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What hardware does not support Linux?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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Broadcom, as you've discovered. That's the one brand that I've always had trouble with; they go out of their way to be closed source: never publishing specs, never responding to developers. They're horrible to the point where I will not buy any product that uses Broadcom chips. Which used to be a PITA because they were also common.
Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.
One of my computers has a MediaTek wireless chip where WiFi isn't supported but Bluetooth does.
A lot of people have problems with NVidia cards; I've not had trouble with either AMD or Intel GPUs (although, I think all Intel GPUs are CPU integrated?).
Multifunction printers are still iffy, and even just plain printers can give grief; I've come to believe that this is simply because CUPS is ancient and due for a completely new, modern printing service. It's an awful piece of software to have to work with.
Not sure if it technically counts as fingerprint readers but using my YubiKey Bio daily, for login on my desktop and WebAuthN and... 0 problem.
I think that's because Yubikey handles the fingerprint reader part, not Linux, right? As far as Linux goes, it's a black box security fob - but I might be wrong about that.
Indeed hence my warning. I'm only sharing this alternative because in practice it works and it's secure (AFAIK).
Edit :
IMHO that's a feature, namely I do not want to OS to mess with this specific part of my setup. I do also have NitroKeys and FPGAs to tinker with but that's different. FWIW if there is an OSHW&FLOSS alternative to the YubiKey Bio please do share.
Yeah, I wasn't saying it was bad; I meant only that Linux didn't have to worry about device drivers for it, because the fob handles reading the fingerprint chip.