software builds are a method for verifying that the binary software we have installed on our computer was created, unmodified, from the source code associated with the same project. It helps confirm that software has not been altered or corrupted during the build and distribution process. The Arch Linux project, along with other distributions, is striving to build their software with reproducible means. Jelle van der Waa has published an update on the tools and infrastructure which are helping to make Arch Linux package reproducible. "archlinux-repro: Also known as repro this tool allows one to rebuild a package and check if it is reproducible by providing a build package such as $foo.pkg.tar.zst. It then sets up a build root, downloads PKGBUILD and sources and rebuilds the package checking if it's reproducible afterwards. During the year the tool has improved a lot to being able to rebuild all the packages in our repository without any known side effects at the moment.
* * * * *
About six years ago, in the wake of the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability, the OpenBSD project created its own fork of OpenSSL called LibreSSL. While OpenBSD has been successfully using LibreSSL since, the new cryptography library never really caught on in the Linux ecosystem. A few Linux projects, such as Gentoo, supported LibreSSL as an option, but it looks like it will be phased out in favour of keeping OpenSSL. LWN reports: "Two distributions that did attempt to provide LibreSSL support were Alpine Linux and Gentoo. Alpine Linux supported LibreSSL as its primary TLS library for a while, but switched back to OpenSSL with the 3.9.0 release in January 2019. Gentoo never tried to switch over completely, but it supports LibreSSL as an alternative. That support will end in February, though. Gentoo developer Michał Górny first suggested this change at the end of December, saying that LibreSSL offers no benefit over OpenSSL at this point while imposing a lot of costs. In particular, he complained about the large number of packages that require patches to work with LibreSSL and the constant stream of regressions that the project must deal with." Further discussion on LibreSSL and the debate over whether to support it in Gentoo can be found in the LWN article.
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The Tails project has published a newsletter outlining plans the distribution's developers have for the coming year. Some of the key issues deal with persistent storage and circumventing censorship. "We want to completely redesign how to start Tor and configure Tor bridges. This will make it easier for people in countries where accessing Tor is blocked to circumvent censorship. According to data from the Tor project, the top 5 countries by users of Tor bridges are Russia, Iran, the US, Belarus, and China. We want to improve the interface of the Persistent Storage settings. Improving the Persistent Storage was your top priority when we surveyed our users in July. We want to start by improving the usability of its core features and rewriting this 9-year-old Perl application into Python GTK+. This will make it possible to improve it faster in the future. We also want to make it possible to persist Tor bridges." Additional details can be found in the project's news post.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Testing multiple hardware devices quickly
Curious-about-methodology asks: A lot of your reviews of Linux distributions have the following sentence: "a quick test showed my hardware was functioning properly so I dived right into the install process."
Can you please elaborate what exactly this test is and if it involves running few commands, etc?
DistroWatch answers: I like tests that are quick, simple, and easy to perform. Typically when I'm testing hardware compatibility I play a video on YouTube.
Streaming a single video might not seem like a comprehensive test, but there are a lot of components which need to work properly in order to deliver a video across the network to the desktop. In order for the video to play successfully, first the distribution needs to be able to boot on my hardware and load its desktop environment. This confirms my processor is supported, no drivers cause an immediate crash, and the video card is working properly.
Then I open the network settings tool (which requires a working mouse or trackpad), find my wireless network in the list of available local networks (confirming my wireless card is functioning), and type my wi-fi password (confirming the keyboard functions). Then I open a web browser and browse to YouTube (confirming both networking and DNS are functioning properly). When I click on a video and it plays successfully that confirms audio hardware is working. It also tells me if the distribution has unusual audio quirks, such as muted sound or the volume set to maximum by default. In under two minutes I've confirmed at least six major hardware components are functioning properly (or not, if part of the test fails).
Basically, if a streaming video plays without any obvious problems then chances are everything else I'm going to be doing on the distribution is going to work just fine.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
ExTiX 21.1
Arne Exton has announced the release of ExTiX 21.1, the latest build of the project's desktop-oriented Linux distribution. This version is based on the deepin 20.1 distribution and it features a customised Deepin desktop environment: "ExTiX Deepin 21.1 live based on Deepin 20.1 (latest) with Skype, Spotify, Refracta snapshot and Linux kernel 5.10.4. New features: you can run ExTiX from RAM - use boot alternative 2 (load to RAM) or 'Advanced'; you will have the opportunity to choose language before you enter the Deepin 20.1 desktop - all main languages are supported; I have replaced Deepin Installer with the Reborn version of Deepin Installer - works better in every way; I have replaced Linux kernel 5.9.1 with Linux kernel 5.10.4, corresponding to the latest available stable kernel from kernel.org; Spotify and Skype are pre-installed; you can watch Netflix while running Firefox; you can also install ExTiX Deepin in VirtualBox or VMware using Deepin Installer; as an alternative to APT you can use the Cactus package manager...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
ExTiX 21.1 -- Running the Deepin desktop
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Puppy Linux 7.0 "Slacko"
If you are a fan of Puppy Linux, a unique, minimalist Linux distribution designed for the desktop, here is an interesting piece of news for you - the based-on-Slackware "Slacko" variant of Puppy Linux has hit version 7.0. This version continues to be built on top of Slackware Linux 14.2, but it includes all of the upstream bug and security fixes as well: "Another stable release of Slacko64 Puppy Linux is out. Slacko64 Puppy is built from Slackware64 14.2 binary TXZ packages, hence has binary compatibility with Slackware and access to the Slackware and Salix repositories. It is a 64-bit operating system and requires a compatible Intel (IA64) or AMD (amd64) processor. More comprehensive release notes and documentation of known issues are available. Features include: latest bug fixes from upstream Slackware; 64-bit and 32-bit EUFI boot capability; FrugalPup installer to install Puppy to UEFI and BIOS computers, either to hard drive, USB or SD/MMC devices; ability to boot from ISO files from hard drive or USB device using Super Grub2 or you can prepare a GRUB 2 entry manually...." See the release announcement for further details.
Linux Mint 20.1
The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 20.1, a long-term support release which will continue to receive updates until 2025. The project's newest version features a new web apps manager which will assist users in setting up websites to act more like native applications. The project is also including the Hypnotix IPTV application and the ability to mark files as favourites for quick access. "Time and time again we need to access the same files. Up until Linux Mint 20.1 we would remember where they were stored and slowly get to them using the file manager, bookmark their containing folder to get to them faster, look in the recently opened document section, hoping to find them in there, clutter our desktop with direct links... Well, there's a much better way now! If you're working on a file and you know you access it often, right-click it and select 'Add to Favorites'. You'll see a little star pop up in your panel. That's where all favorite files are, just one click away. You'll also find them in your application menu." Further information can be found in the project's release announcements for its three editions (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce) and in the release notes (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce).
