Your comment refers …”PC-BSD has such a list AND a tool that allows you to check what hardware is compatible when running the live CD, aka BEFORE installation not afterwards.”

“Yes, three guys hacking BSD did better than thousands of linux loons.”

On certain linux live CD/DVD’s and usable when running live BEFORE installation is a program called HardInfo.
Maybe under another name but nervertheless it seems to comply with your requirements and seems to give a tad more info than the screen displayed on this site.

http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility

See if it compares with the PC-BSD tool and let me know.
Perhaps you can then send an email to the linux loons at their site.

MoveTheGoalPosts(TM)

I gave you exactly what you asked for and now you’re splitting hairs. Where’s the linux equivalent to this? Where’s the fully searchable hardware compatibility list that I can query against every fork of Linux?

Such as? Always dealing in heresy instead of actual fact or experience. I’ve actually had Debian, yes DEBIAN, refuse to boot after trying to get multiple monitor support working. Something that takes two clicks in Windows or OSX requires config file editing and the potential to brick your system.

It wasn’t even a typo, it turns out that the display drivers that I was using didn’t support the monitor’s native resolution. Something Windows and OSX give you actual feedback on, letting you know what resolutions are supported by the monitor via its driver.

Great, where’s the error? Zero feedback other than “it’s broken”. You’re no better off than where I said you were. The difference is, I’ve never encountered an error after changing settings in a GUI configuration. This is because fields are validated; I can’t enter a letter when a field only accepts numbers, etc.

Even web configurations have this down pat. No website says “upload a text file with your config options”, they provide a simple form (automatically generated based on the dataset, like most GUI configs) which automatically validates.

Here’s my current $HOME/xpdfrc:
“cat .xpdfrc
include /etc/xpdf/xpdfrc
initialZoom width”

For a demonstration, let’s break it:
“cat .xpdfrc
include /etc/xpdf/xpdfrc
initialZoon width
“

The result, “Error: Unknown config file command “. Granted, if I mistype “width” the program still runs but at least it’s usable. So, software can and does notice misconfiguration. Good software always checks user-input for validity. That’s not a property of the OS, just good coding. Some things are not checked so there is room for improvement. Of course that other OS has the same problem, feeble/evil users and the developer may not have any way of telling whether input is correct or not, e.g. writing “lose” instead of “loose”.

ROFL! Many “regedit” advice columns are about cleaning up after installations/removals gone wrong and then, there’s malware which deliberately messes with the registry so manual tweaking is required or you re-image/re-install the OS. Been there, done that. Re-imaging is the way to go. A lot of malware is a trojan and some of the “guests” may tweak the registry in unknown/undocumented ways. Unless a user has a rigorous backup/restoration system that makes the PC unreliable at best even if you remove the trojan-malware. You cannot be sure to get all the guests. That is why I gave up trying to fight malware on XP and switched my last employer to GNU/Linux. Problem solved.

Chuckle. For fun, I entered the device I recently purchased in a popular PC shop in Winnipeg…

It was not found. So, M$’s search engine is incomplete. How is that different from GNU/Linux’s hardware compatibility lists? Most distros quit the HCL racket years ago because it was virtually impossible to get universal coverage.

Some statistics. I searched the link TM provided for Universal Card Reader, my product. I found two hits. I searched walmart.com for the same string and found 145 hits of which 16 were more or less similar products. So, how useful is that search engine? For your information Alibaba.com is full of OEMs who will rebrand really generic stuff like this so searching is useless. GNU/Linux does index the actual chips used and classifies them by driver very nicely. GNU/Linux also follows published standards for USB so it should work with anything. I have only seen a couple of cameras that had any problem with access by GNU/Linux and that was a configuration problem not software compatibility.

PC-BSD has such a list AND a tool that allows you to check what hardware is compatible when running the live CD, aka BEFORE installation not afterwards.

Yes, three guys hacking BSD did better than thousands of linux loons

Fantastic. This is exactly the kind of teacher I want teaching my own children.

Student: “But other people say one plus one is two instead of three…”

RP: “Go XXXX yourself.”