Official Ubuntu community certified hardware

[phersotty]

Hello Ubuntu world!

I've been working at configuring Edgy on my MacBook and almost got it fully tweaked when I thought to myself... why? Why does the Ubuntu community, and Linux in general, put so much effort in adapting to preconfigured hardware? It's not as much of an issue on a custom modded tower, but on preconfigured laptops or desktop systems it seems like a lot of unnecessary work. Sure its fun and a challenge to get your favorite distro to work your individual configuration, but there could be so much more potential.

Take for instance the MacBook once I get Edgy smoothed out I will start looking at how I'm going to install Fiesty Fawn and so on and so on. ;) (that was poetic)

I guess what I am getting at is should/would/could Ubuntu pick an optimal set of hardware (insert your favorite system here) and use it as a benchmark for development. This is kind of how it has been with graphics cards where nVidia was the most supported and ATI was the card that always needed extra attention to meet the nVidia benchmark.

I'm not discounting the hard work that the Laptop Testing team is doing or any of the other developers out there. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam
I'm just suggesting that each new release of Ubuntu targets specific hardware as a benchmark in various categories ranging from budget to high end systems. I think that approach would entice hardware manufactures to develop their products with Linux in mind with the notion that their product would be in high demand. :-\" =D> yeah! i'm done now:biggrin:

[Joe_CoT]

Unfortunately, linux doesn't have enough market share on the desktop yet to get manufacturer's attention. Hardware's still designed with windows in mind, as are games. Building linux only for reference systems puts us in the same boat as OS X.

I don't want to have to tell my friends that Ubuntu wasn't "designed" for their system. People look at ubuntu after buying their pc, not the other way around. The few that look at ubuntu first buy hardware that works with it.

[phersotty]

Building linux only for reference systems puts us in the same boat as OS X.


Yeah, I guess your right. Your point reminds me of Yellow Dog Linux and how they confine themselves to the PPC architecture. They seem to be content with that. If Ubuntu and other distros don't keep adapting they could eventually get stuck defunct obsolete hardware. :-k Thanks I got to go work on my Edgy MacBook some more. :lol:

[az]

The only reason why a piece of hardware does not work is that nobody has yet written a driver or a support application for it.

Those things tend to turn on a dime.

By definition, there is no hardware that linux will not support. And so every release keeps that in mind.

[DoctorMO]

If Programmer-A wants it to work on a Mac and Programmer-B wants it work on a PC, while Programmer-C wants his sparc to be blessed. who should decide? in fact no one decides because the best architectures are used that can encorperate all hardware.

when all your hardware works out of the box then you know we have no more work to do.

[Joe_CoT]

when all your hardware works out of the box then you know we have no more work to do.

But that will never happen, because there will always be new hardware.

If Gnu write a Radeon driver that is perfect in every way, does full hardware acceleration, and implements every feature, ATI will release a new card a month later which makes it completely obsolete -- sure, binary blob drivers are available, but they don't implement all the features, and everybody wants to get rid of them. The same is true for wireless drivers, acpi, etc. We're always a step behind, as long as hardware is written for Windows.