7 ms·

Linux Hardware Database

121 points by auraham 5y ago

jeffbee 5y ago
The selection bias here must be pretty intense, if they are showing Apple with a 10% share of the install base and the MacBook Core 2 Duo from 2006 as the most common model.
- mhitza 5y ago
  If you look at the bottom graph on this page https://linux-hardware.org/?view=cpu_family https://linux-hardware.org/?view=cpu_family interestingly Core 2 Duo doubled in data representation solely this year.
  - linuxbuild 5y ago
    If you click on 'Intel Core 2 Duo' then you can find unusual increase in installs of Debian 11 on old macs and macbooks this month. I guess it's temporary.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Wacky. It's great that Linux extends the useful life of such machines, though.
  - wanderer_ 5y ago
    Too bad I just gutted mine...
  - glowingly 5y ago
    I know it's unmaintained now, but SimpleOSX VM defaulted to a Core 2 Duo. Looks like it's successor also defaults to a Core 2 Duo, though with 2 cores and SMT. https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM That being said, just browsing through that site, it doesn't immediately seem like it's this family of Hackingtosh VMs adding significantly to the list or at all.
    - linuxbuild 5y ago
      VEs are not presented in the database due to hardware identification problem and because people are not so interested in looking for virtual hardware.
freedomben 5y ago
If you're in the market for a Linux computer, this is a great resource for making sure your hardware is compatible. If you're already running Linux, this is a super easy way to contribute info about the hardware you have to help others [1]. For many distros it's already in the repos. For example Fedora: sudo dnf install -y hw-probe Run the hardware probe/report and store it locally in `/root/HW_PROBE/LATEST/hw.info/` (no upload) sudo -E hw-probe -all Run the hardware probe/report and upload it (uses privacy preserving techniques)[2]: sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload [1]: https://linux-hardware.org/?view=howto https://linux-hardware.org/?view=howto [2]: https://linux-hardware.org/?view=howto https://linux-hardware.org/?view=howto See section "Privacy"
- buscoquadnary 5y ago
  Thanks for the advice, just uploaded stats on my Ubuntu 20.04 machine.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  TIL dnf has replaced yum, which replaced urpmi, which wrapped rpm. I swear, every time I use a RPM based distro, there is a new package manager.
  - protomikron 5y ago
    To be fair, dnf replaced yum for quite some time now. However yum is still recognized as a command (but symlinks to dnf).
    - Georgelemental 5y ago
      DNF is itself being replaced: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/MajorUpgradeOfMicrodnf https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/MajorUpgradeOfMicrodn...
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      That probably explains why I didn't know about dnf; I only rarely use CentOS, so if using "yum" worked for basic things, then I wouldn't even have known it was calling dnf.
merlinscholz 5y ago
Why would you test all Ubuntu desktop environments separate? Shouldn’t the hardware support be the same? Shouldn’t the hardware support be the same in a given kernel version?
- noselasd 5y ago
  While kernel support is the first step, userland applications need to take advantage of the hardware for it to be useful. e.g desktop envoronments need to care for how it interacts with touchpads, you want your wireless interface to actually be configurable. You want sane handling of which audio device is the default, and you'd want recognicable names to select them. The list goes on for another mile.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I've had instability issues with specific GNOME or KDE releases in combination with certain drivers (notably, you guessed it, written by NVIDIA) so at least Ubuntu vs Kubuntu matters. My laptop's touchpad only supports proper gestures with Wayland, which means disabling the NVIDIA drivers (or waiting for the next holy grail of GPU drivers, the current ones aren't the promised holy grail yet on laptops) is required for me to get the touchpad working. Because I value the ability to attach an external screen, I've instead switched back to X11, which means no gestures and therefore only partial touchpad functionality. I don't know how much the other versions of Ubuntu differ, they all seem relatively minimal in comparison.
LukeShu 5y ago
If you're a nutjob like me who runs Linux-libre instead of the normal Linux kernel, you'll be interested in checking the h-node database. https://www.h-node.org/ https://www.h-node.org/
kgeist 5y ago
Russian is the second most popular language and the majority of top cities are in Russia. I wonder whether it reflects the real situation or the site is somewhat biased towards Russia for some reason.
- linuxbuild 5y ago
