I never really see hardware lacking Linux support mentioned, which got me caught by surprise when a computer with a Broadcom network card couldn’t use the card. What other hardware don’t work with Linux?
Fingerprint sensor on most laptops
Internal HDMI capture cards are barely supported, there are some professional brands like blackmagic that have support but nearly all consumer grade capture cards are not supported at all, because the companies who make them don’t care about Linux.
USB based capture cards often work because they use the same standard protocols as USB cameras.
About 10% of the hardware in my 2016 MacBook Pro. Twice I’ve tried to install Debian on that Satan spawn using various gists online, and each time I ended up deciding it wasn’t worth the time
Every other piece of hardware I’ve tried in the past works without fail, that MacBook irks me.
Broadcom, as you’ve discovered. That’s the one brand that I’ve always had trouble with; they go out of their way to be closed source: never publishing specs, never responding to developers. They’re horrible to the point where I will not buy any product that uses Broadcom chips. Which used to be a PITA because they were also common.
Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.
One of my computers has a MediaTek wireless chip where WiFi isn’t supported but Bluetooth does.
A lot of people have problems with NVidia cards; I’ve not had trouble with either AMD or Intel GPUs (although, I think all Intel GPUs are CPU integrated?).
Multifunction printers are still iffy, and even just plain printers can give grief; I’ve come to believe that this is simply because CUPS is ancient and due for a completely new, modern printing service. It’s an awful piece of software to have to work with.
Racing wheels lacks Linux support. It’s the biggest, actually only, reason why I’m dualbooting with Windows.
I’ve been trying to get my Thrustmaster TX to work on Linux Mint but no success so far. I’m still a little bit newbie with Linux so that might be the reason why my wheel doesn’t work (yet).
Often the hotkeys on laptops for screen brightness, mute, etc will either not work or be wonky, on my HP Elitebook on Debian distros the brightness keys both mute the speakers instead, they work fine on Fedora though.
Not technically hardware itself but Nvidia + Intel hybrid graphics have never really worked for me
That was a nightmare I’ll never recover from. That laptop is now running windows 11. It’s what made me promise myself to never ever touch Nvidia ever again. I’m now all Red on my desktop and life is so much better.
Similar story here. I had a laptop running nVidia/Intel dual graphics for a few years and it was so fucking finicky. Primusrun this, optirun that. Ugh. Once upon a time, whenever I heard the word Optimus, I thought of transforming trucks with laser guns. Hearing that same word now puts me in a fetal position.
To any GeForce owners that are considering going Linux full time: do a test run first and see how it works out, because nVidia support on Linux is spotty at best.
iPhones
I stand corrected.
