Proprietary drivers

[Jeff Haran]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kernelnewbies-bounces at kernelnewbies.org [mailto:kernelnewbies-
> bounces at kernelnewbies.org] On Behalf Of Ali Aminian
> Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2014 1:10 PM
> To: Kernelnewbies at kernelnewbies.org
> Subject: Proprietary drivers
> 
...
> And also how can i find linux certified laptop. i mean a laptop  that has all its
> driver in linux source tree. 

This seems to be quite a challenge even today. The last time I was in the market for a laptop (early 2014), I did some research first and decided on a Lenovo since they had a rep for good Linux support.

Even then I had to install 3 different distros (1 Suse and 2 Ubuntus) before I arrived at one that supported the hardware (and in the case of one of the Ubuntus would actually make it through the installation without hanging, repeatedly). In my case it wasn't the graphics that was the problem. It was the wireless and/or Ethernet.

I suspect the best bet these days is buy the laptop, put it in a box for a couple of months then try to install the latest version of your favorite distro. This gives the distros time to catch up with all the new, ever-so-slightly-different-and-thus-not-supported-by-current-Linux-drivers-but-5-cents-per-part-cheaper hardware they put in these things.

Jeff Haran