Ive heard that Linux has very limited hardware support, how do I know my WhizzBang8D(TM) card will work?
Linux includes support for a great many hardware configurations, including many different processor architectures (including Motorola 68000, PowerPC, ARM, Alpha and x86s from the Intel 386SX up to the new AMD Athlon), motherboard chipsets, cdroms, tape drives, zip drives, network cards, sound cards and joysticks. Graphics support is provided by XFree86 [1], and, to a lesser extent, by SVGAlib [2]. Questions about Linux support for graphics adaptors are usually really questions about XFree86 support for the card’s chipset. XFree86 is a freely redistributable implementation of the X Window System that runs on UNIX® and UNIX-like operating systems (and OS/2), and is included in most GNU/Linux distributions. Drivers are available for hundreds of chipsets, and more are being added with every release. In addition, binary-only drivers for new cards such as ATI’s Rage 128-based boards are often provided by other sources such as SuSE [3], between releases of XF86 . And even if a driver is not a
