Hardware Support
Hardware developers have often been reluctant to provide full technical documentation for their products to allow drivers to be written. This has meant that a Linux user had to carefully hand pick the hardware that made up the system to ensure functionality and compatibility. These problems have largely been addressed:
Years ago, if you wanted to install Linux on a machine, you had to make sure you hand-picked each piece of hardware or your installation would not work 100 percent … This is not so much the case now. You can grab a PC (or laptop) and most likely get one or more Linux distributions to install and work nearly 100 percent. But there are still some exceptions; for instance, hibernate/suspend remains a problem with many laptops, although it has come a long way.At one time, Linux systems required removable media, such as floppy discs and CD-ROMs, to be manually mounted before they could be accessed. Mounting media is now automatic in nearly all distributions, with the development of the udev.
Some companies, such as EmperorLinux, have addressed the problems of laptop hardware compatibility by mating modified Linux distributions with specially selected hardware to ensure compatibility from delivery.
Read more about this topic: Criticism Of Linux
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