[unhappyhippie]

Wireless and graphics still cause major heartburn on a lot of devices. For example, laptops with hybrid graphics (dual, switchable cards) still don't work properly after multiple versions of bumblebee/ironhide. Just last week, I spent all night trying various ways to install a wireless adapter. The adapter came with drivers for OS versions as recent as Windows8 and as old as Windows Me, but the linux version only had kernel 2.4. I got it working finally using ndiswrapper. After that I performed an upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 and that killed it.

Ofcourse, all of the above was really just manufacturers not open sourcing or updating their drivers. But I think the linux ecosystem is direly in need of more device manufacturers taking it seriously for it to gain wider adoption. Canonical is doing a great job but we are not there yet.

[dfc]

Switchable graphics works flawlessly on my lenovo w500. I've never had a problem in the four years I've had the laptop. I don't know what ironhide/bumblebee is. Is it an ubuntu thing or some proprietary driver?

Its 2012, what are you doing buying hw that needs ndiswrapper?

[mark_h]

I think switchable is something different; ironhide/bumblebee are for the newish "optimus" setups, which currently only work properly for windows AFAIK. It's quite neat: rather than switching between cards, the discrete card is used only for the windows/apps that need it, while the integrated card handles the rest of the desktop.

The ironhide/bumblebee solutions work by running another X display, and using virtualgl to draw the window from the discrete card on the main desktop -- but you have to explicitly invoke the applications that you want to run in this fashion.

[unhappyhippie]

bumblebee[1] etc are open source efforts to get the proprietary optimus systems working on linux. The wireless adapter I bought is an Asus Usb N10 from a popular computer store last week.

[1] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/History-...