  The same situation for any other snap app in the store, e.g. https://snapcraft.io/vlc https://snapcraft.io/vlc (see map at the bottom of the page). As far as I know, Linux is massively used at the state level in Russia, for example, in schools and universities.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Well either Linux is incredibly popular in Russia or ROSA desktop a Russian distro is almost certainly over represented at 8.6% share. It might do to check if anyone installs hw-probe by default or promotes it to its user base.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Sounds like ROSA probably includes it by default; maybe with a "send your hardware stats in" button. I think I've seen something like that with Ubuntu but I assume it would go to Canonical only.
optymizer 5y ago
I clicked around a bit, but can't understand how would this inform my decision of purchasing a part that's compatible with Linux. Say I search for a laptop graphics card model and find that 4000 people are using it in their builds. That only tells me that it's minimally functional, not that it actually works at full features. For example, it could be the that the video drivers for that card don't support[ 3d acceleration for Linux and people are just fine without it because they don't play games anyway. This info is missing. Basically, I'd think a qualitative approach would be more useful than quantitative approach. I want to know that the thing I buy is going to work properly, not that I was suckered into buying something along with 1000 other people. To give a real example this time, the Wi-Fi card I bought works fine under Windows, but the Broadcom drivers available in the Ubuntu distro didn't work properly at the time, so I had to go the old route of finding drivers that worked and then recompile the kernel modules on every kernel update. It got rather annoying fast. Linux Hardware Database would mark me as a user of this card (which would be correct), but it falsely implies that it's worth buying, which I think it isn't.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I see some little (i) on "works" on some of mine from my report, so perhaps it's more for negative reporting about things that don't work well? Who knows; you never find out about all the issues with any hardware until after you buy it.
  - auraham 5y ago
    I have seen those (i) too on WiFi cards. After checking it, I think it means that such WiFi cards only work with some distros. For example [1], it does not work with Ubuntu 20.04 but it does work with Ubuntu 21.04. [1] http://linux-hardware.org/?id=pci:8086-2725-8086-0024 http://linux-hardware.org/?id=pci:8086-2725-8086-0024
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Distros losing support for hardware makes me sad.
- 5y ago
josteink 5y ago
I see OpenWRT not listed as an available distro. That’s going to quite significantly limit the amount of available HW, no? Is that intentional? If so, why?
awinter-py 5y ago
data collection yes, but there's also a need to crowdfund hardware support this affects oss wifi router OSes, linux on laptops + chromebooks, cell phones, gadgetbridge for fitness trackers, probably many iot devices in the chromebook linux space gallium seems to have lost momentum (the most recent device with full support is from 2018, or 2017 from a well known manufacturer). if you want to run linux on a pixelbook there are stale forks of stale repos, but like 'alsa doesn't work yet' and support doesn't get merged to the kernel committers are always complaining 'we don't have test hardware for this device' (and also they're uncompensated) we should as a community find a way to fund this work. can be hardware donations, paying competent volunteers, and eventually working with hardware vendors directly to answer questions / do signed firmware builds if necessary
teddyh 5y ago
There used to be a site at https://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ https://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ which simply took the output from “lspci -n” and gave you a list of what the names of kernel modules were to load to support that hardware, together, IIRC, with what version of Linux was required. The site was full of user-contributed data from all sorts of devices which you could browse. Sadly, the page no longer exists.
mdp2021 5y ago
It's amazing. Level of gratefulness up to the stars. Would not the "Find computer" tables benefit from a column "OS/Kernel" near the "Probes", especially when the probe is just one? If you want to check how an OS or a kernel fares with a model, you would not want to open them all.
peterfield 5y ago
Great tool - it even shaved 4 years of my thinkpad :) https://i.imgur.com/HdRVr5i.png https://i.imgur.com/HdRVr5i.png
auraham 5y ago
You can also find the Framework laptop in the database on Ubuntu 21.10 [1]. Only one component failed the test (Goodix USB2.0 MISC). The rest of the components are marked as "Works" or "Detected". I am not sure if "Detected" is a good sign. [1] http://linux-hardware.org/?computer=c1410c65e83e http://linux-hardware.org/?computer=c1410c65e83e
- linuxbuild 5y ago
  'Detected' means 'Device is detected, driver is found, but not tested', see https://github.com/linuxhw/hw-probe#operability https://github.com/linuxhw/hw-probe#operability

