Hardware migration

Most hardware manufacturers today support most Linux distributions. In addition, most Linux distributions today automatically detect most hardware, but in some cases, you might need specific drivers for new or unusual hardware. If your hardware falls into that category, you might encounter a hardware compatibility issue. Somebody eventually may write a driver for your problem hardware, but you might have to put your project on hold until you can locate an appropriate driver. The alternative is to buy new hardware.

In the case of laptops, you shouldn't have much problem getting your graphics card to work, but just in case, consider downloading the Linux drivers from the manufacturer. Virtually all video cards are supported in 2D mode, which is all most users need for desktop productivity. However, depending on the card, you might not be able to gain support for 3D games, DVD playback or the TV-out capabilities of the card -- features that aren't generally required for the average work environment. Other home use issues are usually USB-related. For example, some digital cameras can't be hooked up to Linux desktops, as well as some printers and scanners -- at least without the services of an experienced Linux systems engineer. It's also worth noting that Centrino notebooks don't work with Linux.

Computers/Motherboards/BIOS

ISA, VLB, EISA, PCI, and AGP buses are all supported. All recent motherboards should work fine.

Unsupported

• • Supermicro P5MMA with BIOS versions 1.36, 1.37 and 1.4. Linux will not boot on this motherboard. A new (beta) release of the BIOS which makes Linux boot, is available here.

  • Supermicro P5MMA98. Linux will not boot on this motherboard. A new (beta) release of the BIOS which makes Linux boot, is available here.

  • DataExpert Corp. ExpertColor TX531 V1.0 motherboard with chipset ACER M1531 (Date: 9729, TS6) and ACER M1543 (Date: 9732 TS6) seems to present not reproducible segmentations faults, kernel oops and kernel hangs under heavy load and tape access. The problem seems to be the PCI-bus, respectively the ACER chipset.

Laptops

In general, any laptop will support Linux fine. Some specific features (wireless and video especially) may have issues, but these should not interfere with basic functionality.

Currently, laptops with the Intel® Centrino™ logo are the most likely to work perfectly under Linux. The Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 and 2200 802.11b/g wireless cards are supported by drivers released by Intel that are being integrated into the stock Linux kernel. Accelerated 3D support for the on-board video is provided by the DRI project and is included in recent releases of X.org and XFree86.

For more information about Linux and laptops, the following sites are good starting points.

• Linux Laptop and Notebook Survey
• Linux Laptop Homepage
• Linux Mobile Guide - A Guide for Laptops and Mobile Devices

CPU/FPU

Intel

• Intel 386SX/DX/SL, 486SX/DX/SL/SX2/DX2/DX4, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III (regular and Xeon versions), Pentium 4, and Celeron (including mobile versions) are all supported.

AMD

• AMD 386SX/DX, 486SX/DX/DX2/DX4, K5, K6, K6-2, K6-3, and Athlon (all varieties, including MP) are all supported. Older versions of K6 should be avoided as they are buggy. Setting "internal cache" disabled in bios setup can be a workaround. Some early K6-2 300Mhz have problems with the system chips.
• AMD's 64-bit Opteron and Athlon64 processors, as well as the mobile Athlon64 (or Turion64), are also supported, running either in 32-bit or 64-bit mode. For 32-bit mode, compile a kernel for i386, optionally optimized for Athlons, since that's essentially what these processors look like in 32-bit mode. For 64-bit mode, compile a kernel for x86_64 . It will still run 32-bit binaries, assuming all the appropriate libraries are available. Opteron and Athlon64 systems use standard PC hardware, so the information in this HOWTO still applies.
• The old NexGen processors are also supported

Cyrix

• Cyrix 386SX/DX, 486SX/DX, 5x86, 6x86, and MediaGX are all supported.

IDT

• IDT Winchip  C6-PSME2006A processors are supported under Linux.
  

Transmeta

• The Transmeta Crusoe processors are supported.

Memory

All memory like DRAM, EDO and SDRAM can be used with Linux. Be aware that older kernels or kernels running on a mortherboard with an older BIOS may only be able to detect 64MB of RAM.

Video Cards

Linux will work with all video cards in text mode, VGA cards not listed below probably will still work with mono VGA and/or standard VGA drivers. If you're looking into buying a cheap video card to run X, keep in mind that accelerated cards (ATI Mach, ET4000/W32p, S3) are MUCH faster than unaccelerated or partially accelerated (Cirrus, WD) cards. "32 bpp" is actually 24 bit color aligned on 32 bit boundaries. It does NOT mean the cards are capable of 32 bit color, they still display 24 bit color (16,777,216 colors). 24 bit packed pixels modes are not supported in XFree86, so cards that can do 24 bit modes to get higher resolutions in other OS's are not able to do this in X using XFree86. These cards include Mach32, Cirrus 542x, S3 801/805/868/968, ET4000, and others. AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) support is growing fast. Most of the X-servers (both freely available and proprietary versions) have more or less support for AGP.

Controllers (Hard Drives)

Enhanced IDE (EIDE) interfaces are supported, including support for UDMA and ATA/33, ATA/66, and so on for some controllers and compatible drives.

Controllers (SCSI)

It is important to pick a SCSI controller carefully. Many cheap ISA SCSI controllers are designed to drive CD-ROM's rather than anything else. Such low-end SCSI controllers are no better than IDE.

Unsupported

• Adaptec AHA 2940UW Pro

• Adaptec AAA-13x RAID Adapters

• Adaptec AAA-113x Raid Port Cards

• Adaptec AIC-7810

• NCR chip 53C710 (ISA) (old obsolete chip, but still used in some Compaq models)

• Non Adaptec compatible DTC boards (327x, 328x)

Controllers (I/O)

Any standard serial/parallel/joystick/combo cards. Linux supports 8250, 16450, 16550, and 16550A UART's. Cards that support non-standard IRQ's (IRQ > 9) can be used.

Network Adapters

Linux has driver support for all current production, mass-market PCI Ethernet and Fast Ethernet chips as of July 5, 2000. While a few specific boards are not supported because e.g. of unique transceiver interfaces, they are rare exceptions. Most common Gigabit Ethernet adapters are supported as well.

CD-ROM/CD-Writer/DVD

Most, if not all of them are supported.

Removable Drives

All SCSI drives should work if the controller is supported, including optical (MO), WORM, floptical, Bernoulli, Zip, Jaz, SyQuest, PD, and others.

USB

USB is supported in all 2.4.x kernels, as well as 2.2.18 and higher. The kernel driver supports both the Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI, used by Intel and Via motherboard chipsets) and the Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI, used by Compaq, Apple, SiS, OPTi, Lucent and ALi chipsets).