Over the years, I’ve watched as Linux hardware support slowly caught up with proprietary operating systems and, later on, surpassed them altogether thanks to modern Ubuntu drivers, as well as drivers for other distros. Video card, sound card and peripheral support have all seen a massive evolution since the earliest days of Linux on the desktop.
However, despite these gains, some problematic vendors still don’t make using Linux very easy. And even though Linux maintains the largest database of retroactive older hardware support in existence, Windows still has some vendors making difficult drivers for select hardware.
In this article, I’ll share tips and tricks for avoiding hardware selection headaches, while also ensuring that the hardware you’re choosing has usable Ubuntu drivers available.