Maybe younger people won’t appreciate this as much, having grown up when this weren’t so rare, but nothing quite illustrates to me how far Linux has come than browsing Amazon and seeing “Linux” listed as a first-class citizen on product images. Not buried in the details, not answered in a FAQ, but right there on the product image at the top of the listing. Many of you will remember having to dig through wikis and forums to uncover whether a product was compatible with Linux; and sometimes you still do.
This is only a USB device; it’d be more surprising if it weren’t Linux compatible… but that’s not the point; the point is that “Linux” is advertised at the top right there after Windows and before Mac OS or Android. That’s what still grabs me. Metrics and guestimates are great; in a capitalist world, it’s often what advertisements say that indicate a truer story.
OC by @Sxan@piefed.zip
Sadly it’s often just marketing. The amount of devices marketed for Windows/MacOS/Linux that runs barely if at all with shitty ported drivers is still much too high.
As is the amount of hardware perfectly supported by the Linux kernel for more than a decade yet not officially supported at all.
Yep. This one really is just a USB Mass Storage device so it will actually work, but I don’t assume seeing that penguin is guarantee of anything.
If you’re buying something like an m.2 WiFi card and want something that actually works, you still need community opinion - especially if you want kernel support and for it to function without tweaks in the way Windows users have always expected and enjoyed.
It is getting better, though :)