Posted May 13, 2008 | by Rich Menga | 1 Comment

One of the most outright frustrating experiences using a Linux distribution is having hardware that absolutely, positively will not work with it for whatever reason.

But what if you’re building a box? Is there any way to find out what hardware will work best?

Yes. It’s called the Hardware Compatibility List or HCL for short.

Most new Linux distro users have heard about Ubuntu and choose to use that distro first (and sometimes stay with it.) All well and good. And maybe that new Ubuntu user likes that OS so much that they want to build a better faster dedicated box.

Some will opt for buying a Dell with Ubuntu already on it (in which all the hardware is guaranteed to work.) But everyone else is going to build the box instead.

The best site I have found for everything Ubuntu HCL is, appropriately titled, UbuntuHCL.org.

What makes UbuntuHCL better than most is that it won’t list particular hardware as “works” or “doesn’t work.” If particular hardware is labeled as “works,” it goes on to rate how well it worked by using a rating scale of 1 to 5 (5 being best) with included commentary detailed any/all good or bad experiences encountered when testing.

UbuntuHCL is very basic, very easy to use and I strongly recommend anyone who’s building a box for Ubuntu to go here first before anywhere else.

For example, you can start right where it all begins – the motherboard. Here’s an example search using Asus motherboards as the search criteria. Most got ratings of 5 but some dipped below and went to 4. This one is a 4 and notes problems using RAID0 and Enhanced IDE. It is important to know this stuff before building your Ubuntu box.

What about printers? For example, do HP printers work well in Ubuntu? Most do.

What about wireless stuff (like wireless routers)? Some don’t do too well in that category.

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As stated above, I strongly recommend reading up on the HCL first. After that you can pick/choose the hardware you know is going to work the first time without any problems.

And that makes for a very happy *nix user.