openSUSE:Hardware FAQ

Desktop PC, Laptop PC and Server

What kind of devices are supported by openSUSE?

Can I find a list of supported hardware around?

There is a nice hardware compatibility list available. This list is certainly not exhaustive, but it contains a lot of information which may be of help.

How can I get my piece of hardware to work?

You may wish to search for your hardware model or type of hardware in the openSUSE Wiki and see if any information can be found.

CPU

What is the minimum CPU requirement?

openSUSE can run on any desktop or laptop PC, even those 20 years old devices!

If your CPU is too old or not powerful enough, you can:

Install light weight desktop environment like Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment.
Or use just window manager, like i3wm, which is more light weight.
Or run without graphic user interface.

Does openSUSE support latest CPU on the market?

Most CPUs on the market are x86_64 architecture from AMD or Intel. Currently, both AMD and Intel will push code to Linux kernel before their new CPU/GPU available on market. To utilize latest CPU, you need a newer version kernel.

You can install openSUSE Tumbleweed which always has latest kernel.

If you prefer Leap, you can also install a newer version of kernel from OBS. Note that even though Leap's kernel version looks very old, it has back-ported support of newer CPU. For example, Leap 15.x has kernel 4.12, but it supports all CPU that are supported by kernel 4.19.

Does openSUSE support ARM CPU?

openSUSE does support a variety of ARM devices, like Raspberry Pi. However, packages available on ARM devices are less than x86_64 devices. And the installation process is also different. Here is a team actively develop openSUSE on ARM. Even though it is not as stable as x86_64 ports, you can always get help from community. Visit ARM portal for more information.

Graphics card drivers

How do I get the ATI/Nvidia binary drivers up and running?

See SDB:NVIDIA and SDB:ATI.

Wireless

Is there a list of supported wireless cards available?

Sure, take a look at http://linux-wless.passys.nl/

Any card with a "green" status has native Linux drivers available. The majority of them can be compiled into the SUSE kernel by hand, but some, like Atheros and acx100 based chipsets, only need a few RPMs to be installed. Check in a non-OSS repository to locate RPMs, if any.

How can I get my wireless card up and running?

When proprietary Linux wireless drivers were made available by the manufacturer, there is a reasonable chance that an older wireless card will work immediately after being configured within YaST. For newer wireless cards, if a Linux wireless driver was proprietary, then openSUSE may need additional drivers (such as the SDB:Atheros madwifi driver), followed by configuring the card/driver with YaST. For wireless cards where no native Linux driver is available, it may be necessary to use SDB:Ndiswrapper.

Webcams

How do I install my webcam?

Look at the article web cameras in order to setup you webcam.