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,292
- Total data uploaded: 35.7TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Does Linux support all of your hardware?
The Linux kernel includes drivers for a huge number of hardware devices. However, there are many devices in the world and many companies do not write their own drivers for Linux. Have you run into situations where Linux was unable to detect or use one of your devices, or is Linux able to work with all your hardware? Let us known which items still do not work with Linux in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on the number of packages installed on your distribution in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Does all of your hardware work with Linux?
| Yes: | 1530 (72%) |
| No: | 542 (26%) |
| I am not running Linux: | 40 (2%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 18 January 2021. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Poll (by Somewhat Reticent on 2021-01-11 00:18:29 GMT from United States)
Question is backward - should be "Does your hardware support your software?"
2 • Poll (by brad on 2021-01-11 00:31:04 GMT from United States)
Fingerprint reader on my ThinkPad laptop does not work with Manjaro Linux. I know that there are distros that recognize and use fingerprint readers, but they don't have the important features that I need in a distro.
3 • Poll (by DaveW on 2021-01-11 00:38:33 GMT from United States)
I have a Canon LBP6000 Laser printer that does not work on Linux Mint Mate 18 and later. It did work on Linux Mint Mate 16. I have no idea what changed.
4 • #1 tomayto, tomahto (by vern on 2021-01-11 01:04:22 GMT from United States)
@1, what difference does "your hardware support your software" vs "does your software support your hardware" make?
5 • Poll (by Bob Hall on 2021-01-11 01:05:36 GMT from Canada)
@2
Fingerprint readers are very insecure, I would not use them.
All it takes is an image captured from a clean dish or glass. The image can be 3d printed and there you go.
There is also the old tryed and true method of slicing a little off the top and taking that to the laptop in question to gain access.
To be honest, passwords and the like were created soley to cause low stress frustration to the user. If you forget your password, who is locked out of your system, the criminals? Nope, you are.
6 • Poll (by Bob on 2021-01-11 01:40:08 GMT from United States)
I have one old desktop with Nvidia that won't work with most of the current distros.
7 • Bluetooth HCI device (by JohnW on 2021-01-11 01:49:37 GMT from United States)
Bluetooth HCI device needs BCM43142A0-0a5c-21d7.hcd firmware, the version with the same name in linux, don't work. I have to get it from the internet.
8 • For the most part...yes, Linux works everything it should. (by tom joad on 2021-01-11 01:51:12 GMT from France)
I answered yes but I think there should have been gradations of listed responses; not just yes or no or I don't use Linux.
For the most part, 98% of the time, Linux works just fine for me. I have had some hiccups with Nvidia cards from time to time. Most recently I had or have an issue with my video card and Mint 20. The card works fine in 19.3. In version 20 not at all. (NVIDIA GK208B [GeForce GT 710]). And I have some issues with an ancient Belkin wifi adapter but who cares. I daily use either Ethernet or an on board Intel adapter.
And I make sure to use only HP printers too. Zero issues there. Plug it in and it works.
Other than that no worries!
9 • hardware - "almost" (by uncle nimby on 2021-01-11 01:55:44 GMT from New Zealand)
My bugbear has been proper full support for my Canoscan 9000F. Works fine as a document scanner, but for film and slides I have to switch back to an old install of Win7. But recently I have found a lot of pros are saying it is easier, faster and cheaper to just rephotograph old slides. So thanks (for nothing) Canon, keep your secrets, I have moved on.
A more recent issue - oh wow, Canon AGAIN - is support for their shiny new .CR3 raw format. I have to work via Adobe DNG Converter under Wine - a massive extra detour in my workflow. If anyone from Canon reads this, right here lies the reason why that pile of cash for new kit (I could easily buy the new R5 and several lenses, etc) is staying in the BANK. Maybe Canon can share "early insider access" with the Linux community as they do for Apple, Adobe and Microsoft...
10 • Big tip of the hat to Jesse... (by tom joad on 2021-01-11 01:59:32 GMT from France)
Sorry for posting or trying to post a second comment...
Jesse, I just read, after posting earlier, your method of testing hardware against new software. I have but one word, sir....BRILLIANT!
And I laughed too at the simplicity of it as well as the common sense approach. It also explains why you are there and we, out here, ain't!
TJ.
11 • wifi drivers (by John on 2021-01-11 01:59:52 GMT from United States)
I have several older (I hate to say old) Lenovo laptops. These were once very popular machines used in many schools. Most came with Broadcom 43 wifi installed; it was a simple matter to find and install the drivers until Mint 19 and 20came along, then it became a chore to find drivers. What good is a laptop without wifi?
12 • Does Linux support all of your hardware? -- NO! (by LiuYan on 2021-01-11 02:03:03 GMT from China)
I had encountered several hardware not working issues in Linux, and some of hardware are still not working.
* USB WiFi adapter
TL-WDN5200, it started working from kernel 4.19 when mt76x0u module was added (after several years waiting time). It's working in Windows system.
* USB Bluetooth adapter
A cheap Bluetooth 5.0 USB dongle, I suppose it can working in Bluetooth 4 mode, but it is not. It's working in Windows system.
* Printer
Olivetti PR2, an old printer with traditional parallel cable. I didn't found a proper driver, and it's replaced by another printer now. It's working in Windows system using a driver (comes with Windows) from different company.
* Touch screen
It's working as a basic pointer device like mouse, but no gesture at all.
----
ps: Some other hardware need to compile driver each time when new kernel is installed, manually or automatically by dkms or akmod.
pps: Anyone remembered ndiswrapper ?
13 • Linux Hardware (by David on 2021-01-11 02:04:20 GMT from United States)
My hardware mostly works with linux, except for the graphics card, Nvidia GEFORCE Fx5200, which mostly works with the Nouveau driver, except not nearly as well as the Nvidia driver did when it was still supported. I think NVIDIA stopped support after Xorg-server version 1.15, around 2014 or so....
14 • supported hardware (by Otis on 2021-01-11 02:04:57 GMT from United States)
Oh I remember the days of no keyboard/mouse support, etc. That's what got me to learn linux, under the promise of "anything can be fixed on a linux machine." RedHat 5.2. lol .. well ...
It's better now. ;o)
15 • Pinnacle PCTV Dual DVB-T Pro PCI 2000i and Nvidia 9800 GT (by pigeonskiller on 2021-01-11 02:13:47 GMT from Italy)
Pinnacle PCTV Dual DVB-T Pro PCI 2000i has never worked as there have been no drivers in years!
Nvidia 9800 GT is quite supported if you use limited open-source Nouveau drivers, but it is a pain if you use proprietary drivers every time a new kernel is released...
16 • Response to Poll (by abtm on 2021-01-11 02:32:53 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu 20.04 running on my Precision 7530 does not fully support the Bluetooth (no support for bluetooth headsets or ear buds as anything other than headphones only - no mic support). Have not found a solution as of yet.
