Ubuntu hardware compatibility

When you buy a computer from a retailer, you expect everything to be working, all the hardware to be installed properly with all the necessary drivers.  It works.  Wonderful.  But then you buy a printer, or a web cam, or a scanner, and you expect that to work as well.  After all, you bought the computer expecting to add peripherals to it, or at least use the ones you already have.  You knew when you bought it that you would eventually add on something and you expected it all to work.

The problem with this expectation is that in order to talk to hardware, an operating system such as Windows needs a small program called a device driver, typically written by the hardware manufacturer.  If the driver is compatible with the operating system, for example the Vista Home version of Windows, then all will be well and the device should work.

But there are very many devices around.  Some of them were released before Vista or Windows 7 was released, and the drivers that came in the box might no longer be appropriate.  And that's the problem very many people face.  They have an older computer, or an older printer, and want to connect it to something else and they find themselves looking at compatibility issues, and driver updates.

Windows Vista was notorious for not having sufficient driver support on its release.  The information available to hardware manufacturers before Vista came out, left them struggling to write the drivers in time.  Those who managed it, often had to rewrite them to accommodate late changes in Windows.

Any operating system will have to cope with the driver problem and so it expects drivers written to interface with it.  To support a range of hardware it needs to have preinstalled a set of typical drivers.  If the operating system is stable and well-understood, the drivers will be supplied in good time and will be well-tested.  If the operating system code is open to developers for inspection, the drivers will be more reliable and they will benefit from scrutiny by a larger number of developers.  And that's the case with Ubuntu.

Are Ubuntu drivers obtainable?

Of course, hardware manufacturers will provide drivers for the most popular operating systems because they want their devices to sell well.  By providing Microsoft with their drivers, hardware manufacturers can advertise their products as Windows ready.  It takes additional effort to provide drivers for other operating systems such as Ubuntu.

But the hardware manufacturers are not alone in this endeavour.  There is an open source community which also has an interest in ensuring that drivers are available.  Some companies simply hand over the relevant details of their hardware to the community who then obligingly produce the Ubuntu drivers for them.  Where the likely sales in the Ubuntu market are small, this is highly cost effective for the manufacturer - they get access to the market just by being nice!

If there is any hardware available for which you cannot find drivers, it is almost always the case that you can obtain them via the support forums. If you need to check for specific hardware, there are extensive lists of supported hardware available on the Ubuntu support site.

Are there exceptions?

Yes.  As with every operating system, there will be devices for which the drivers don't work very well.  In the case of Ubuntu though, the only devices I have found with driver problems are built-in wireless cards in the cheaper laptops.

Some wireless cards, especially those produced by Broadcom, suffered major problems with Ubuntu with many users reporting dropped links or an inability to connect at all.  Broadcom did not release the necessary details for the open source community to write working drivers and so an alternative approach had to be used.

There is software stored inside a chip on the wireless card, called firmware.  This is natively designed to work with Windows drivers.  The good folks in the open source community analysed how this firmware was used, wrote programs to extract it and use it directly.  Another group developed a means of using the equivalent Windows driver, and wrapping it in code so that it would still work on Ubuntu.  Both approaches had some, but not total, success.

Some users, myself included, simply ditched the Broadcom card and used either a USB plug-in wireless connector or a PCMCIA wireless card for the laptop.  In either case, the problem goes away.

Do I end up working with the command line?

Whenever a user faces some detailed configuration problem, there comes a point at which you start looking into the depths of the machine.  On Windows, you might find yourself having to look at the Registry settings, or manually editing some files.  Often, although you are told that you can use some configuration program in Windows, it doesn't work, and you end up doing manual configuration work.

It's the same with Ubuntu.  Sometimes, in order to install a driver, you will need to follow some instructions in the Terminal, the equivalent of the Windows Command window.  Of course, the syntax is different from Windows, but if you can follow basic instructions and type what you are told, you can carry out any necessary steps.

Overall?

Ubuntu supports a massive range of hardware and most manufacturers provide drivers for their hardware.  Where the hardware is not immediately available, it is almost always available online.  Ubuntu works with far more hardware out of the box than either XP or Vista.  There is a common assumption that hardware will be more compatible with Windows but this simply isn't born out by experience.  Although there is massive publicity associated with Windows, there are also millions of people experiencing compatibility problems.  Ubuntu has an excellent track record of compatibility with free helpful community support to resolve any problems.  You only need to experience the frustration of a Microsoft helpline once to understand the value of this community.

If you are concerned about compatibility with Ubuntu, it is worthwhile using Google to track any known problems, just as you would with Vista.  With the exception of cheap built-in wireless cards, compatibility is not a major problem.