this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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Absolutely not.
Signed, owner of half-supported hardware.
Out of curiosity what hardware are you using that's not supported?
Printers 🤣
In my experience, the only OS where printers won't have drivers is Windows.
But I don't deal often with dark demoniac systems, so there are probably lots of niche hellish devices that I don't know the details.
BS, I have gotten HP printers to work on Linux with no problems.
My Epson inkjet is a paperweight without w*ndows
Epson seems to supply Linux drivers according to their website and some Linux users when I searched around
Yeah, there's some drivers but I never could get it quite work.
I was able to get mine working by setting it up as a network printer via windows and then just accessing it like that through Linux. But yeah, if I ever change wifi ssids I would need to factory reset it go back into windows and configure it again. (ET2400)
Edit to be clear the windows instance is only needed for setup, it can be shut down or removed entirely after setup
I also had a windows server for that for a little bit, but dumped it in the end. Realistically only my wife is using it, and she is still stuck with windows on her Thinkpad
If I were already using Linux when I bought a printer like that, it would be returned immediately lmao
Lol I would have too, but unfortunately I had owned it for probably 5 years before I switched to linux
How old is it? Almost all relatively recent printers should support driverless network printing by now.
Maybe 5 years old, haven't tested in a while but it's USB only with no network connectivity
It's actually the same protocol over network or USB, as long as the printer is new enough that is.
Check for your model here, if it's listed then you shouldn't need any drivers and it should "just work".
Unfortunately not :(
They work better on Linux ,more prints than on windows ,same Cartwright. Installing was plug play (Office jet 6950)
I supported Hp Web Jet Admin on a slew of print servers for a large healthcare org after it got dropped in my lap from a round of layoffs. I'll never own a printer again. Granted I never print anymore but I would rather drive to office depot a thousand times than to bring that evil back into this house
my brother laser was easier to set up in linux . windows needed a big ass download , linux just printed.
Certain fingerprint readers and touchscreens
ex. Goodix
Broadcom hardware (WiFi cards an webcams in particular). Plus there are quirks with some proprietary driver version not building against some kernel version...
With unsupported hardware and closed drivers you are always on the lookout for some breakage.
And it's not a Linux problem nor a complaint on distro maintainers. It's manufacturers that are shit.
Audio gear.
HP Reverb G2 for me. Still waiting on Monado to get it fully working but no such luck yet. Hugely appreciative to the dev team for all of their amazing work, of course.
Asus Zenbook DUO
I'll be honest, A lot more of it works than I expected. Linux runs and is quite stable.
Keyboard Backlighting? Had to write some Python. Windows driver manages this, proprietary. I still can't get backlight to work in bluetooth mode.
Trackpad Palm Rejection? Had to write a service. Windows driver manages this, proprietary.
Function keys on the keyboard in wired mode? Not supported, no work-around that I can find. I have to remove the keyboard and put it into bluetooth mode. Windows driver.
ohh shit, now that this reminded me to look, someone's done something about it
https://github.com/zakstam/zenbook-duo-linux
Now I just need to figure out how to wedge that into nixos
Peripheral devices, mostly. I have some half-supported, like Logitech mouse (G-shift doesn't work), and for some I rely on open-source devs (like Corsair keyboard for certain keys/modes/connectivity fix). Sure, you can say just buy compatible devices, but it's not always viable to replace everything you owned before moving to Linux.
I've got some LianLi case fans that aren't supported by anything Linux that I've been able to find. I run a barebones VM just to control their features.
What case are you using? I've got a LianLi Lancool 216. It's a little loud but it runs just fine for me.
Off the top of my head, my case is a LianLi O11, but I was talking about my case fans, which are... Oh lord, their naming is so obnoxious, the... TM LCDs I think?
lconnect just isn't linux friendly, which is kinda surprising. I've got the 8.8 universal screen, which I could just toggle into a second display and get all the system data that way when running under linux.
Oh yeah I gave up trying to run LConnect on linux a while ago. I then looked into alternative tools people have made, of which there are a few and they seem great, but none of which (when I looked last) support my specific fan models. So my current solution is Windows 11 in a barebones VM that autostarts. It literally just runs Lconnect and nothing else, and the only things passed through to it are the USB controls for the fans. It has allowed me to at least control the colours, and screens, though not fan profiles or stats.
Lenovo thinkbook 16 G7 iml
Yes it's a POS. It wasn't my choice. Work laptop.
What Linux kernel are you running which isn't supporting your hardware?
My case: I have an nvidia GTX 980. It's old but it's what I have.
Nvidia dropped its support from driver version 595.
Driver 580 is what I need, it worked until 7.0 but no longer in 7.1 (was using Fedora 44). Since my hardware is old I switched to Debian Trixie.
Another example is the facetime HD Webcam of macbook pro: to make it work you have to install OSx or download a recovery image, compile a C program to extract a specific binary blob, then use that blob to recompile the driver on your kernel.
There are lots of examples: it's a big world, with lots of hardware and mostly no producer interested in the Linux world.
This depends a bit on the distro you are using. Like in arch you should not use the proprietary drivers for older cards but the open ones. My guess is there are some community drivers you should use instead.
you mean the nouveau driver? the one that is unable to up the frequencies from the minimum because it is not signed by nvidia? it may work as a display output, but not much else
Even if you happen to use older NVidia cards from before they started doing signed firmware blobs the experience is miserable.
Nouveau has 0 dynamic power management, so the only way to change clocks speeds is via a debug interface in /sys/.
Everytime you change clock speeds the driver can crash. And while some software does become usable it tends to be very unstable because some features are just not implemented or only half-implemented, leading to graphical glitches and unpredictable behaviour.
It's a shame because I really feel like nouveau could be a great piece of software, but unfortunately nobody is working on it anymore.
😆😂🤣 Are you kidding? Have you tried using nouveau? It works, sure, but you can’t play games that are even vaguely modern and if something uses up a bit too much RAM the entire display system starts jittering/lagging or becomes unresponsive. Source: I ran nouveau with a GTX 2080 for years. I was only able to fully ditch Windows once I fully ditched Nvidia (by switching to an AMD GPU and scrubbing every last vestige of Nvidia’s bullshit off my PC).