17 • LibreSSL (by pin on 2021-01-11 05:03:31 GMT from Sweden)
How is it possible to talk about LibreSSL on Linux without mentioning Void a single time?
18 • Printer needs an extra plug-in (by Ted H in Minnesota on 2021-01-11 05:35:08 GMT from United States)
@nr 8 Tom Joad
I agree with you that this week's Opinion Question should have had more gradations of response.
And I envy you with no HP printer problems!
I have a couple of HP P1102w printers, that act differently from each other, for some unknown reason.
I have had to add an hplip-plugin driver that HP unfortunately does not make readily findable/available. I have managed semi-successfully on several occasions to download it and install it, sometimes not even sure how I managed to do it. For the two printers (located in different cities) I have had to use different installations/drivers! Can't figure that one out!
A message to HP if you monitor Distrowatch: Please put this plug-in out there, perhaps in the public domain (?), so we linux users can use our printers! And can various linux distros (such as MX Linux that I use) include this plug-in in your distros? Thank you!
19 • Canon stuff (by Bin on 2021-01-11 05:39:45 GMT from United Kingdom)
@9
I too have a Canon scanner - get yourself a copy of VueScan and you'll be fine!
20 • HP LaserJet M1212nf MFP @18 (by Thomas Mueller on 2021-01-11 06:27:19 GMT from United States)
I have got this printer to print but could never get it to scan, or fax from software. It requires a proprietary binary plugin that I couldn't find. This printer is enough to make me never again buy an HP product. Xerox looks better from the descriptions. Now this printer is so old that downloading the plugin from HP is beyond hopeless. I would try to avoid any printer that requires a plugin, especially a proprietary plugin.
21 • Poll: Does Linux run...my printer ? (by Toctoc on 2021-01-11 07:09:37 GMT from France)
I run a Samsung Xpress 2078 (copy, scan and some time ...print). I find it more and more difficult to run correctly this printer (My PC : HP G4 + EndeavourOS), thus it work with my Android device. Plus, it's difficult to find the printer on my network.
22 • Poll: Does Linux run... (by fniessen on 2021-01-11 08:09:52 GMT from Germany)
Yes, including an old Headset (GN Netcom GN 4800) that has been designed to work with standard windows out of the box but has stopped working with Win 7.
This is one of the reasons why I have refused using a win 10 based laptop from my company.
23 • Hardware testing (by Alexandru on 2021-01-11 08:18:14 GMT from Austria)
Additionally to tests outlined by Jesse, I usually test webcam (when present) with Cheese and microphone (when present) with PulseAudio setting and then with cound recording application.
24 • PakOS (by UmBongo on 2021-01-11 09:16:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Do they really think the logo for PakOS will withstand a moment's contact with Microsoft's lawyers?
25 • rtl8821ce don't supported (by I like Linux on 2021-01-11 09:51:21 GMT from Germany)
The wlan Device realtek rtl8821ce on my HP Laptop is not supported by Linux
26 • @25 : rtl8821ce (by Burdi01 on 2021-01-11 10:28:08 GMT from Netherlands)
Current kernels such as 5.10.X include the driver, and modprobing that driver does not report missing firmware. Maybe a specific option should be specified -- something like the "ant_sel" for 8723de.
:D
27 • Hardware support (by James on 2021-01-11 10:31:53 GMT from United States)
Does Linux support all of your hardware?
Yes, it was built for Linux, a System 76.
28 • @25 Hardware support rtl8821ce (by NotMe on 2021-01-11 10:52:42 GMT from United States)
Drivers for rtl8821ce are available in Ubuntu repositories, AUR, and GitHub. Google is your friend, even if it's a snoopy one.
29 • Hardware and Tails (by WhoBusters on 2021-01-11 11:01:52 GMT from United States)
The poll says "work with", not supported (see, I can split hairs too). I had to get 'fancy' in the past, I had to download a printer driver years ago, written and supplied by the vendor. It worked, but oh what fun, lots of directory hunting, copy/pasting, sshing, etc. Not like now, pretty corporate GUI drivers and wizards, vying for a footprint in the once mysterious Linux desktop. I have made a habit of ensuring hardware is ALREADY supported. I love how some people get/buy uber cutting edge, and expect all its required blobs to be magically present in the kernel already. Half the time, I am buying new but aging hardware (that can be as little as six months on the market), or 'refurbished', like this laptop (being the 'detective' that I am, I could tell its battery and SSD were replaced), it was a little beat up, but only a sharp-eyed fussy like me would notice, but wow, it works great, runs Linux great, and hours of fun, and I kept it out of the landfill. There is a whole process between hardware coming on the market and blobs being available, inserted in to the kernel, and made available as non-free kernel add-ons. Some hardware vendors have not gotten with the times, and are still stick in the Microtel-opoly era, so don't blame open source developers because YOUR hardware vendor is stingy with source code. Then there is hardware popularity, some obscure, exotic peripheral, model, etc, that was on the market for about five minutes, will possibly get overlooked.
Tails and persistence, hmm. Maybe just for a few unimportant settings, but to allow for secrets to be stored (journalism, etc), only to have the USB stick confiscated by government thugs, and analyzed. I certainly wouldn't like that set of circumstances. Even leaving a trail to a journo's cloud storage, like the slightest browser history clue, could result in some brutal questioning, if ya know what I mean. Danged if ya do, danged if ya don't.
30 • Hardware support (by DachshundMan on 2021-01-11 11:05:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
At the moment no problem but when I got my current laptop (Lenovo) I had to update Linux Mint to a newer Kernel to get the WiFi to function. Luckily the wired connection worked so I was easily able to find some info on Google and determine what version I needed to go up to.
31 • Hardware support (by Alessandro di Roma on 2021-01-11 11:32:29 GMT from Italy)
Some month ago I was looking for a new laptop and I found an Asus VivoBook M533I, CPU AMD Ryzen R7 4700U 2.0GHz (4M Cache, Up to 4.1GHz, 8 cores), RAM 16 GB, SSD 512 GB, AMD Radeon Graphics, screen 15.6" FHD 1920x1080. I knew nothing about Linux compatability, but I liked the machine and I bought it.
First I launched by usb key my preferred OS, xubuntu-20.04-desktop-amd64.iso. Live session showed some severe problem: resolution was randomly the right 1920x1080 or a not adjustable 800x600, and system freezed few minutes after boot.
So I was looking for some other Debian/XFCE Linux distro, I tried debian-live-10.6.0-amd64-xfce.iso, but it refused to boot.
Then I tried MX-19_x64.iso, but this too refused to boot.
Then I tried linuxmint-20-xfce-64bit.iso, this booted and installed successfully, but it was unable to get an external screen to work.
