I have an idea but does it exist?

[Tesseract]

I was thinking it would be so great if there was a program that you could download and have it scan your computers hardware like the processor, memory etc. and after its all finished list all the Distributions and Versions that would be compatible with your computer. Because it can get very complicated if your a newbie such as myself. Does such a program exist? Thank you.

[daark.child]

I've never seen such a program, but tools for scanning hardware are abundant, e.g. hwinfo, lshw, lspci, scanpci, harddrake etc. The difficult part in my opinion would be finding out which distro supports a certain piece of hardware because there are so many different types of hardware configuration out there.

[elija]

The other problem with that is that hardware manufacturers
change the components in their gizmos without changing the
model number etc.

If you can overcome that, then go for it, but I think it will be tricky
to beat the live CD as a way of testing compatibility.

[i92guboj]

I've never seen such a program, but tools for scanning hardware are abundant, e.g. hwinfo, lshw, lspci, scanpci, harddrake etc. The difficult part in my opinion would be finding out which distro supports a certain piece of hardware because there are so many different types of hardware configuration out there.

The main common point amongst *ALL* linux distros is that, well... they ALL use the linux kernel.

As such, they are -virtually- support the same hardware. The only thing that matters for hardware support is the kernel version, and that can be updated manually with little effort.

This is the main reason why such a tool would be useless, but it would also be very difficult to keep updated (and as such, useful), because the kernel evolves too quickly. The only way that such a tool would make sense would be as an add-on to the kernel, maintained by the same kernel team. That'd be the only way to guarantee that it's in sync with the real state of the hardware support on the kernel on every momment. It would inform you which kernel versions (if any) do support your hardware. But it's usefulness would nonetheless be still be vary limited, since the menuconfig kernel configuration tool has a search tool that can lookup into the kernel help texts for strings (device names, drivers, or whatever).

So, provided that ALL the linux distros do support the same hardware, what the OP probably meant is "which distro has better auto detection for my concrete hardware". And this is, obviously, impossible to guess, unless it's on a case by case basis.

[Dies]

So, provided that ALL the linux distros do support the same hardware, what the OP probably meant is "which distro has better auto detection for my concrete hardware". And this is, obviously, impossible to guess, unless it's on a case by case basis.

I'll guess.

Sabayon Linux Project Website

or

KNOPPIX Linux Live CD

[daark.child]

The main common point amongst *ALL* linux distros is that, well... they ALL use the linux kernel.

As such, they are -virtually- support the same hardware. The only thing that matters for hardware support is the kernel version, and that can be updated manually with little effort.

This is the main reason why such a tool would be useless, but it would also be very difficult to keep updated (and as such, useful), because the kernel evolves too quickly. The only way that such a tool would make sense would be as an add-on to the kernel, maintained by the same kernel team. That'd be the only way to guarantee that it's in sync with the real state of the hardware support on the kernel on every momment. It would inform you which kernel versions (if any) do support your hardware. But it's usefulness would nonetheless be still be vary limited, since the menuconfig kernel configuration tool has a search tool that can lookup into the kernel help texts for strings (device names, drivers, or whatever).

So, provided that ALL the linux distros do support the same hardware, what the OP probably meant is "which distro has better auto detection for my concrete hardware". And this is, obviously, impossible to guess, unless it's on a case by case basis.

I agree with the majority of what you said. One thing to note though is that some distros patch their kernels for additional hardware support, so this means that sometimes you can run two kernels with similar version numbers on two different distros, but the hardware support would not necessarily be the same. If you are using Vanilla kernels, then this won't be an issue.

[i92guboj]

Yes. But you still can use those patches on any other distro. In fact, a lot of distros take kernel patches from redhat or debian to build their custom kernel patchsets. Not to speak about the famour grsecurity patches and a lot of other famous ones.

Even more: most serious distros offer methods like precompiled packages for external modules, alternative patched kernels, or at least wikis and / or howtos to use almost any available patches around.

I, however, understand your point: if you are using a very very very essoteric device which needs a custom patchset or a very very recent kernel from the git or mm branch, and you are not so smart about linux, then having it setup automaticaly can be a good thing. But it has also a downfall: using experimental drivers makes your distro experimental, and, possibly, unstable.

So, I vote for leaving experimental stuff to people that can handle it.

Anyway, it's true that experimental doesn't automatically mean "unstable", and well tested distros can ship experimental or non-official patchsets on their kernel without -usually- compromissing stability.

As always, nothing is black neither white, but instead on a full 8-bit grayscale. As everything in life.

I agree with the above poster, however, that the knoppix hardware detection is very good, SuSE seems also to be good at that and is probably better suited as a non-live distro than knoppix.