“Linux supported hardware” is an outdated phrase only used in windows propaganda today.
System 76, Tuxedo Linux, Mint, and several other Linux developing OEMs I can think of exist?..
Absolutely not.
Signed, owner of half-supported hardware.
What Linux kernel are you running which isn’t supporting your hardware?
My case: I have an nvidia GTX 980. It’s old but it’s what I have.
Nvidia dropped its support from driver version 595.
Driver 580 is what I need, it worked until 7.0 but no longer in 7.1 (was using Fedora 44). Since my hardware is old I switched to Debian Trixie.
Another example is the facetime HD Webcam of macbook pro: to make it work you have to install OSx or download a recovery image, compile a C program to extract a specific binary blob, then use that blob to recompile the driver on your kernel.
There are lots of examples: it’s a big world, with lots of hardware and mostly no producer interested in the Linux world.
This depends a bit on the distro you are using. Like in arch you should not use the proprietary drivers for older cards but the open ones. My guess is there are some community drivers you should use instead.
you mean the nouveau driver? the one that is unable to up the frequencies from the minimum because it is not signed by nvidia? it may work as a display output, but not much else
Even if you happen to use older NVidia cards from before they started doing signed firmware blobs the experience is miserable.
Nouveau has 0 dynamic power management, so the only way to change clocks speeds is via a debug interface in /sys/.
Everytime you change clock speeds the driver can crash. And while some software does become usable it tends to be very unstable because some features are just not implemented or only half-implemented, leading to graphical glitches and unpredictable behaviour.It’s a shame because I really feel like nouveau could be a great piece of software, but unfortunately nobody is working on it anymore.
😆😂🤣 Are you kidding? Have you tried using nouveau? It works, sure, but you can’t play games that are even vaguely modern and if something uses up a bit too much RAM the entire display system starts jittering/lagging or becomes unresponsive. Source: I ran nouveau with a GTX 2080 for years. I was only able to fully ditch Windows once I fully ditched Nvidia (by switching to an AMD GPU and scrubbing every last vestige of Nvidia’s bullshit off my PC).
For desktop? Probably. For laptop, linux support can be awful, because manufacturers keep introducing hardware that don’t support standard drivers. Webcam? How about an IPU6 that needs kernel modules just to be detected and then special calibration files just so the image is not a stripey corrupted mess… How about no on-board sound because screw you I guess. How about a non standard USB controller so that you cannot even communicate over your USB ethernet dongle when the wifi is once again some special sauce non standard shit…
These are Dell and Lenovo Yoga machines at the University I work at. Some are absolute garbage where the USB is always powered and will drain the battery when the computer is turned off and no BIOS setting will disable this.
We are now looking into Tuxedo and Framework…
PS.: even windows has issues with these, where you have no touchpad and no USB anything (mouse, keyboard) until you somehow install a driver…
Yeah laptop hardware is garbage to deal with
Psht. I wish! This is wrong and will set people up for failure. There is absolutely hardware that will work well with Linux and hardware that will not.
I tend to run into problems with brand new laptops. Microphones don’t work, web cams don’t work, fingerprint readers don’t work.
I have a Dell Dell Pro next to me with a web cam that doesn’t work. Arch, btw.
I also have a Lenovo T14 where everything does work.
The point is you have to RESEARCH before you buy. Otherwise, you’re gonna get mad a Linux for not supporting your hardware, instead of being mad at yourself for not researching first.
Hardware that’s too old is problematic and hardware that’s too new can be problematic.
And unsurprisingly my framework laptop works perfectly under Linux
Wait, it isn’t the point to nuke “spy equipment” with a new OS?
No, the point is not to nuke it. One point is to have control over your own hardware and (in principle) be able to make sure the software/OS is not using your devices to spy on you.
Unfortunately this is not true. If manufacturers do not support Linux, then it is up to dedicated community members to reverse engineer drivers. Much love to these amazing people ❤️
Things have gotten much better in recent years because now Linux is seen as a legitimate operating system and not just a platform for hobbyists.
except when the manufacturer puts effort into locking out reverse engineers through cryptography.
fuck you, nvidia!
Different disks if you must at all.
2 separate bootloader partitions. Grub launches the windows bootloader on a different partition so it isn’t aware of anything other than itself. Then the 2nd bootloader actually launches windows. Don’t try to share one partition or else windows will inevitably wind up clobbering the Linux loader.
Windows will know, its lik a cancer
This assumes windows is not maliciously checking for other bootloaders in order to fuck with them, which I’m not willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt on tbh.
It does work.
If you have two EFI partitions, Windows will stop looking once it finds the first one.
Which is actually a problem sometimes, as it will stop looking and use the first one it finds, even if it’s on different drive than windows.
