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Sure, Linux Can Talk to That

I'm growing increasingly dismayed by the widely held belief out there that Linux's hardware support still sucks. I just can't follow the logic anymore, and I'm hoping that if I have a huge blind spot, my readers will rush to my aid and help me understand.

But first, an anecdote: Last Friday I left PC World HQ and wasn't even a block away when I noticed a laser printer sitting atop a trash can. In the printer's output tray was a single sheet of paper, and scrawled on it were the words "Free (works fine)." Whoa, free printer! Score! So I took the thing home, cleaned it off (judging from the grime, this poor device had been printing in someone's backyard for a long while), plugged it in, and fired it up. I told Linux what make and model the printer was, and almost immediately had a glorious test page printed. At no point was I asked for a driver disc. That just never happens with Linux. Either the system knows how to talk to your latest device, or it doesn't. And more likely than not, it does.

Another anecdote: A colleague bought himself one of those nifty new 80GB iPods. But the first machine he plugged it into was his Mac Mini at home--so the iPod's hard drive got formatted with the Macintosh file system. No problem if you continue plugging that iPod into Macs, but the moment you plug it into a Windows-based PC, you're up a creek: Windows can't read a Macintosh-formatted drive.

I wanted to see if my Ubuntu Linux-based laptop could talk to this iPod. I assumed it would be able to, since Macintosh file system support is included in the Linux kernel. Lo and behold, we plugged the iPod in, and Rhythmbox popped up, displaying the music collection on the device.

Linux's ability to deal smartly with hardware of all kinds is even leading to some features you won't find in other operating systems, Free or commercial. One example: The power management layer on Gnome-based Linux distributions is being altered to automatically detect whether your notebook houses a doomed battery that can explode into flames without notice. Future Linuxes will pop up a dialog box alerting you to the potential danger.

More data points:

• Go out and buy a printer. Pretty much any printer at all. Betcha it works with Linux, especially if it's an Epson or an HP.
• Go out and buy a digital camera. If it emulates a USB mass-storage device when plugged into a PC (most do), Linux can talk to it. If it doesn't, Linux can still probably talk to it.
• Go out and buy the latest 3D graphics card from ATI or nVidia. Linux will be able to talk to it. If you insist on 100 percent Free Software all the time, you won't get 3D support (only 2D); but if you're willing to settle on a vendor-supplied binary-only driver, then yes, you'll get the 3D capabilities you paid for.
• Go out and buy an iPod. Linux will talk to it. Buy an iPod clone that follows the USB mass-storage standard, and you still have no problem.
• Go out and buy a PDA or a smart phone that runs the Palm OS or Microsoft's Pocket PC software. You'll find that Linux can talk to those devices.
• Go out and buy a wireless card for your older laptop that doesn't have Wi-Fi built-in. Linux can probably talk to it, and if it can't, it has a means of using the vendor-supplied Windows driver that came with the card. NdisWrapper will more than likely make the card work.
• USB keyboards and mice? Check. Multimedia keyboards with all the extra, wacky keys? Check. USB key chain drives? Check. Monitors of all shapes and sizes? No problem. Sound cards? Hardly a worry.

If I'm overstating the case in any of these instances, I am doing so unwittingly, and not because I'm an unabashed Linux cheerleader. So, in all honesty, I toss this question out to the Free Agent readership: What hardware devices are out there that still won't work with Linux?

Matthew Newton is PC World's QA engineer and unofficial Linux guru. If you're new to Linux and are feeling a bit lost in one way or another, drop him a line and let him know what's vexing you. Or, speak Freely in the Comments section below!