I no longer maintain the GNU Hardware Compatibility Guide. You should go here to get the latest version.
This is provided as an archival version because I do not believe in content disappearing off the web or constantly changing location. But it is out of date.
Go to the real GNU Hurd Hardware Compatiblity Guide now.
Thanks to James A. Morrison for taking this over. (Email address not included to avoid feeding the spambots).
This file contains a list of hardware that is known to work with the GNU operating system.
Copyright (C) 1999 Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com)
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this document under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the author.
HW Guide
This documention contains a list of hardware that is known to be supported by the GNU Hurd operating system. Where possible, specific unsupported hardward is also listed.
This information is provided as a public service. It comes AS IS, with absolutely NO WARRANTY.
This document is maintained by Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com). Please send him any updates or corrections.
The GNU Hurd should run on any archictecture that is supported by the underlying GNU Mach kernel. Currently this is only the Intel x86 architecture. Any 80386 chip or better in that processor line is supported, so long as it has a math co-processor. Additionally, there are restrictions on the bus architectures that are supported. The supported buses are
The Hurd should run on a laptop system. However, PCMCIA cards are NOT supported.
The Hurd supports all type of system memory, including FPM, EDO, and SDRAM.
In console mode, the Hurd supports any card that has a standard VGA text mode. Under X, the Hurd supports any card that is supported by XFree86. The list of supported cards is available on the net at http://www.xfree86.org/cardlist.txt.
If you have a VGA monochrome monitor, it will not be supported even if the video card is supported. Only color monitors are supported at this time.
SVGALIB is currently not supported. Debian packages which depend on it can link against the stub library. This can be useful for packages that have a console mode as well as a graphics mode. The best option for getting SVGALIB support is to port the GNU/Linux GGI code to the Hurd. It has a library abstraction layer that can emulate SVGALIB. If anyone is interested in doing this, please contact help-hurd@gnu.org.
The following SCSI controllers are supported:
Note that the Debian GNU Mach package does NOT include the NCR drivers.
All hard drives should be supported provided the controller is supported (devices show up as "sd%d"). All CD-ROM drives should likewise be supported provided the controller is supported and the block size is 512 or 2048 (devices show up as "cd%d") . However, tape drives and generic devices are currently NOT supported.
Exceptions to the supported disk drive list are the NEC D3817, D3827, and D3847. These disk drives are not supported under any controller.
Standard PC floppy drives are supported.
Most IDE controllers should also be supported. The following controllers are known to work:
If a disk drive is supported by the controller and the controller is supported, then the hard drive will be supported by the Hurd (devices show up as "hd%d"). UltraDMA (also known as UltraATA) hard drives should work, but will operate in standard IDE mode. As with hard drives, almost all CD-ROM drives supported by a supported controller are themsevles supported under the Hurd (devices show up as "wcd%d"). All other types of IDE devices are NOT supported.
Standard PC parallel ports are supported (devices show up as "lpr%d").
Standard PC serial ports are supported (devices show up as "com%d"). All UARTS are supported, including 8250, 16450, 16550, and 16650A.
The Hurd supports a large number of ethernet controllers. Token ring, Arcnet, FDDI, and other network types are all NOT supported.
The supported ethernet controllers are (devices show up as "eth%d" except the atp device which shows up as ???):
If a supported card supports 100MB ethernet, then the Hurd can make use of that mode.
The GNU Hurd currently does not support any sound cards.
All SCSI CD-ROM drives with a block size of 514 or 2048 should be supported if the controller is supported.
Almost all EIDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported.
No proprietary CD-ROM drives are supported at this time.
No CD-R (recordable CD) devices are supported at this time.
No tape drives are supported by the Hurd at this time.
Serial mice are supported. PS/2 style mice are NOT supported.
Any internal or external modems that connect to a serial port should be supported. The major exceptions are the so called "Winmodems" that require a proprietary operating system in order to work.
Fax modems should work, provided appropriate fax software is available for the Hurd. Currently no such software is available, however.
PPP is currently NOT supported by the Hurd. Thus using a modem to establish an IP connection to the Internet will not work.
Almost all parallel or serial port printers should be supported. The main exceptions are printers that are designed solely for use with a proprietary operating system. Printers that support PostScript are preferred. However, many other printers can support PostScript via the Ghostscript program. A list of supported Ghostscript devices is available at http://www.gnu.org/software/ghostscript/devices.html.
I don't know what scanners are supported by the Hurd.
Removable drives such as Zip and Jaz drives may be supported by the Hurd. The most likely candidates are SCSI devices.
The Universal Serial Bus (USB) and all USB devices are NOT supported.
Multiport terminal cards are NOT supported.
Joysticks are NOT supported.
TV tuner devices are NOT supported
Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) devices are NOT supported