Finally everything fell into place in october, installing xubuntu-20.10-desktop-amd64.iso, now everything works, resolution is the right one and external screen is supported.
I forgot to say that none of the aforementioned distros sees the laptop's internal wifi, but this is a minor issue for me, I could solve with an external usb wifi key.
So I was able to experience for myself how much hardware support is a complex and critical problem, and I think this should be a key issue to address when testing distributions.
32 • hardware (by slack on 2021-01-11 11:38:50 GMT from United States)
Linux does - freebsd does not as touchpad on dell laptop does not work.
33 • Hardware support Linux (by Hank on 2021-01-11 11:50:21 GMT from Netherlands)
With some help from antiX forum members all hardware working quickly except for one Laser printer.
I had to add a PPD driver file extracted from the windows driver cd for that.
Interestingly the laser Printer will not work at all with 10 version of a commercial software
from MS so I was given it for free. :-).
34 • @6 poll (by kc1di on 2021-01-11 12:05:26 GMT from United States)
The problem is older Nvidia cards is that Nvidia stop supporting them in newer xorg. I Had and old machine that was still very good and lost the 304.x drivers because Nvidia obsoleted them. Will sometimes still work with the Nouveau drivers.
Everything on my systems seems to works well with Mint 20.1
But hardware has always been a problem with Linux, But it's much better now that it was years ago.
35 • hardware (by Rick on 2021-01-11 12:26:19 GMT from United States)
The reference does Linux run all of my hardware. Yes and mostly because the first thing I do before buying hardware is to look and see if it is supported by Linux drivers or if there are proprietary drivers that will work on Linux. Yes the same as Windows or Mac OS, or any other system. There is always going to be some hardware incompatibility. Windows has the least incompatibility, but nevertheless, it is still there. Also sometimes if you get with the developer of drivers they may have a way to use them. I remember when I first started running Linux my scanner was not compatible with Linux, however, the developer gave me the needed info to get it up and running. Do homework first.
36 • Linux support of Mac hardware (by fox on 2021-01-11 12:40:38 GMT from Canada)
I run Linux on Mac hardware; mainly 27" iMacs. I have three at the moment with varying levels of hardware support. The oldest, a 2011, is by far the best supported, with all hardware supported except the brightness control of the display. My 2015 has no support for the internal sound and mic, and all kernels after 5.2 have a major problem with the AMD video card, requiring 3-4 minutes to boot. The 2019 I am using now has no support for the internal wifi, sound or mic, requiring me to use most of my USB ports to hook up external devices to compensate. It also doesn't support the brightness control, but I can control this with an app called Brightness Controller. I run Ubuntu 20.04 and 20.10, but I have tried many other distros to see if any work better with my hardware. None do. I continue to use Macs in part because there are programs I need on it that cannot be run in Linux. Very unfortunate! I wish that developers had more interest in supporting Mac internal components, but on the other hand, I'm getting what I pay for.
37 • PakOS (by LXQt user on 2021-01-11 12:51:13 GMT from Norway)
I think the reason PakOS used a lot more RAM than LXQt generally does is that it ran on XFWM instead of the default OpenBox. This is probably an idea PakOS has got from Debian which also uses the more medium weight Window Manager of XFCE instead of the much ligther OpenBox. The use of this heavier Window Manager does not make the desktop more customisable or more beautiful (openbox can be really pretty with nice theming), so I do not understand thy they use XFWM in Debian and PakOS. People often think that XFCE is lightweight, but if you compare it to other desktops and to the real lightweights like LXDE and LXQt, it actually uses more than double the amout of RAM (just as MATE which also many people tend to think of as light-weight even if it is middle weight).
38 • @34 Aging Hardware Support (by WhoBusters on 2021-01-11 12:53:06 GMT from United States)
In a certain huge graphics chip maker's case, it would appear to be planned obsolescence. Makes one want to run out and buy a new(er) video card, PC, whatever. This is a very common complaint. I find different kernels act differently, both my machines seem to prefer the odd numbered kernel releases (e.g., 4.9.x, 5.9.x, etc), but the second I try using kernel 5.4.x on this laptop, fonts get bizarrely skewed (good ol' Intel CPU on die graphics processor), kernel 4.19.x, no problem. Here is more bizarre behavior, one kernel allows keeping of the laptop's screen brightness setting, downgrade because of font skewing, gone.
Planned obsolescence is rampant, and enthusiastically utilized, in and out of the digital device world, it started decades ago with throw-away cars, the motor might still work, but the rest of the car fell apart.
So maybe the next poll question (just suggesting) could be, how long should hardware be supported by the Linux kernel, and/or non-free installable kernel add-on blobs.
I say 10 years, 15 at the most, anything further back, the old hardware becomes a total electricity guzzler, and probably too weak to do any modern day tasks anyway. I am all for re-purposing old hardware, but at some point, it just becomes a waste of time, and literally, energy.
39 • Hardware On Linux (by Dan on 2021-01-11 13:07:46 GMT from United States)
Since I only use Linux on Virtual Box, everything works, except my computer's camera which only works in Windows, but since I don't use it anyway, it's no big deal.
40 • Everything works... (by Friar Tux on 2021-01-11 14:01:41 GMT from Canada)
Yup, everything works beautifully. In fact, better than I ever expected. My son lives upstairs in the main house, The Wife and I have an apartment, downstairs. When my son bought a new printer (don't know the brand) a few months back it showed up on my HP laptop with Mint/cinnamon 19.3 through Bluetooth. Anything I need printed, I just drop on the icon.
The Wife got new hearing aids a few months back. As soon as she walked into the room her laptop picked them up through Bluetooth. Now she doesn't require her headphones as we can pump the audio output right into her hearing aids. She can be anywhere in the house and still hear her laptop/music/podcasts. Isn't tech great?? Now, if could only get this gadgets to mow the lawn or do the dishes.
41 • R8101 is not supported with new 5.x Linux kernels (by HPEmpl on 2021-01-11 14:02:44 GMT from Netherlands)
It is unfortunate that in most distributions the newest kernels 5.x do no longer correctly support the Realtek R8101 network interface by the R8169 driver. Most other hardware works, but too many single and AIO print devices are more or less troublesome to install.
42 • hardware support (by wally on 2021-01-11 14:17:44 GMT from United States)
Most of my machines there are no hardware issues running multiple distros based on Debian , SUSE, or Fedora.
I have no esoteric hardware, just run of the mill.
PCs vary from ancient to new.
My most recent Dell Vostro, a couple months old, was unable to boot a number of attempted distros. I finally got it to run with Ubuntu which has a 5 kernel, the other attempts were all 4 kernels, so I suspect something too new in the hardware.
Debian is my main OS for all machines, but I am okay with Ubuntu.
Curious to see if Debian 11 will run/install.