121 points by auraham 5y ago

The selection bias here must be pretty intense, if they are showing Apple with a 10% share of the install base and the MacBook Core 2 Duo from 2006 as the most common model.

mhitza 5y ago
If you look at the bottom graph on this page https://linux-hardware.org/?view=cpu_family https://linux-hardware.org/?view=cpu_family interestingly Core 2 Duo doubled in data representation solely this year.
- linuxbuild 5y ago
  If you click on 'Intel Core 2 Duo' then you can find unusual increase in installs of Debian 11 on old macs and macbooks this month. I guess it's temporary.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Wacky. It's great that Linux extends the useful life of such machines, though.
- wanderer_ 5y ago
  Too bad I just gutted mine...
- glowingly 5y ago
  I know it's unmaintained now, but SimpleOSX VM defaulted to a Core 2 Duo. Looks like it's successor also defaults to a Core 2 Duo, though with 2 cores and SMT. https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM That being said, just browsing through that site, it doesn't immediately seem like it's this family of Hackingtosh VMs adding significantly to the list or at all.
  - linuxbuild 5y ago
    VEs are not presented in the database due to hardware identification problem and because people are not so interested in looking for virtual hardware.

freedomben 5y ago

If you're in the market for a Linux computer, this is a great resource for making sure your hardware is compatible. If you're already running Linux, this is a super easy way to contribute info about the hardware you have to help others [1]. For many distros it's already in the repos. For example Fedora: sudo dnf install -y hw-probe Run the hardware probe/report and store it locally in `/root/HW_PROBE/LATEST/hw.info/` (no upload) sudo -E hw-probe -all Run the hardware probe/report and upload it (uses privacy preserving techniques)[2]: sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload [1]: https://linux-hardware.org/?view=howto https://linux-hardware.org/?view=howto [2]: https://linux-hardware.org/?view=howto https://linux-hardware.org/?view=howto See section "Privacy"

buscoquadnary 5y ago
Thanks for the advice, just uploaded stats on my Ubuntu 20.04 machine.
aidenn0 5y ago
TIL dnf has replaced yum, which replaced urpmi, which wrapped rpm. I swear, every time I use a RPM based distro, there is a new package manager.
- protomikron 5y ago
  To be fair, dnf replaced yum for quite some time now. However yum is still recognized as a command (but symlinks to dnf).
  - Georgelemental 5y ago
    DNF is itself being replaced: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/MajorUpgradeOfMicrodnf https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/MajorUpgradeOfMicrodn...
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    That probably explains why I didn't know about dnf; I only rarely use CentOS, so if using "yum" worked for basic things, then I wouldn't even have known it was calling dnf.

merlinscholz 5y ago

Why would you test all Ubuntu desktop environments separate? Shouldn’t the hardware support be the same? Shouldn’t the hardware support be the same in a given kernel version?

noselasd 5y ago
While kernel support is the first step, userland applications need to take advantage of the hardware for it to be useful. e.g desktop envoronments need to care for how it interacts with touchpads, you want your wireless interface to actually be configurable. You want sane handling of which audio device is the default, and you'd want recognicable names to select them. The list goes on for another mile.
jeroenhd 5y ago
I've had instability issues with specific GNOME or KDE releases in combination with certain drivers (notably, you guessed it, written by NVIDIA) so at least Ubuntu vs Kubuntu matters. My laptop's touchpad only supports proper gestures with Wayland, which means disabling the NVIDIA drivers (or waiting for the next holy grail of GPU drivers, the current ones aren't the promised holy grail yet on laptops) is required for me to get the touchpad working. Because I value the ability to attach an external screen, I've instead switched back to X11, which means no gestures and therefore only partial touchpad functionality. I don't know how much the other versions of Ubuntu differ, they all seem relatively minimal in comparison.

