Shopping For Linux Compatible Hardware

[deanjo]

Motherboards might work well to in the store, but CPUs or Hard Drives and other components may not since they'll always work in Linux. Never seen a "Windows-only" CPU before.

Actually there are few external hd's that will not work properly in *nix ( a few seagate and wd's IIRC). Also sometimes the USB to IDE/SATA chip can be incompatible with linux.

[eugene2k]

Another option is to add comments to Newegg product pages, and insert links to your website for more details. Maybe Newegg would be willing to add a "Linux Compatible" checkbox in their search tool, and you could tag items appropriately.

Amazon isn't a bad idea, but I will generally buy the hardware I want from the cheapest and most reputable store I can. Even if you create a great Linux hardware store, you might have trouble selling your inventory. People will just use the site to find what works, then buy it elsewhere.

BTW, newegg has an affiliate program:
http://www.newegg.com/Info/Affiliates.aspx

Here's a thought: make an on-line store, that would offer the cheapest deal between stores such as newegg and amazon (in other words stores that offer affiliate programs) or even ebay (they too have an affiliate program). You can ask people on the forums which websites they use to buy hardware, and perhaps if those websites don't have an affiliate program - email them and offer that

[netsurf]

i think the idea was to make some money from the service using referral links. So that donations and the such weren't needed or relied on so much. could you make money out of the proposed HCL? linux questions has one too you see..

[eugene2k]

Yes, if rather than having users add links to newegg et al., you add them yourself

[Ghnuberath]

I think this is an excellent idea. I recently "shopped" for Linux-compatible hardware by looking at other people's benchmarks on Phoronix Global (searching for the processor I was interested in and recording the various system configurations - particularly motherboards - that came up). It'd be great to have something dedicated to this purpose!

[b15hop]

This is a question I've always Pondered. Linux has been missing this for over a decade!

For instance, Imagine a real time database driven website that visually advocates Linux friendly hardware. Be it on specific distros or kernel version etc.. All the details could be finely thought out and easily accessible.

Ie:

A rating of compatibility:

• What drivers are available: Binary Blob, Open Source, etc...?
• What kernel versions are supported, 2.6, 2.4 etc...?
• Maybe a star rating showing how well this hardware is supported overall?
• Cost and country specific availability.
• User comments / reviews ala Amazon with it's rating system...
• Links to various external information ala Wikipedia references: Ie drivers etc...
• Performance in Linux, since fast hardware in windows != fast hardware in Linux.
  
  • Infact even a comparison since some people duel boot.
  
  

Maybe more features could be thought of? Hey, you could even start your own computer business selling LINUX hardware! =D Or was that your intention.. haha

I'm not 100% confident with say Amazon. As I'm seeing this as an external medium. People can buy hardware all over the place. Though I'm sure competition would arise on Amazon once a website is initialised. That might not be a bad thing.

Be carefull though. Money could be offered by companies to uprate their product. ~~here is *big wad of money* because our product is just so awesome... hint hint~~ Or poor review killed us, SUE! ... I'd be annoyed about that.

Go for it!

[laurencevde]

I'd love to see entire linux-running systems, especially laptops. No more windows-tax , and not having to go through the difficulty of getting the system installed and perfectly working. Oh, and as you won't have to worry about windows-support, you could also start doing things normal vendors won't do, like using coreboot
And ARM-based devices...

[seba]

this is a great a idea

[deanjo]

Well a couple of questions I have is:

As far as this goes, how is this any different then the existing HCL's out there other then a link to the product for amazon? The biggest problem with this kind of list is keeping them up to date. Say someone has a piece of hardware that is not yet supported by linux but 3-4 months is, who is going to guarantee that the review, link, compatibility is up to date? Fedora and opensuse for example already uses smolt for checking if a piece of hardware is supported. I like the idea (although I admit I find shopping locally much cheaper then through newegg or amazon) but the biggest problem is that many of these attempts never go back to update the reviews and product once a product is supported.

http://www.smolts.org/reports/device_ratings

[macemoneta]

If you're going to do this, only products that have 100% functionality with mainline in-kernel drivers (kernel.org) should be listed.

Anything else just becomes a variable crap-shoot.

For example, Nvidia cards are out (3D not working), Broadcom chipsets in WiFi and Bluetooth, etc.

I don't need / want to know what will work with proprietary drivers.

This will also provide an incentive to manufacturers to get off their rear ends and get their drivers upstream.