43 • hardware support - 2 (by wally on 2021-01-11 14:23:52 GMT from United States)
One thing that does worry me is disappearing 32 bit support.
I have a 32 bit laptop that is still very useful for me although it primarily runs only local data, not the internet, so I suppose if I was was stuck on EOL software, the lack of updates wouldn't be harmful.
44 • supported hardware (by Otis on 2021-01-11 14:35:59 GMT from United States)
This HP laptop with intel/nvidia chip has been "supported" by any linux or bsd I've challenged it with, the only extra time to set up being with whatever wifi printer I've had to find drivers for and how to get the machine to run as cool as Artix (amusing that a distro with a name that sounds almost like "arctic" runs the coolest). The old days of getting angry and having to try yet another distro for hardware reasons are gone for some of us and we install various distros for other reasons.
But yes the poll question does seem upside down: Maybe it'd be an even more interesting discussion if it were along the lines of "which distros does your hardware support?"
45 • Printer support (by Toran Korshnah on 2021-01-11 14:39:14 GMT from Belgium)
My Brother printer supports onlt rpm and deb, but I should like to change to Ecotank or smarttank. No idea how the support is there. I think HP supports, and Epson might support, but thats it. In general Epson seems not to support Linux, but they inform some products are supported. Communication is not optimal. And Openprinting is so slow...
46 • Hardware support (by Darkman on 2021-01-11 14:49:33 GMT from United States)
Almost. I have an LG Ultra-wide monitor that displays an elongated image. Windows 10 detects it and loads the proper driver, Kubuntu does not. I have wasted days attempting to configure it and finally gave up.
47 • fingerprint readers (Linux support), passwords, security (by Jeff on 2021-01-11 14:49:56 GMT from United States)
@5 To be honest, passwords and the like were created soley to cause low stress frustration to the user. If you forget your password, who is locked out of your system, the criminals? Nope, you are.
True.
As the old hackers say; "Physical access is root access."
Give someone time with a computer and they will find a way in.
48 • Hardware (by Barnabyh on 2021-01-11 15:17:50 GMT from Germany)
No hardware problems here since 2013 when I last had to compile Ralink RT2870/RT3070 wifi dongle drivers in Slackware. But I'm not pushing the envelope and usually keep with integrated intel graphics and wireless.
Even the camera of this ASUS Vivobook works fine. As if I had use for it but you never know. I remember having to authenticate with a live pic when taking online exams so it does have its uses now and then.
The other laptop, a 2010 Core2Duo Dell Latitude still works great, albeit some lag is starting to show in desktop responsiveness with often high CPU utilization. I guess two cores is not enough any more these days. Hardware all still well supported.
Just checked, the old Getnet Ralink RT2870/RT3070 adapter worked ootb in LMDE 4. Still have several of them lying around. Nowadays I'm only using laptops though.
49 • Reply to poll (by cafi on 2021-01-11 16:24:58 GMT from Italy)
Every Linux distro i tried, doesn't work properly with my USB WiFi dongle, the os always tries to load multiple drivers for it. I can solve it bu blacklisting some fo the drivers
50 • Hardware (by César on 2021-01-11 16:27:07 GMT from Chile)
Almost 99% of my hardware works...except the damn Brother HL-1202 printer...no way...nothing to do.
This cheaper printer is a pain in the ass...is better HP (for me).
Saludos desde Santiago de Chile.
51 • Hardware (by Robert on 2021-01-11 16:46:27 GMT from United States)
All my hardware currently works on linux.
My two most recent issues were my Radeon 5700 which needed firmware and drivers from git when I bought it. Prior to that was a first gen skylake processor that needed a kernel version that hadn't made its way into any distro release yet. Basically just new hardware woes.
Been a long time since I had anything that couldn't be made to work at all.
52 • @50 Printer Drivers (by WhoBusters on 2021-01-11 16:56:05 GMT from France)
I have an HL-1435, it wants to use the 1430 driver, which barely works (buggy and flaky). So I try other CUPS Brother drivers, like HL-1250, voila, works beautiful. Sometimes you have to experiment, and give the hardware what it needs, not what it wants. :)
I am not intentionally plugging product here, but Brother has been quite Linux friendly over the years. If hardware will commercially work with Apple/Mac, writing a Linux driver for it is a walk in the park, and one is most likely available.
53 • Hardware (by John on 2021-01-11 17:39:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
My four desktop computers, two netbooks and one laptop all running Xubuntu 18.04LTS all work with my collection of printers (HP, Samsung, Brother, Canon, Xerox, Lexmark),scanners (HP - with plug-in downloaded, Canon, Epson), routers (Zyxel, TPLink), cameras (Canon, Sony, Lumix, Logitech) various wifi cards and dongles, bluetooth, Sandisk mp3 player, All disk drives, usb sticks, sd cards and docking stations also work with no problems.
The only device I have problems with is a Linx 2 in 1 tablet/netbook. It has a 32 bit uefi - so apart from Fedora distros I have to modify other distros to include bootia32.efi. Then it mostly works (although it can be flaky) ---- but no way can I get it's onboard webcam to work.
So in the survey I voted that all my hardware works with Linux because 99% (and all the important stuff) does.
Huge fan of distrowatch - many thanks for all your efforts.
54 • Hardware on linux (by ronan the accuser on 2021-01-11 18:06:39 GMT from Moldova)
I accuse companies that don't create drivers for linux,
and specifically buy laptops & desktop parts which work well on linux,
so no nvidia cards (only AMD)
Usually Dell laptops work just fine with linux,
also there are specialized linux only vendors like System76, but unfortunately those are not present in my country
p.s:
every major linux distro has LiveCD mode, with which you can check if the hardware you wanna buy supports linux.
All you need is a memory stick...
55 • HP support in MX Linux (by Chris Whelan on 2021-01-11 18:16:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
@18
If you ask on their friendly forum, the good folk at MX Linux may well be able to add what you want to their repositories.
56 • What works! (by pfbruce on 2021-01-11 18:49:09 GMT from United States)
Computer on a USB Stick.
I have been fascinated by this idea since Barry Kauler came out with Quirky. Since then a number of systems have been born. A number rely on a persistence file. This is saved before shutting down. If you find slow shutdowns as unacceptable as I do, persistence sucks.
But there are systems that do not require this. And they work fine
1. Manjaro. You have to follow their instructions and use their testing repo. But once you have done this, you have Manjaro on a thumb drive that has all the parttions to act independently from the actual computer that you are using.
2. MXLinux. Not set up with persistence! I had this installed on a thumb drive as part of my desktop. Taking a step from the Manjaro instructions, I relocated/renamed a file in the EFI/boot partition and had the same result as I had with Manjaro.
