this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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Broadcom, as you've discovered. That's the one brand that I've always had trouble with; they go out of their way to be closed source: never publishing specs, never responding to developers. They're horrible to the point where I will not buy any product that uses Broadcom chips. Which used to be a PITA because they were also common.
Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.
One of my computers has a MediaTek wireless chip where WiFi isn't supported but Bluetooth does.
A lot of people have problems with NVidia cards; I've not had trouble with either AMD or Intel GPUs (although, I think all Intel GPUs are CPU integrated?).
Multifunction printers are still iffy, and even just plain printers can give grief; I've come to believe that this is simply because CUPS is ancient and due for a completely new, modern printing service. It's an awful piece of software to have to work with.
Cups is so much better then everything printer related that is available for Windows and it works so good that even Apple was not able or willing to create something on their own and are using it their OS on all devices. Yes, the web interface is dated but nearly every Desktop comes with a modern integrated interface for printer setup and configuration. It is ages that I had to use the web interface. Cups comes with a boatload of printer drivers out of the box. And if not then there are often PPD files on the homepage of the printer manufacturer.
Multifunction printers are a special case and if they are supported or not depends either on how the device is build (are the parts addressable Independently as printer, scanner, modem/Fax) or is it all a integrated mashup that needs special software or drivers from the manufacturer. In the first case can the printer part often be used with cups and the scanner with sane. Well in the second case there is not much that Linux developers can do without support and goodwill from the manufacturer.
Brother printers have a good reputation in the linux world. Not sure what the current status is... My printer is over 15 yrs old
I bought a new one recently. Apparently they're doing a subscription thing now, so look closely at which model you're buying. But other than that, it works just the same as my old one.
I bought a Brother colour laser last year (which on the outside looks identical to the monochrome one I bought 17 years ago that lives with my parents), zero issues, which pretty much has been my experience with printers on linux (also tried a ~5 y/o & 25 y/o HP LaserJet, one being the cheapest thing I've ever used, other being old office equipment, think I tried the Epson ecotank and photo printer my mil has as well)
We have a wireless Brother laser MFP from 2-3 years ago that just works. I needed to scan something for the first time a few weeks ago and started to go down to rabbit hole of the official driver package but then I decided to give "scanimage" a try and it just found the scanner.
I'll give that a try. I actually never figured out scanning on linux
My experience with Brother was also good, until it got tipped during a move and came out simply covered in toner. We don't really need a new printer, but I'd buy another Brother LaserJet in a heartbeat.
@9488fcea02a9 @sxan Almost all printers work now, since they have to support IPP Anywhere to be useable by phones
My Canon regularly gives me grief. My Epson Ecotank, OTOH, has been painless.
Intel Arc discrete GPUs released 2022
I've run AMD, Intel, and Nvidia on linux and I would say my intel experience was by far the best. I use an a380 in my server for transcoding, and I had an a750 in my desktop but switched to a b580. AMD gets the graphics stuff right, but intel does the graphics and compute right on linux where AMD ROCM is a major pain in the ass. It may not be great if you do tons of gaming, but it works quite well for me.
Hmm, I run an Arc GPU at work without any issues. Just using plain mesa on NixOS. The Intel devs were quite responsive when we ran into issues as well.
Arc support was added after release to Linux Kernel 6.2 and it's steadily improved since. Older Linux distros, or "LTS" oriented distros that favour stability may still not have support for them. I know Unraid was very slow to pick up on it and I had to settle for passing the pcie device through to a VM to get it working. Intel is keen to made these viable though, and I love having the AV1 encoder from my A380.
Ah I see, haven't been on "stable" distros for a long time so I wasn't affected. I've enjoyed the good support and the video stuff is definitely nice. On the AMD side, still no idea how to encode or decode anything on my Framework 16, meanwhile Intel is acing it.