On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 03:08:29PM -0000, Stuart Fox wrote:
Pretty much all linux's have the same hardware support, a linux kernel is a linux kernel whatever the flavour. The same goes for software, the difference being package management. Debian based systems are supposed to have the best package management via the apt/dpkg system. Depends on what software you mean though. Commercial/non-free software tend to release rpm based packages for redhat though others may be available. Of course there is almost always the option to compile your own :)
I'd disagree somewhat, as Debian seems to remove drivers they consider to be "non-free" (drivers with binary firmwares that don't have source aiui) from the kernel and distros like Ubuntu who take a different view and add lots of patches of various drivers and binary firmwares so they can support more hardware "out of the box" (of course idealogically this makes them more "non-free"). Other distros come somewhere inbetween these points (and probably others have more polarisation).
In my experience, doing a bog standard install of Ubuntu on a laptop is more likely to get all the hardware working (and generally does *much* better than Windows ever could) than doing a bog standard install of Debian which will end up with me having to do things like download drivers and firmware for the wireless card for example.
Thanks Adam