3. EasyOS. Yeah, I know Barry relies on overlays to keep the system up to date. But however he does it, It does not require a one to fifteen minute shutdown ordeal with a save file. EasyOS is still experimental. Software installation is a pain, and software removal is impossible. BUT, EasyOS mounts EFI/Boot partitions. This made the creation of my MX system a snap.
4. Liveslak. I think Liveslak does the save file thing, but it must make corrections at startup. I find that no matter how much stuff I add, Liveslak shuts down in a timely fashion. Although, it is some what slow to start up. It also fills a 32Gb drive quite rapidly after a few updates. And, I do not update the kernel. There is a script to do this, but I have not been able to make it work.
5. Unplug your hard drive. Supposedly you make any system work on a Thumb drive by forcing the computer to use the only drive available. I tried this a few times. I was not successful. It might be GPT/MBR problems. I did not pursue it.
If you do not mind long shutdowns, you can use persistence files. Puppy, MXLinux, Antix, some of the 'buntus all do this. I currently have a Slacko64 stick that works fine. It even shuts down quickly, if I do not use it for anything.
I have 2 AMD machines and 2 Intel machines. All of my computers on a stick work in any machine I have. A small data gathering, I know. But, I have also been playing with BSDs, and they have a difficulties with Radeon video and multiple monitors.
57 • Hardware support (by Christian on 2021-01-11 19:33:27 GMT from Canada)
I have two computers (laptops). A 2014 Dell that works perfectly, even with only free repos enabled and FSF endorsed distros (Trisquel and PureOS), and an Asus ROG 2019, that, mostly, works. It's sad that Asus has zero commitment to Linux. Special keyboard function keys won't work (i can only control volume). I can't use any other function keys. Can't control keyboard backlight too (it's always on, and I've managed to keep it static in one single color).
58 • mint doesn't support video on Lenovo ThinkPad E430 (by dave walls on 2021-01-11 21:00:41 GMT from United States)
I have to boot into "advanced" mode, then resume normal boot, so all drivers are not loaded. Otherwise I get a black screen. I think this occurred upgrading Mint to version 19 or 19.
59 • Hardware (by Fred on 2021-01-11 21:26:24 GMT from Australia)
I haven't had any hardware problems with Linux for almost 10 years now.
Everything just works.
60 • @20 HP plugins (by eznix on 2021-01-11 22:10:17 GMT from United States)
Really? A hard time locating the HP plugins? Just search "hplip plugin download" and the first result is the download page for all the recent hplip plugins by version number. The third result is the archive: https://www.openprinting.org/download/printdriver/auxfiles/HP/plugins/
61 • Poll (by DaveW on 2021-01-11 22:34:25 GMT from United States)
In an earlier post, I noted that my Canon LBP6000 laser printer wouldn't work in Linux Mint Mate. Since then, I took a couple of hours (maybe 6), and went through the installation process for the Canon supplied driver. I found two things I had been doing wrong, did the whole thing right, and now the printer works fine.
I also have a Brother HL-2270DW laser printer and an Epson Expression 1600 scanner that both work. I install Brother's driver to get the most functionality for the printer. The default driver for the scanner does everything I need.
I would change my poll vote to 'Yes' if I could.
62 • Hardware (by Bob on 2021-01-11 23:03:53 GMT from New Zealand)
I answered yes, as 'just works' is the norm. One exception is the Kyocera FS-1325 MFP laser printer. It needs manual assistance with .ppd file from disk to initialise and if the printer loses its internal settings, it needs another os to read .exe files needed to restore them. The latter only occurs very infrequently during prolonged power-down events so is a rare issue. I have kept a very old version of an os on a very old computer for that purpose. Consequently an occurrence is a comic highlight in a quiet life.
63 • @57 Keyboard Back-light (by WhoBusters on 2021-01-11 23:06:36 GMT from United States)
Have you tried holding down the fn key, and repeatedly hitting the keyboard back-light key (mine is f11)? I can set my keyboard back-light timeout in my BIOS (set mine to 1 minute), it's pretty much strictly a hardware function, the OS does not control the keyboard back-lights. I can flip my fn key's function too, default is f, or when flipped, whatever the alt purpose of the f keys is. Unless you are talking about the keyboard screen back-lights control keys (mine are f9 and f10), not every distro 'sees' mine either, but most do (you may have to check a 'control brightness keys' box in your GUI's power management settings). I stick to one low screen brightness level anyway, screaming bright screens make my eyes tired faster.
64 • Hardware support (by CaveMan on 2021-01-11 23:14:09 GMT from United States)
After having to work for hours and days to get everything working half right (or finding out that it was never going to work) back in the day, I'm always amazed when I install a distro to test now on any system and it works about 99% correctly right out of the box.
My current favorite laptop and distro (HP 15-DW0046NR & MX Linux 19.3) works great except for the niggling problem of the WiFi driver, RTL8821CE. The one in the repositories does not work. Googled for tips and hacked until I got tired of it then finally found one on GitHub that works like a charm. (Although I have to download it in Windows then put it on a USB drive to transfer and install when MX Linux gets done installing, because when ones WiFi chip doesn't work, one isn't going to go online and get the driver lol)
Anyway, I don't know which all of the drivers on GitHub for RTL8821CE work (there are several) I use the "tangolee" one. Has very simple install instructions, too.
65 • @1 (by Simon on 2021-01-11 23:54:05 GMT from New Zealand)
No: Windows is "software" so your suggested wording would make the poll useless (it could be asking if all your hardware worked with Windows rather than Linux). Also, it's only *Linux* (the actual kernel) that matters, not the huge range of "software" that can be run on a GNU/Linux system. The kernel handles the hardware, so if the hardware works with *Linux* (exactly as the poll is worded), it can be made to work with the software. Some hardware doesn't work with Linux because the vendors refuse to disclose information as to how the hardware works, and it's not always possible to reverse-engineer fully functional drivers.
66 • CANON PIXMA MG2500 Series (by 42King on 2021-01-12 00:09:58 GMT from United States)
Weird thing is the "scanner" works with Simple Scan but the printer option is not recognized on Manjaro XFCE. Will work on Debian but I use and prefer Manjaro. Go figure.
67 • Canon printer dirvers (by Otis on 2021-01-12 01:04:09 GMT from United States)
@66 your post jumped out at me I had that issue and found that there are many printers that CUPS will report as only a scanner (as to the provided drivers. Keep going, I have forgotten which driver selection ended up working for my Pixma 2500 series but I did get it corrected. I have since run into the same issue with my new Epson printer/scanner but just went down the driver selection list in CUPS and ended up with it working perfectly. Spend time, it'll pay off.
68 • hardware (by hotdiggettydog on 2021-01-12 02:14:21 GMT from Canada)
@11. I updated an old laptop with the infamous Broadcom wifi. I was giving it away so I wanted a live cd I could use if they borked the install. Mxlinux supports broadcom out of the box.