LukeShu 5y ago

If you're a nutjob like me who runs Linux-libre instead of the normal Linux kernel, you'll be interested in checking the h-node database. https://www.h-node.org/ https://www.h-node.org/

kgeist 5y ago

Russian is the second most popular language and the majority of top cities are in Russia. I wonder whether it reflects the real situation or the site is somewhat biased towards Russia for some reason.

linuxbuild 5y ago
The same situation for any other snap app in the store, e.g. https://snapcraft.io/vlc https://snapcraft.io/vlc (see map at the bottom of the page). As far as I know, Linux is massively used at the state level in Russia, for example, in schools and universities.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Well either Linux is incredibly popular in Russia or ROSA desktop a Russian distro is almost certainly over represented at 8.6% share. It might do to check if anyone installs hw-probe by default or promotes it to its user base.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Sounds like ROSA probably includes it by default; maybe with a "send your hardware stats in" button. I think I've seen something like that with Ubuntu but I assume it would go to Canonical only.

optymizer 5y ago

I clicked around a bit, but can't understand how would this inform my decision of purchasing a part that's compatible with Linux. Say I search for a laptop graphics card model and find that 4000 people are using it in their builds. That only tells me that it's minimally functional, not that it actually works at full features. For example, it could be the that the video drivers for that card don't support[ 3d acceleration for Linux and people are just fine without it because they don't play games anyway. This info is missing. Basically, I'd think a qualitative approach would be more useful than quantitative approach. I want to know that the thing I buy is going to work properly, not that I was suckered into buying something along with 1000 other people. To give a real example this time, the Wi-Fi card I bought works fine under Windows, but the Broadcom drivers available in the Ubuntu distro didn't work properly at the time, so I had to go the old route of finding drivers that worked and then recompile the kernel modules on every kernel update. It got rather annoying fast. Linux Hardware Database would mark me as a user of this card (which would be correct), but it falsely implies that it's worth buying, which I think it isn't.

bombcar 5y ago
I see some little (i) on "works" on some of mine from my report, so perhaps it's more for negative reporting about things that don't work well? Who knows; you never find out about all the issues with any hardware until after you buy it.
- auraham 5y ago
  I have seen those (i) too on WiFi cards. After checking it, I think it means that such WiFi cards only work with some distros. For example [1], it does not work with Ubuntu 20.04 but it does work with Ubuntu 21.04. [1] http://linux-hardware.org/?id=pci:8086-2725-8086-0024 http://linux-hardware.org/?id=pci:8086-2725-8086-0024
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Distros losing support for hardware makes me sad.
5y ago

josteink 5y ago

I see OpenWRT not listed as an available distro. That’s going to quite significantly limit the amount of available HW, no? Is that intentional? If so, why?

awinter-py 5y ago

data collection yes, but there's also a need to crowdfund hardware support this affects oss wifi router OSes, linux on laptops + chromebooks, cell phones, gadgetbridge for fitness trackers, probably many iot devices in the chromebook linux space gallium seems to have lost momentum (the most recent device with full support is from 2018, or 2017 from a well known manufacturer). if you want to run linux on a pixelbook there are stale forks of stale repos, but like 'alsa doesn't work yet' and support doesn't get merged to the kernel committers are always complaining 'we don't have test hardware for this device' (and also they're uncompensated) we should as a community find a way to fund this work. can be hardware donations, paying competent volunteers, and eventually working with hardware vendors directly to answer questions / do signed firmware builds if necessary

teddyh 5y ago

There used to be a site at https://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ https://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ which simply took the output from “lspci -n” and gave you a list of what the names of kernel modules were to load to support that hardware, together, IIRC, with what version of Linux was required. The site was full of user-contributed data from all sorts of devices which you could browse. Sadly, the page no longer exists.

mdp2021 5y ago

It's amazing. Level of gratefulness up to the stars. Would not the "Find computer" tables benefit from a column "OS/Kernel" near the "Probes", especially when the probe is just one? If you want to check how an OS or a kernel fares with a model, you would not want to open them all.

peterfield 5y ago

Great tool - it even shaved 4 years of my thinkpad :) https://i.imgur.com/HdRVr5i.png https://i.imgur.com/HdRVr5i.png

auraham 5y ago

You can also find the Framework laptop in the database on Ubuntu 21.10 [1]. Only one component failed the test (Goodix USB2.0 MISC). The rest of the components are marked as "Works" or "Detected". I am not sure if "Detected" is a good sign. [1] http://linux-hardware.org/?computer=c1410c65e83e http://linux-hardware.org/?computer=c1410c65e83e

linuxbuild 5y ago
'Detected' means 'Device is detected, driver is found, but not tested', see https://github.com/linuxhw/hw-probe#operability https://github.com/linuxhw/hw-probe#operability