Linux DevCenter: What if Hardware Vendors are Trapped Too?

“Want some frustration? Buy a piece of hardware with ‘Linux
support’ and try to use it on anything besides x86 GNU/Linux. If
you’re fortunate enough to choose a device for which there exists
free drivers, you’ll have much more luck. Often, recompiling is all
that’s necessary–and if you use a modern distribution, you may not
even have to compile it yourself.

“Otherwise, you may be in for days of fun trying to explain that
the Linux kernel and almost any piece of software you can run on
x86 works just fine on PPC, or that FreeBSD or OpenSolaris or all
of the other open and stable free operating systems can do much the
same…”

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