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The hardware wiki
The purpose of this wiki is to collect information about common computer hardware components, and how to use them. The wiki will contain a page for each individual part, for example the Logitech Media Keyboard Elite. A page about a keyboard will then contain (among other things) a description of the hardware, Linux support status (including whether there's an open source software driver or not), and links to drivers and online manuals. The hope is that this info will be more comprehensive and accessible than the official manufacturer pages.
I (User:Thue) created this wiki because I thought that a wiki was an obvious way to create a collection of knowledge about computer hardware. I often want to read about for example Linux support and known problems for a piece of hardware, and besides this wiki there seem to be no place on the Internet where such user-contributed information is collected. My vain hope is that this site will catch on, to create a large and valuable resource in the spirit of Wikipedia.
I have found that the time spend creating articles documenting problems and workarounds is well spend, from a purely egocentric point of view, because of the time saved the next time I have to reinstall the same piece of hardware. On top of that comes the benefit to others, and other people adding solutions to your articles.
The structure is relatively simple. Hardware is categorized by type, for example laptops. Categories may be subdivided, for example laptops is subdivided by laptop maker, e.g. Acer laptops. This page then contains a list of specific models, for example Acer Aspire 3613WLMi, with information such as features, driver support and HOWTOs for Linux, and a list of internal links to cards/motherboards using the chipset.
If you want to, you can create a list of links to the hardware in your own system on your user page. See user:Thue for an example.
Content
(To be expanded)
Hardware
Computers
Components
Input devices
Printers
Storage
Expansion cards
- Wifi cards
- ...
Other
Manufacturers
Other Data Sources
If you don't find information here, the following may help:
- Free Software Foundation (FSF)'s "Hardware Devices that Support GNU/Linux"
- Xen Hardware compatibility list
- Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO (Steven Pritchard)
- The Unix Hardware Buyer HOWTO (Eric Raymond)
- Linux on Laptops
License
All information in the wiki is licensed in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license, which means that the information will always be free. Dumps of the wiki are available on request.
