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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Is there a program that I can run on my laptop to tell me what Linux distro supports the hardware out of the box? Also whether the hardware is supported at all? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My laptop is an MSI Sword 15 A11UD. But I'm really looking for a program that analyses and projects problem areas and supported/unsupported hardware

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (8 children)

a quick and dirty way to find out if your hardware is supported is to try out a live usb distributions that runs entirely off of a usb stick and never makes any permanent changes to your system.

it will run MUCH slower than a regular installation; but if you see all of your hardware and drivers enumerated in lspci; you'll know that it works out of the box.

you should know that this limits you to the distros that have live usb images only; but if you go with mainstream debian, fedora, arch, etc. you'll instantly know that downstream distro's are capable of supporting with that hardware with that version of the mainstream distribution that they're forked from (eg ubuntu from debian; manjaro from arch; suse from redhat; etc.)

i used this method extensively when i was new to linux and distro hopped a lot; it taught me a lot when i first started out.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (7 children)

I find quite often that the Live version of a distro will work perfectly, but after install some hardware won't work anymore.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (6 children)

yes, that will happen.

the live distro's come included with a lot of preloaded driver/firmware that is not included with a regular installation for a myriad of reasons; but you can use lspci and lsmod from the live environment to identify the proper software you need to add to your regular installation to get that hardware working.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Thank you, that's useful info, I didn't know about this. Could you be so kind to share some link, or say something more, about lspci and lsmod and how to proceed from them to identifying which drivers one should install? Cheers!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

here's an example using my wifi card on my laptop; here i use lscpi and i've copy/pasted the stanza that pertains to the wifi card:

me@laptop:~$ lspci -v
[REMOVED]
00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P PCH CNVi WiFi (rev 01)
        DeviceName: Onboard - Ethernet
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wi-Fi 6(802.11ax) AX201 160MHz 2x2 [Harrison Peak]
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16, IOMMU group 9
        Memory at 601d18c000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
        Kernel modules: iwlwifi
[REMOVED]

i can see that the driver name is iwlwifi and i can use that to look for related modules using lsmod:

me@laptop:~$ lsmod | grep iwlwifi
iwlwifi               598016  1 iwlmvm
cfg80211             1318912  3 iwlmvm,iwlwifi,mac80211

now i know all of the module names and i can either google them to learn how to install them or i can continue further with the package manager on the installation to further backwards engineer it. (googling is faster).

as i mentioned earlier there are caveats: downstream distros tend to use a slightly older version of their base distros so you also need to make sure that you're using the same version of the driver and kernel and adjust accordingly if it doesn't start working right away.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Also do "dmesg | grep -i firmware" to see what firmware loads the kernel squirted into the various device controllers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Fantastic, this is extremely helpful, thank you! 🥇 I wanted to test a couple of distros for my Thinkpad, and I'll make sure to check and save this kind of information from live USBs.

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