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If there is one Linux myth that must be put to bed, it's that desktop Linux has terrible hardware support out of the box. This is compete nonsense. As a matter of fact, there has been talk that to the degree of mainstream support for hardware, it rivals anything seen with Windows or OS X. Again, this is with mainstream hardware.

Yet, despite this ability to say, take a Wii RockBand guitar, plug it in with Ubuntu Linux and discover that it can work really well with the open source game FretsOnFire, just how usable is all of this if we are unable to discern what works and what does not? Trial and error? This is hardly practical.

Ever-evolving hardware compatibility lists

Sad as it is to say, the single best effective HLC (hardware compatibility lists) that I have seen are those that are not Linux distribution specific. Compatibility lists provided by the SANE or HPLIP projects, among others, have shown us that getting the data collected is not outside of our grasp.

Instead, the problem seems to stem from the fact that unless we have users consistently updating their hardware abilities with each release of any specific distribution upgrade, any sort of predictability is more less a role of the dice. This might be enough to get desktop Linux by for now, but clearly as users find new hardware compatibility successes out on their own, there needs to be a cohesive means of allowing others to know for sure what hardware is going to work and what will not.

Even considering the fantastic resources mentioned above, including other efforts from The Linux Foundation and distro specific resources like UbuntuHLC.org, in the end I have found endless numbers of compatible hardware not highlighted, as no one bothered to report it. To make matters worse, even when things are being reported as not working or working, they are often done so by people who have no idea what they are talking about. Let me give you an example.

Linux wireless. Even considering the fact that resources such as this one provide the single best resource for working Linux wireless regardless of the distribution in question, clearly its interface is about as helpful as an engineer giving lessons in customer relations. In other words, it is not usable for "Joe User."

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