On 29 Sep 2016, at 11:56, Martin Kühne via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> wrote:
Honestly, though, "worked for you to this day" just doesn't cut it in this case. Just because you were lucky or never had to deal with really new hardware doesn't mean hardware compatibility is not an issue. And the rarer the case of incompatibility appears, the more disappointing it actually is when it hits you, and I guess we all agree that a bit of accumulated data about how to avoid them as much as possible is a good start.
"Worked for you this day", "you were lucky "…? I am talking of 100+ Linux installations on different hardware over the last few years. Not just one or two lucky cases. And sometimes it was very new hardware, like WiFi-Chips that were released a few weeks ago. But hey, I don't even disagree with the idea of aggregating hardware data that works. I guess running a wiki page on that really is a good idea. I just wanted to say that Linux compatibility Isn't that bad as often assumed, and I don' know why. I often hear people talking like: "Hey, watch out that this new external HDD is Linux certified", "when you buy new hardware, you really have to make sure that it's Linux compatible, because it often isn't". I wanted to give an example that People are offen overcautious with that, and that companies may abuse this misbelief to make money by selling regular hardware as "Linux compatible" at higher prices. And after all, we shouldn't scare off new soon-to-be Linux users with these old scars of hardware compatibility, should we? ;)