Not too long ago I installed Mint onto a laptop that turned out to have a network card by Broadcom, which doesn’t have Linux support, so that didn’t work. I’m going to upgrade my currently Windows PC to Mint at the end of Win10 support in October, and I want to be sure I don’t have any hardware that is incompatible with Linux. Which manufacturers are obstinate like that?
If it is a computer, it is compatible
You may just need some extra bits in addition to the base ISO
IIRC the Broadcom website has the latest Linux drivers on there if the kernel doesn’t support it out of the box, so grab a copy of those and put them on a USB.
As others have said, you could get a live distro to test it out before you install
Also keep in mind that laptop wifi cards are usually easily replaceable, so if you end up with that being the only problem it’s usually cheap and easy to solve
this
these cards are about $ 5-12 and i pull them from junk laptops all the time
not the “easiest” thing to solve but well within the abilities of somebody who can build a PC
Not all laptops have replaceable wireless cards. If you have a thinner machine they probably soldered it on. But I can’t find any rhyme or reason to what manufacturers do and don’t solder.
Interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a laptop where it was soldered.
My Thinkpad P1’s is soldered :( At least that came with a good Intel Wireless card.
But somehow on my T14s (a much smaller machine) it wasn’t soldered.
But then on the bigger T14 it is soldered. So I have no clue what is going on at Lenovo. At least the machines with good wifi cards are soldered, and the shit ass ones are
You can get broadcom to work, it means adding the missing driver.
For example in NixOS its adding a line in the hardware/config file then running a rebuild.
For Ubuntu there appears some steps spelled out lower in this thread https://askubuntu.com/questions/55868/installing-broadcom-wireless-drivers
Some distros publish their known working hardware lists https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Hardware
Mostly just try Linux on it 😹 Don’t install it just run from a flash drive or something
Generally speaking, most if not all hardware running Win 10 will be able to work on any Linux distribution making a few exceptions where external drivers can be found. Normally though, this will not be necessary as it will be pre baked into the kernel with no interference from you
That being said - Mint runs an older version of the kernel compared to the current state of desktop Linux and may not contain certain drivers for hardware that came out after that specific kernel version was released. You can use a distro that favors being up to date over long term support, such as Fedora or Arch (if you’re willing to put up with setting up Arch) if that crops up. But generally, if you’re running win 10 still this shouldn’t be a problem
Without knowing your hardware, i can’t really say more though. Just try mint or any other distribution on a live usb and if it works there, then it will work when installed
Also sometimes with a wireless issue there’s an easy workaround.
The ancient Broadcom WiFi module is the most problematic aspect of my 2012 MacBook Pro, but I got a fully Linux compatible tp-link USB wifi adapter for about £10.
On my wifés 2012 MacBook Pro, I had the same broadcom related problem and installing Rpm fusion solved it https://ostechnix.com/how-to-enable-rpm-fusion-repository-in-fedora-rhel/
You could dig into the Linux hardware and see if your system is listed there, and how compatilble it is
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If we can answer it here, it will show up on Google in the future
