Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 18th Oct 2012 18:15 UTC
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Member since:
2005-11-16
If Linux fanboys didn't whitewash its problems then maybe people wouldn't have false expectations.
It's nowhere near as easy as that for two reasons:
1. Something that works in one distribution may not work in another, or even in a different version of it. I've bought hardware after finding guides to using it with Debian and still had no luck in Linux Mint. My Thinkpad, which works pretty well with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, doesn't have working power management in either Fedora or Ubuntu. Even if the hardware itself works, it's often the case that graphical configuration tools are only available for certain distributions, and then aren't updated to work with newer ones.
2. When Linux compatibility guides state that a particular piece of hardware works in Linux, they don't necessarily mean that every feature of it works perfectly. For example, I've seen soundcards listed as compatible as soon as stereo output works, which isn't much use if I want to record using the optical input. I've been called a nitpicker for complaining that my "Linux compatible" laptop's special buttons and sleep mode didn't work. The fact that Linux installed and booted to the desktop was enough for it to be considered fully compatible, with no problems worth listing.
Using Windows it really is as simple as checking that the hardware has drivers for the version I'm running. With Linux, researching compatibility often turns up a lot of misleading and incomplete information, with problems only revealed after actually trying the hardware. I'd rather save myself the time and hassle of dealing with that.