raymac46 Posted June 17, 2016 Share Posted June 17, 2016 (edited) In my several years of using Linux I had some pretty standard working beliefs about choosing the right hardware and you'd always be OK. Lately though.... Can't go wrong with Atheros wifi..we had an incredible thread here lately where we could not get an Atheros wifi card to work at all with a Manjaro - or for that matter Debian - distro. Now there looks to be a recurring problem with Atheros AC ath10k drivers requiring firmware now which may or may not be installed properly in a given ISO. The other day I got a copy of the latest Linux Mint 18 Beta and it worked fine with one ath9k Atheros card I have and failed in a second desktop with a different ath9k supported Atheros chipset. If not Atheros then Realtek...I had great luck with the tiny Realtek wif USB dongles in older versions of Linux. Lately though the drivers for these have come under heavy development with the latest kernels and so I have stopped using them until things get sorted out in a few months - or not. Broadcom sucks - avoid..except Broadcom gives you 2-3 ways to get its wifi working now - firmware for old cards, a proprietary driver, even a FOSS driver for the later N series of chipsets. What used to drive you nuts now often works right from the get-go. Not enough to turn me into a Broadcom fanboi yet but... For video choose Nvidia....no, AMD...no, Nvidia...despite the well known feud with Linus, Nvidia did and does make a great proprietary Linux driver. However AMD had taken over as king of the FOSS driver category. Then AMD deprecated its proprietary driver and tried to fuse open source and closed source into the latest amdgpu code. The problem is - it doesn't work yet for many of AMD's recent video cards. A whole generation of recent Linux ISOs are totally borked unless you have a very old or bleeding edge AMD card. So it's back to Nvidia - just don't expect the FOSS Nouveau Nvidia driver to work all the time. Oy... Well I still think HP is the way to go for printing and scanning. I think...I think...I think... Edited June 17, 2016 by raymac46 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 17, 2016 Share Posted June 17, 2016 Don't know about Atheros, et. al., but Broadcom certainly vacuums. Nvidia is the way! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 New hardware has always been a crapshoot given that new drivers/firmware often need to be written by devs, or supplied by the maker. Catch up time can be weeks, years, or never. CPUs are another point, eg. Skylake needs a very recent kernel and firmware for its graphics to work properly. I also have had a good run with Nvidia and never used anything else. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. J Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 Hmm, I've got a Broadcom wireless card in my Lenovo and it's never given me any real grief. The broadcom-wl firmware package (or something along those lines - varies by distribution) always has it working pretty good. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 Well I still think HP is the way to go for printing and scanning. I think...I think...I think... I'd have to agree with that Ray! HP is awesome with their linux support/drivers. I always give HP first crack at selling me new hardware when I'm looking to buy. But I've also had pretty good luck with Epson and Brother AIO products. The Epson Workforce products WF-26xx etc... are widely available in WalMarts, Staples, etc.. at price points of $50-$100 (depending on models, sales, etc...) and work WONDERFULLY with linux! But HP makes pretty much EVERYTHING linux-compatible, so they're still King of the Hill in my view! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 (edited) It's not that Broadcom hardware is bad. It's their nasty drivers that cause issues for many Linux distributions. Getting wifi to work in any Dell that used a Broadcom card has always been a pain in the posterior in Slackware. I've done it so many times, though, that it's no big deal for me to compile and install those drivers these days. Nightmare in the past, though. HP is almost plug 'n' play with Linux. I love HP. . Edited June 19, 2016 by V.T. Eric Layton 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted June 19, 2016 Author Share Posted June 19, 2016 I believe that the hardware choices above are still GENERALLY good ones - there is always a way to get them working if you choose an appropriate kernel and distro. The hardware I'm working with is quite vintage - my newest desktop is now nearly 3 years old and I built it with older tech at the time. If I have trouble with the latest kernels and rolling releases I can still choose something like LM 17 or Debian stable and I should be OK. Boring but usable. I just hope AMD can sort out this amdgpu mess though. They were doing such a fine job with their radeon driver. I think by making just one good FOSS driver for their cards AMD is doing the right thing. Now if they can only do the thing right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt.Crow Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 I must agree with Eric re HP being plug and play with Slackware . I finally got round to swapping out the old ide drives for the sata . Right from the get go everything just slid into place even my glitchy wireless modem . The only small problem was the Firefox browser playing videos . Sorted now This is the first time I used the proprietary Slackware 14.1 disc and I am so well pleased that I spent the few euros for the disc and book . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 The hardware I'm working with is quite vintage - my newest desktop is now nearly 3 years old and I built it with older tech at the time. If I have trouble with the latest kernels and rolling releases I can still choose something like LM 17 or Debian stable and I should be OK. Boring but usable. Haha. Mine is a 2008 Core2Duo E8500. Works perfectly with 4.5.x kernels. I've upgrade SSD, RAM and graphics, but even the GTX970 came out 2 years ago so it's "vintage tech" now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 20, 2016 Share Posted June 20, 2016 I must agree with Eric re HP being plug and play with Slackware . I finally got round to swapping out the old ide drives for the sata . Right from the get go everything just slid into place even my glitchy wireless modem . The only small problem was the Firefox browser playing videos . Sorted now This is the first time I used the proprietary Slackware 14.1 disc and I am so well pleased that I spent the few euros for the disc and book . Further Slackware help, including the full Slackware Book downloadable in .pdf format. --> docs.slackware.com 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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