Go to page: 1 2 3   

Printer Friendly Version

For every person I have pointed to that website, two others fell back onto the "headache waiting to happen" known as NDISWrapper in order to try and get wireless working with an incompatible wireless card. Why? Because listing a variety of chipsets with their perspective vendors is not really all that helpful for most people without a means to obtain those devices. Hello, shopping links, anyone?

Tools to change the rules

Now that we have established that there is decent hardware compatibility for today's Linux distributions, let's examine why the existing tools for hardware compatibility clearly needed more time in the virtual oven.

Automatic hardware reporting. Ubuntu, among other Linux distributions, have already begun offering something sort of like this with their Hardware Testing tool. Unfortunately, it is requiring me to first discover it, then use it and finally, have Launchpad account already as well. Not working, sorry.

Dohickey Client and Database. Certainly clever in the fact that is simply allow the user to rate with stars, what is working and how well. But again, nothing automatic, even worse as some stuff is not even detected on my system. But on the plus side, their database found here, allows me to search for various components. Too bad the wireless devices I searched for were not included though. Clearly, a problem that would have been sorted with automatic reporting.

Various "pull-down menu" websites. Generally possessing the bulk of available, these little misleading resources bounce around from being very up to date all the way to useless with regard to the compatibility info they provide. Unless it is for printing or scanning, you are generally working with junk.

If I had my way, I would find a way to bridge the obvious gap between both the existing functionality of some of the tools listed above and a simple-to-navigate, heavily updated source with links for making real purchases should new hardware be needed. In short -- give me a hardware determination tool.

Go to page: 1 2 3   

Printer Friendly Version