Someone else mentioned video probems with old nvidia hardware and Mint 20. I had the same problem with the above laptop. Mint was completely unusable with nvidia or nouveau drivers. Weird.
I bit the bullet and bought a laptop from Dell with ubuntu pre-installed thinking this would be fully supported. Wrong. The installed OS would not run and anything else I tried to install failed. A bios setting was to blame - something to do with power management if I remember right. Disappointing.
I picked up a Thinkpad T490 from a black friday sale. The only thing not supported is the fingerprint reader and I could care less. It runs Mint 20 beautifully. The cinnamon version supports high resolution displays very well. I highly recommend this model for linux users.
69 • Main machine or auxiliary fleet of eee pc? (by MInuxLintEbianDedition on 2021-01-12 04:09:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
Main machine: Everything works but my fast card reader is throttled to 20MB/s under linux. It'll do 80+ under win10
Asus eee pc: Most are totally supported but sadly, no video support for the beautiful asus eee pc x101
70 • Hardware (by GreginNC on 2021-01-12 07:24:37 GMT from United States)
Personally I haven't had any hardware issues since 2008 or 2009 when I had an Acer laptop with a problem built in wifi card, I used NDISWrapper at the time. haven't had any other issues in the years since. Of course I dodged the issues with printers/scanners by not having any.
71 • Linux hardware support (by Dude on 2021-01-12 12:10:56 GMT from United States)
No, many Linux distros do not support my WiFi adapters. If my WiFi adapter doesn't work with one distro, I try other distros until I find one that does work. Linux Mint seems to have better WiFi support than other distros. Same with video drivers, especially AMD/ATI/Raedon onboard video in some laptops. But no problem with Intel video though. Linux Mint on Intel laptops has the best Linux compatibility, as long as you don't get stuck with a lame WiFi adapter, like Broadcom.
72 • Libressl (by Semiarticulate on 2021-01-12 14:40:51 GMT from United States)
"Alpine Linux supported LibreSSL as its primary TLS library for a while, but switched back to OpenSSL..." You just can't save someone from themselves.
73 • Poll on Linux hardware (by Cellobrat on 2021-01-12 15:53:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
Lots of problems finding distros that will work with the following setup - AMD A8-6600K with Radeon(fm) HD Graphics 8 GiB Ram and Graphics Processor AMD ARUBA.
Currently only MX and Pop OS from Ubuntu and Debian bases work and Garuda and Hector from Arch work.
Helpfully Rescatux does work with this system too!
Usually the problem seems to be with the onboard graphics card causing a non boot from a live disk but I also find installing to SSD that grub/EFI booting into the newly installed distro doesn’t work.
74 • Poll on Linux Hardware (by moincoin on 2021-01-12 19:07:56 GMT from United States)
Only BINARYchoices on the poll Does all of your hardware work with Linux???!
My answer is rather a 4 on a scale of 1 - 5 or even a bit up to a 9 on a scale of 1 - 10.
For me and others, it's maybe 10-20% of devices such as those relatively inexpensive, commonly-used MS-Windows-only (or Mac-only) non-HP printers and multi-function printer/scanners that really ding Linux despite the HW and SW workarounds Linux distros try to offer for their end-users.
75 • Hardware tests (by marty on 2021-01-12 20:09:55 GMT from United States)
I thought your explanation for tests of hardware compatibility was simple to understand.
76 • Does all of your hardware work with Linux? (by mmphosis on 2021-01-13 00:09:57 GMT from Canada)
Yes. All of my devices work with Linux. Pretty much all of them are running Linux. Many devices come with Linux already installed.
Does all of your hardware on your devices work with Linux?
No. Here's a list ...
• Intel RST does not work https://help.ubuntu.com/rst/
• WIFI does not work depending on the distro
• Audio does not work depending on the distro
• Printing only works sometimes
77 • linux hardware support (by Titus_Groan on 2021-01-13 00:54:27 GMT from New Zealand)
My preferred distro has about 99.9% of my hardware supported out of the box.
only 3 issues in the last 10-15 years, one fixed, the others are vendor issues.
Canoscan 5600f- not supported.
Canon MP280 MFP, used to have to install vendor drivers, now included in the on-line repos (CUPS).
Broadcom BCM1413 WIFI- drivers available in the Live.iso, but due to licensing, can only be installed by Live to run after install completed and rebooted. Unless I want to get into Live w/persistence setup.
hardware includes:
Acer C710 ex chromebook
Acer C730 ex chromebook
Acer B11 Travelmate
Asus u31f
Asus u31sd
Asus T100TA
Asus X541
Compaq CQ61
Compaq C700 - with that Broadcom Wifi module
HP8510w
HP4520s
HP PROdesk 400 G2
Linx 7 tablet
Toshiba R930 Laptop
2 Asus Towers
MSI tower -Athlon XP2400+ 32bit processor
printers: Kyocera, HP and Canon
78 • @77 linux hardware support (by Titus_Groan on 2021-01-13 01:01:20 GMT from New Zealand)
meant to add,
Cameras - Linx 7 and Asus T100TA - nogo, again vendor issues.
auto rotate out of the box, no for both.
Linx 7 is OOTB in Portrait mode, the T100TA Landscape mode.
79 • @78 linux hardware support (by Titus_Groan on 2021-01-13 01:27:48 GMT from New Zealand)
hmm....Dyslexia has a lot to answer for!
Broadcom BCM4311 wifi module
80 • T-Link Router Print Server Non-support (by acswprof on 2021-01-13 03:14:04 GMT from United States)
Nearly everything runs very well on my Dell Latitude E6400 with MX Linux. Only serious problem is with the printer server on our T-Link Archer C7 router. Have a Brother printer connected to the router by usb. Works fine with my spouse's Win 10 desktop, but T-Link's print server is proprietary. Even contacted T-Link to ask for help - no joy! So when I need to print something I just walk the laptop to the printer; and that works ok.
81 • Linux hardware support (by TheTKS on 2021-01-13 04:31:23 GMT from Canada)
Voted yes to your poll question "Does all of your hardware work with Linux?"
Then I remembered two pieces of hardware it doesn't support, or at least that I haven't found support for in simply installed packages:
- Garmin car and hand-held hiking GPSs, for both device and map updates. But then Garmin doesn't support the hand-held on *any* OS anymore, and they stopped supporting the car GPS 1-1/2 years after I bought it new... then started supporting it again (I would guess they got blasted with enough complaints or threatened with a lawsuit.) So *standard* support on Linux is non-existent, although you might find aftermarket support, but even on Windows it's tenuous.
- Canon EOS T2i Rebel camera, when I last looked into it 2 or 3 years ago, but then I didn't look that hard, and a quick internet search just now shows there may be some options.
