I added a laptop into the HCL.
What is meant by "vendor" there? Why should vendors be rated and not the HW compatibility with Linux (distro)?

Thanks.


The company bringing a product to market like Alienware or Cray. (Not that the latter makes laptops so don't bother looking ;-p)


Isn't rating HW compatibility like rating the vendor? Because some vendors ship products with Linux installed or at least Linux-compatible HW, provide good documentation and support?

I don't think so: from the same vendor (or rather, manufacturer) some things may be well Linux compatible, whereas others are not. Also, some HW-compatible SW is in the default repo of some distros, but not in some other distros'. Also default settings may affect the experience. To give an overall rating, one needs some experience of several products. Also, like in my case, one distro is fine, another is not. Statistics about one occurrence is about as good as random guess.

I had a long journey getting my pixma mp 140 printer to work in Kubuntu, but in LuPu (Puppy) it worked O-O-B. The problem was in the default USB-setting: waiting for response with time-out. Only took me 1,5 years to find out (tried also Debian and Mint). Funny, BTW, with Kubuntu Live DVD it worked O-O-B, but with installed it didn't. I understand, that in current Debian (Wheezy) mp140 doesn't work (due to bug in CUPS 1.5), but in next release it should.

I think a better (more useful) HCL would be HW against a distro/version.

BTW: Cray really doesn't make laptops, but uses Linux:
http://docs.cray.com/books/S-2425-52xx/

;-D

As suggestion it's nice but practically speaking it's nigh impossible IMHO. At best it'll be no more than a snapshot of what kernel, user land, compile time options and configuration was used on that HW and only at that time. Too much permutations IMHO but feel free to suggest it to Jeremy.

Hm, UnSpawn, I guess you're right.
It should be something in between...

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <LQ Suggestions & Feedback> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.