Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

Hardware Detection.

Compared to just two years ago, hardware detection with most distributions has been fantastic. Heck, I have seen a number of instances where Linux was able to locate printers on a PC that would have required a driver download for XP to run them. It's a great feeling, no question about it.

Now here is the catch - WiFi cards. With recent advancements in FreeBSD, I have seen indications that they could in fact be outperforming the Linux crew with regard to WiFi card chipset detection. It's sad, but a couple of quick Google searches will yield some interesting results along this line of thought.

So this leaves us with one serious problem: why is it that one WiFi card will work on one distribution and not on another? It's true, what will work perfectly on SuSE, Linspire, and other beginner friendly distributions will not work on other similar minded distributions. Simply Mepis is a great example of this. Besides the fact that they blatantly ignore the GPL, their wireless support is terrible. Now this begs the question, whose fault is it really?

Well, the short answer is no one directly. Since most of the wireless support for beginner friendly distributions comes from the now famed ndiswrapper, most people looking to jump right into a newbie ready distribution expect that the chipset drivers for their particular card are already preloaded onto their PC as they install Linux. It sounds silly to those who have been using Linux for sometime now, however, the fact remains that this is a growing expectation that we must begin to adhere to.

Remember, it is no longer a geek-only club with the "use it as it is or leave it" attitude that used to drive people away from Linux back in the day. Things are changing...

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