In your preamble to the question, you also asked a different question, in the past tense "Have you run into situations where Linux was unable to detect or use one of your devices...?" Answer:
Unable to detect, but not unable to use: Dell B&W laser printer (rebranded Samsung), Canon colour laserjet printer-scanner-copier-fax, HP colour laserjet printer-scanner-copier. For the ones not automatically detected, I was able to find drivers on Ubuntu/Xubuntu and Slackware.
Using Linux since late 2016, so I don't remember the good ol'/bad ol' days of using Linux.
TKS
82 • Does Linux work with my hardware? (by Dude on 2021-01-13 11:11:23 GMT from United States)
Fedora does not work with the WiFi adapter in my laptop.
83 • Drivers (by LinuxFckry on 2021-01-13 16:49:21 GMT from Mexico)
My friend has a 4 year old....ASUS laptop ..... 4 YEARS OLD!!! and still the wifi driver doesn't work properly sometimes. Some days it works, other days you boot up and it is gone. Talk about fckd. Yes, strong language....but seriously, i had to buy a wifi dongle to use that laptop reliably when i shouldn't have to.
84 • Does your hardware work with Linux? (by Jeff on 2021-01-13 18:00:23 GMT from United States)
Sometimes the real question is:
Are you willing to use non-free drivers and firmware or are you so strict about free only that you would rather put up with things that do not work?
I would rather help someone make what they have work than preach to them about what they should have bought before they even decided to try Linux.
85 • @83 Flady Hardware (by WhoBusters on 2021-01-13 18:59:31 GMT from Germany)
I have had problems with Asus products in the past (like USB ports dying for no reason), so I switched to Gigabyte (I work for neither, I'm just a consumer). If hardware behaves oddly, and intermittently, it's most likely a failing hardware problem. You can also 'blacklist' unwanted kernel driver modules from loading, find the good one, blacklist the rest. Maybe it needs a non-free firmware blob? And oh, FYI, Linux, and the distros built on it, are FREE, as in free beer, you can always go back to big spyware, oops, software, my bad. Run a memory diag (outside of Windows or Linux, self booting), check the HDD/SSD S.M.A.R.T. status, run a file system integrity check, if it's not a flaky wifi chip, the kernel and/or driver is getting corrupted somehow. Oh, any hardware past its (commonly) 3 year warranty, you're pretty much on your own, and lucky it's still working. Good luck!
86 • Snowballs chance in Florida (by M.Z. on 2021-01-13 23:37:05 GMT from United States)
@86
That's one of those things that are almost unheard of, but not impossible. Most Linux desktop users pull nearly all software from vetted repositories & update their systems enough that Linux remains almost completely secure; however, Linux servers that are not updated are frequently targeted and more than a few have been compromised.
For my part I always make sure my firewall is turned on (Gufw is the common one), because some Distros have a lax security attitude toward that kind of thing because their systems are so rarely hit. In addition some Distros like Mageia & PCLinuxOS ship with good security tools enabled or available in their repositories. I like the MSEC tool in Mageia/PCLOS as is has some security enforcement mechanisms & threat mitigation tools, as an example rtkhunter can be installed & is then automatically integrated into periodic reports. Other distros ship with tools that block bad activity like AppArmor or SELinux (similar to some mechanisms in MSEC), and many have sandboxing tools like Firejail available in their repositories. You could also install ClamAV, though I think most Linux users think that that is far more likely to catch a false positive than an actual threat.
So basically its an almost never sort of situation if you use your system right, though it is smart to find & use a few extra security tools & which ones will depend on your Distro & level of willingness to do some extra security work.
87 • All my hardware works.. oh wait-- (by Dr. Dave on 2021-01-14 02:13:27 GMT from United States)
I answered Yes but then I remembered that only half of this new Brother printer/scanner worked OotB. I could print fine, but the scanner portion required some manual intervention and I'm not sure the scanner will work across the network the same way the printer does. Funny that I could forget since it throws up a brief error during the boot sequence.
I think Printers still hold the top position for Linux hardware problems with laptop wireless chips coming in 2nd and laptop GPUs coming in 3rd.
88 • No AMD Ryzen support on kernels older than 5.2 (by ZedHeadTed on 2021-01-14 20:25:42 GMT from United States)
Last month, I bought a new HP tower with an AMD Ryzen 5 3400G processor with Radeon Vega 11 for the GPU. I planned on wiping Windows (no OS wasn't an option) and installing my favorite distro, MX Linux on there. However, MX Linux couldn't properly recognize the display, maxing out at 1024x768 and giving it a generic name rather than picking up on the brand and size of the monitor. Disappointed, I tried out some other DVDs I had lying around: 4MLinux, Ubuntu 18.04, etc. Nothing could handle the display properly, and some wouldn't even boot after install. Then I did some searching and found out that proper support wasn't added until version 5.2 of the kernel. I installed Ubuntu 20.04 (kernel version 5.4.0), and it displayed perfectly ever since. MX, for comparison, was still using the 4.19 line. I'd prefer to get away from Canonical in the future, and now I know what to filter out. I tried out the latest GParted Live last night, and PCLinuxOS this morning. No surprise the display worked wonderful on both, having 5.10.4 and 5.9.16 respectively.
89 • kernel/display (by Otis on 2021-01-15 00:19:24 GMT from United States)
@88 you could have gone straight to Artix and had your up-to-date kernel right from the initial install.
90 • Kernel vintage (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2021-01-15 00:44:21 GMT from United States)
@88 @89 … Following clear Short & Simple directions could have yielded a MX-Linux "AHS" install with a 5.8-vintage kernel. Was that even tried?
91 • Knoppix has very good hardware support (by Elcaset on 2021-01-15 05:40:59 GMT from United States)
Anytime I run into hardware that's not supported by my main distro, I try it with Knoppix, & it usually supports it. I just wish there were other distros that I can INSTALL with hardware support as good as Knoppix.
92 • Hardware Support Is Good, But Room for Improvement (by Arthur Baldwin on 2021-01-15 16:01:51 GMT from United States)
Most of my hardware is WELL supported, but not my GearHead model WC-535i webcam. It looks like a ball and has a base that allows the camera to rotate and move the lens up and down by motors. The camera won't work with Cheese app, or any other app, except for OBS. My opinion is that either it should not work at all, with any app, or it should work with ALL apps! Something is wrong with the manner in which our community approaches the hardware issues! Don't get me wrong, I'm very thankful for all the hardware support we have...but there's room for improvement!
93 • Wishful thinking (by R. Cain on 2021-01-18 00:34:21 GMT from United States)
I find it laughable that 72% of the respondents to the "quickie" survey answered "YES", while well over half of the comments indicated just the opposite.
The question is "Does ALL of your hardware work..."
while more than half of the respondents answered with some variation of "...MOST of my ardware is WELL supported..."
MOST of your hardware is most definitely NOT *ALL* OF YOUR HARDWARE!
Number of Comments: 93
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