Some MediaTek WiFi cards are not supported. I had to replace one in a laptop.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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I replaced a Realtek one because it constantly dropped connections. Luckily, this was one of the type of fixes that actually turned out to be easier than it looked.
Yeah I got a USB wifi dongle that's a bit tricky. It doesn't work out of the box in most distros but there is drivers for it that do work, fairly well.
Not technically hardware itself but Nvidia + Intel hybrid graphics have never really worked for me
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.
Anybody ever get Winmodems to work or did they all give up on it?
Back in the day, it was hard enough getting dialup internet working on Linux (especially before you had internet in your pocket, so you had to print out HowTos or write down a bunch of notes before you tried to do it).
But it was downright impossible with a class of modems that was designed essentially as a softmodem, heavily reliant on closed-source firmware and drivers, making them practically impossible to work on Linux.
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.
Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.
Not sure if it technically counts as fingerprint readers but using my YubiKey Bio daily, for login on my desktop and WebAuthN and... 0 problem.
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.
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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.
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Is there a broadcom firmware package you need to install? I have NEVER gotten away with neglecting that step on a broadcom card.
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.
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.
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.
i have more problems with them on x11 honestly
Sadly I bought my PC before switching to Linux was on the agenda. And I don't have the money to change to AMD.
Don't be too sad, I'm playing and working daily with an NVIDIA for years now and it's just working.
Internal HDMI capture cards are barely supported, there are some professional brands like blackmagic that have support but nearly all consumer grade capture cards are not supported at all, because the companies who make them don't care about Linux.
USB based capture cards often work because they use the same standard protocols as USB cameras.
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!
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iPhones
If you mean interoperability there is https://libimobiledevice.org/ but honestly compared to what KDE Connect can offer with Android phones it's just ... lame.
"Working" is not what I would call that. The "Features" list is full of broken stuff and only 1 works and 1 partial.
Booting, yes. Working, not really.
I stand corrected.
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Certain less well known smaller brands might not work as too few people know the HW
Same goes for very specialized hardware, if it wasn't on Linux to begin with, it probably won't work
Also my Ricoh SP211SU Laser printer is not supported, my workaround is using Windows via VirtualBox if I need to print anything.
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.
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