this place isn't what it used to be
linuxPIPEpower
But where do you start to look? Most distros have their config published in two places: /boot/config-, for any installed kernel, or /proc/config.gz (cat /proc/config.gz | gunzip to read), for your running kernel.
Thanks for understanding the question and providing a concrete answer of a place to look! I will do this. :)
Linux distros I have tried include: ubuntus, debians, fedoras, opensuse, manjaro, endeavour, mint. No slackware, redhat, centos, gentoo, nix, kali, steam.
Every device I currently own is a refurb originally manufactured 5-15 years ago. It's based on some combination of cheapness and hoping that things will be supported by them time I get my hands on them. I don't have any requirement for blazing hardware.
Some of them are unsurprisingly annoying, like netbooks I picked up only because they were cheap and were reported to have linux successfully installed by people online. With these things, it seems that most of the features work just not all at the same time. I can choose between a smoothly-functioning trackpad in one distribution and bluetooth in another. But why? How do I compare them.
I've had the issue on laptops and desktops but I have more experience with laptops. Also you are correct that arch-based tend to work pretty well. But I don't want to run arch on some devices because I do not plan update them regularly enough. I want a longer-term support distro. So in many cases I want to see what arch is doing that another isn't.
Only noting to be fair: in some cases arch-type does worse. I have an old HP desktop which is the case that arch couldn't see the ethernet connection. I could only use a USB-to-ethernet converter as PC doesn't even have wifi. But then I installed Debian and the ethernet works fine through the card. I do not need to solve this specifically as I plan to keep debian. Just one of the many mysteries.
I could find a specific issue that I do want to solve but it's such an ongoing thing I am hoping to learn the general principals rather than being spoon fed the answer. I'll only be back next week with another one.
distros can have different kernel parameters
unloaded kernel modules
different kernel parameters
older kernel/packages
missing packages
how do I find out about these?
Are they specific to my system? Some kind of decision the installer makes? So I would investigate locally on the device?
Or will it be a general distro thing? Am I looking on their website to find out?
try to find what kernel version support was added.
how to do this?
There’s exceptions however like proprietary drivers. While those drivers are becoming exceedingly rare, some distros will only ship with FOSS software,
don’t expect debian to ever work out of the box with nvidia
good news is I don't think I have ever in my life owned anything nvidia.
You didn’t mentioned your component specifically but if your hardware doesn’t have mainline kernel support, is pretty good assumption it’s proprietary and will need to be handled separately with something like dkms. Check the distros documentation for their recommended approach.
thanks, I never heard of dkms
before. I read the arch wiki, wikipedia, and made an attempt at the github repo (very long and over my head). The arch wiki only mentions nvidia. Is this something I need if I am certain nvidia is not the problem? Or is it a general thing?
Off the top of my head some components I've had problems with: touchpads, touch screens, wifi, ethernet, bluetooth, audio in, audio out, media keys. I have suspected others also like (onboard intel) GPUs but it's a little harder for me to even pin those problems down to the hardware.
Not only were the programmers women, but so were the computers.