Not technically hardware itself but Nvidia + Intel hybrid graphics have never really worked for me
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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That was a nightmare I'll never recover from. That laptop is now running windows 11. It's what made me promise myself to never ever touch Nvidia ever again. I'm now all Red on my desktop and life is so much better.
So far I've been playing with Linux on my old work laptop and they've been playing together nicely. Almost everything else about the laptop? No. But hey at least graphics works.
A common issue with those hybrid graphics is that it simply doesn't switch and only uses one. Are you sure you're not just using either integrated graphics or your dedicated GPU all the time?
Oh trust me, I know pretty quickly when that 3080 turns on and when it turns back off. Hybrid graphics is what I've been fiddling with the most.
Probably not the kind of hardware you're thinking of but I have an old Roland synthesizer, an Edirol SD-90, that did not work on Linux. Now, I didn't expect it to given the hoops I had to jump through just to get it to work on modern windows. So Linux seemed out of the question already. But can be a big deal depending on what you use your computer for.
There's this printer that I wanna use for my job but when I went through the process of connecting it the driver wasn't listed among the massive amount of options. So I gotta print using a work computer instead of my laptop 😪
I had an issue with an old Lenovo X260 laptop. The onboard bluetooth device was showing as not being present if the wireless device was loaded. I could have one or the other, but not both. BT/Wifi was being supplied by the same M.2 card, so as soon as a module loaded (the wireless loaded first I guess) it prevented it from being used by another module. I'm not sure if there was an actual fix to that, though. I had a spare USB bluetooth dongle so I just ran that instead.
nvidia cards are always giving people grief, especially on Wayland. Technically supported but practically not recommended if you want an easy time
I always hear this, but I've been using Nvidia with Linux since 2004 and have never had any issues.
I've had mixed experiences myself. Sometimes it works, sometimes it randomly breaks. I just wouldn't recommend it to someone who wants it to "just work" and be stable and not do maintenance. For me, I'm someone who's happy to do maintenance, but I don't want that to extend to my graphics card, which in this day and age ought to just work.
i have more problems with them on x11 honestly
If you have a GTX 10xx card or later, their are virtually no issue with Wayland anymore. I have two PC with nvidia cards and had almost 0 issue with gnome plasma and hyprland in the last two years.
Sadly I bought my PC before switching to Linux was on the agenda. And I don't have the money to change to AMD.
Also my Ricoh SP211SU Laser printer is not supported, my workaround is using Windows via VirtualBox if I need to print anything.
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
iPhones
doesn't it have a unix like core like os x?
Unlike Linux.
That's bsd based.
The lack of support seems very daunting at first.
I started thinking "Oh I wish I could transition to Linux, away from Windows, but what about the latest hardware or random gadget?"
The trick is to flip the question around, namely not "Does my current hardware work with Linux?" but rather "Am I sure my next hardware work well with Linux BEFORE I buy it?" then this remove 99% of headaches. It's typically 1 Web search away from either a lot of complaints or positive feedback... or not much, and then it's up to you to see if you are ready for an adventure. If there is not much but there is some standard interface, e.g. Bluetooth, and no need for a proprietary application, it's nearly sure the main features will work. If a proprietary application is needed, then safer to avoid.
So.... yes maybe surprisingly a LOT of hardware does work well with Linux!
What does not work for me, to give a random example, is the LED controller of my desktop case, which I bought several years ago while Windows was still my main OS. I didn't put a lot of effort into it, cf https://gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB/-/issues/1683 but the recent article posted on this instance, namely https://lemmy.ml/post/32389687 makes me want to give it another go at some point!
This is my plan going forward. Linux wasn't on my radar when I bought my laptop (and my PC but that's a different story about just being scared to try since I use it for work and I'm not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).
I got a wicked sale on a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, and of course a few months after I started cutting BIg Tech out of my life (I was an idiot for buying Samsung to begin with but too late now haha). No more Meta, Amazon, or Google accounts or devices for me, and all I have left of Big Tech is Microsoft on my laptop and PC. I tried Mint as my first Linux attempt, and put it on my Samsung laptop. It...didn't play well unfortunately. I've read Bazzite may work better but haven't tried it yet.
Moral of the story, you nailed it. Going forward every bit of tech I buy will be vetted for FOSS support first.
Neat! Two quick things :
I’m not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).
Feel free to ask here. I might not know alternatives but others could, no matter how niche.
Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra [...] didn’t play well unfortunately
Same advice. I don't have one of these but what fails and how? Any specific error message?
As far as my main PC, I'm a freelance voice actor, artist, and musician. My main concern is recording software and to a lesser extent, art software (I've tried Inkscape, but it's a hard transition from photoshop). For recording I really don't like Reaper, and I use Audition (I know, Adobe, haha) and Cubase for music which unfortunately doesn't have a Linux option.
As per the laptop, it had some standard driver issues which were no big deal but apparently Mint doesn't play well with Nvidia graphics cards. The webcam didn't work but that's a semingly standard issue. The biggest thing was Samsung chips and such from what I read really don't play well with Linux, or at least Mint.
From the olden days: winmodem
I bought an external Hayes 56k modem and suddenly Windows was a memory. Happy days.
I remember the old ADSL modems where effectively winmodems. I had to keep a Windows ME machine as my household router until the point the community had reversed engineered them enough to get them working on Linux.
At least they where usb based rather than some random card. I think the whole driver could work in user space.
The touchpad in the Lenovo 300e is not supported; although the touchscreen does work. I use mouse which is fine most of the time, but it would be nice if the touchpad would be supported one day.
I had issues with brand new hardware. Had to use testing on debian to get proper resolution.
On the peripheral end, ElGato. You can usually get their stuff to work but they provide little to no support, usually have issues to work out, and you'll always be relying on third party replacements for their software.
I got a stream deck plus with the xlr dock, since even though I quit content creation I like what it provides and have no reason to downgrade my mic, but the thing has been a headache and a half ever since I switched to cachyOS.
Some useful stuff for some laptops - worth checking if you're buying one for linux:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Category:Laptops
Also this - i guess this is the inverse question though:
Many cheap chinese web cameras from non know brands,really problematic to make work printers which older from 2015 for example canon ,Lexmark cause they use proprietary communication protocols and thus drivers for inux or exist in shitty state which would not work on modern system but worked on Ubuntu from 2012 or not driver not exist at all and so on other very specific type of devices
There is the gutenprint project supplying drivers for a lot of older printer models.