Imagine installing windows on a machine with two drives. Drive A already has an OS and an EFI partition, so you install Windows to drive B.
Except Windows will still go ahead and drop the bootloader onto drive A. Potentially breaking the OS that’s there, plus setting up Windows in such a way that it requires drive A to boot. EVEN THOUGH THAT ISN’T WHERE YOU INSTALLED IT.
This is why guides tell you to install windows with only one drive connected. It’s the only way to ensure it puts the bootloader and OS on the same drive.
I have found that removing the EFI flag from the partition also works. I just choose which is easier, since removing some nvme SSDs can be buried under a few components depending on the motherboard
Grub refers to this as chainloading and I did it years ago successfully (though with windows 10). Everything has to be EFI boot so grub can see the windows bootloader.
This is the way. I just discovered this, but the lazy way. If I want windows, I mash f8 on startup to get the manual boot selection. I never start windows through grub (systemd-boot in my case). It has its own EFI partition.
My gaming PC dual boots Debian and Ubuntu
Kirk : I use a computer with an AI assistant and 1 gb of free ram. How about you?
Homer : I have a normal computer that lets me do what I want with my hardware.
Dual booting us viable, if you’re curious its good to try linux via dual boot. Windows doesnt break the linux bootloader. The incident referencing was a bug I believe. I know plenty of people who’ve been dual booting for 2+ years keeping both OSs up to date with no issue.
I have had Windows update completely obliterate my Linux partitions at least twice.
Do you remember if its happened in the past 2 years? A patch windows put out in 2024 is supposed to fix this.
No, I jist run straight Linux (Laptop) or straight Windows (Desktop) now. I don’t have a need to dual boot anymore.
If I didn’t play Fortnite so much I wouldn’t run Windows at all honestly.
I’ve had windows nuke my bootloader at least thrice. Stopped dual booting a few years ago so I’m free of that nonsense.
That wasn’t “an incident.” The notion of Windows breaking Linux’s bootloader has been a known thing for at least a decade.
I have had it break my bootloader when I was dual booting, if it wasn’t my main pc then I might risk it but I’m not rolling the dice on if windows decides to break it again.
Still it’s a really good idea to keep a rescue USB drive handy, for when windows decides to update it’s boot loader and blitzes your setup
I believe dual boot is more feasible when you have more than one drive, so you don’t risk corrupting it. Another option to test a Linux distribution would be using virtual machines
If you’re just testing a distro, then a live-bootable USB is also a great option.
My bootloader has survived just fine despite being dual boot for the past 2 years. It may have something to do with me only having booted windows once in all that time (to fix a borked NTFS drive) 😁
That certainly helps.
In my case the solution is two EFI partitions.
Windows finds the first and doesn’t bother looking for a second one, which happens to contain grub and my efistubs.
Windows will go ahead and clear the UEFI menu sometimes, but manually booting an efi file and then re-adding the grub and stub boot entries is small compared to having my stuff actually deleted.
Only evil if you use one disk. :)
I’d had a dedicated windows drive for a little while… Maybe a bug and not malice, but the forced Windows 8 -> 10 upgrade deleted everything on my second drive that windows wasn’t installed on
The Windows installer partition manager also does not ask for confirmation before formatting a drive. That was a costly misclick
tbh if you notice it early, it probably only deleted th partition table entry at that point
I needed to know this about 5 years ago, when I lost a partition on my SSD because of a poorly done dual boot.
i’ve quadbooted a lot before (linux/freebsd/osx/windows), it works pretty well these days with uefi. was pretty hard to handle with legacy bios though
Why no Plan9? Are you even an OS enthusiast?
What no TempleOS? YOU’LL BURN IN FLAMES!!!
lol. i only tried 9front like once but it was too difficult!
I wish it has more hardware support, it doesn’t even run on my hardware
Put Windows in a virtual machine where it belongs!
Windows does stupid things with boot because it’s apparently alone in the world.
Like this NTFS lock up thing because it’s not really shutting down anymore but going into hibernate.
I had to change that setting but other than that dual boot works. Just realized that’s still win 10 on this machine. When that runs out time for fresh Linux only install.
The reason I just overwrote the Windows partition, instead of futzing with fixing dual boot was GDID. MSFTs global ID that tracks, literally, everything you do.
If you bought a store laptop, I’d bet those configuration signatures were recorded when it got imaged… for the police of course.
My second-hand laptop I bought for cash at some garage sale is looking pretty good right about now…
Microsoft’s boot killing shenanigans convinced me to just scrub the taint of 11 off this time.
This might be the most dweeby thing I’ve seen. I love it :)
666 upvotes
Now that Windows isn’t being updated anymore (unless you enroll for extended security updates), can this still happen?
