Linux Hardware Compatibility Sites: Does anyone do it right?
One almost unavoidable problem with using an operating system that is not used by the majority of people is compatibility, specifically hardware compatibility. While Linux supports an amazing number of devices out of the box and chances are if you put Linux on any random computer it will, for the most part, work, there are still many cases where having information about hardware compatibility can be useful. For example, suppose you are having trouble with a particular component and want to know if others have made it work or suppose you are buying a new part for your PC. This is where numerous sites that aim to provide information on the compatibility of hardware come in. Unfortunately, despite the large number of these sites, I often find that these sites are often not very useful. In this article I will define what a good site must have and look at a number of sites to see if they meet these standards.
Checklist for the Perfect Site
So what does a perfect Linux hardware compatibility site need? There are two major categories. First, having the information and, second, making it possible to find the information. In fact, as long as users can submit new information, the first part is not relevant unless the second part is implemented well. So the question is, what ways does a good site need to offer for searching through the information?
- By specific product names – This is the most obvious and is done well by most site. This would be useful to someone who is having trouble with a particular product or is looking at buying a specific product.
- By best compatibility – This is done by some sites, but not all. Although searching by the specific product is good if you already know what you want to buy, if you don’t yet know what you want to get, finding the device with the best compatibility could help you decide.
- By the features of each product – This is where every site I looked at fails. This feature comes in use when you want something specific, but don’t know exactly what product to buy. For example, suppose I wanted a black and white laser printer that had wireless networking. I could search for every single printer that fit those criteria or I could look at all the compatible printers and check each for the features I wanted, but both those approaches would take forever.
Grading the sites
Now that we have a way to grade each site, lets start looking at the sites.
Specific Product Name – Check!
Best Compatibility – No
Features – No
Specific Product Name – Check!
Best Compatibility – Check!
Features – No
Specific Product Name – No
Best Compatibility – Check!
Features – No
As you can see, none of the sites I found scored well. In fact, I found even more sites that do not provide any search features at all that I did not include. If you think I incorrectly scored a site listed above or you know of a site that scores better than these sites, please leave a comment!
February 19th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Hardware4Linux has the best category structure. The other two group devices like POTS (analog dial-up), DSL, and cable modems which have fundamentally different requirements (especially softmodems).
February 20th, 2008 at 7:40 am
LinuxQuestions HCL does have a search by best compatibility. Thats how I chose a HP Photosmart 2575 printer. Once you’re in the right category click “Sort by Most Compatible”.
February 20th, 2008 at 8:24 am
linuxquestions.org has a section with this as well; it has come in useful when i find a product on there, but that is kind of rare. I wish the major distros would get in gear and provide this information — they get to touch thousands of machines a day, why not send anonymous data back to the HQ and create an online database? How hard is it??
February 20th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
The best thing to do is make a knoppix live cd, log in, then run:
# lspci
It will give you a list of hardware on your pci bus as well as the name of your southbridge controller. From there google is your friend.
By using a live cd you don’t need to make a commitment before finding out what works. You’ll never find stuff by specific product name since large groups of products may use the same chip.
The chip name is found with lspci and that’s what driver writers deal with, not the joeschmoe’s implementation called “Giant sound card with everything”.
It really cuts down all the noise to work with chip names and you’ll find answers faster.
lspci 4tw.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
lefty.crupps – I did include the Linux questions HCL. I believe that Fedora does send hardware info back if you let it and I think Ubuntu might under advanced options… I might be wrong about that though and I don’t know what Fedora does with that data.
Darrel W – True, but as far as I can see you can only do that within manufacturer, which is not very useful unless you have any a favorite brand.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Having all the features of hardware is really difficult as it cannot be deduced automatically. What do you propose to solve this issue ?
February 24th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Fred – When I say “features” I mean generic specifications for hardware such as Inkjet or Laser for printers or amount of RAM on a graphics card. To actually get the information into the site, I was thinking of a wiki-style approach where anyone could help out.
February 26th, 2008 at 7:30 am
InTheLoop – A wiki is in my plan for hardware4linux. I was more thinking it would be useful to gather the commercial names of the devices but it could also act as you said to describe more precisely the devices.
February 26th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Fred – By the way, when I say wiki, I don’t mean a standard wiki, I just mean letting the users contribute the data.
Also, although I did not mention it, I think letting users install a program to look at their hardware and report the data back is a really good idea.
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
InTheLoop – I have added a first implementation of the wiki idea. You can see the results here: http://hardware4linux.info/component/31374/ and http://hardware4linux.info/component/13866/.
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Sound like a good idea. I am probably just missing it, but I do not see how people can edit the information.
March 2nd, 2008 at 6:55 pm
InTheLoop – you can edit only for the hardware that you own. That’s probably why you don’t see how to edit it if you look at any hardware…