TechRepublic.com has recently published a good read on how prevent linux hardware issues.
1) Don’t use very old or cutting-edge hardware
2) Verify support
3) Use proprietary drivers
4) Know your log files
Posts Tagged ‘drivers’
10 ways to avoid dodge linux hardware issues from TechRepublic
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010How to enable HD video playback on GMA 500 netbooks with Ubuntu Linux
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009The Intel GMA500 is actually capable of hardware acceleration for HD video, but it requires some tweaking of the linux driver environment
At “Linux-Tipps“, there is a guide to enable VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) for netbooks with the Intel GMA500 graphics chipsets.
Once VAAPI is enabled, Full HD videos can be watched and CPU utilization will only be 30%.
Get your wireless adapter working with NDISWRAPPER!
Monday, August 31st, 2009Much to linux users’ frustrations, many hardware and its specification’s labels do not endorse any support for linux.
While the folks at Kernel.org tries their best to include common and popular hardware drivers into the kernel, there are bound to be some left out. One of these hardware is wireless 802.11 wifi adapters. Due the various chipsets used by different vendors and manufacturers, some of them may not be supported by current kernels and thus causing distress to linux users whom have purchased these wifi cards and usb adapters.
There is a tool available that can make use of the Windows drivers that come with the wifi adapter and make the wireless adapter work in linux.
Enter NDISWRAPPER
This tool is present on most popular linux distro repositories. Some distros even have a graphical user interface for this tool.
More info here
Using Ubuntu NDISGTK GUI to activate wireless cards : Kimbriggs.com
SGLNX recommends noobs to learn how to use ndiswrapper.
