Most commodity desktop PCs have very little custom hardware, so automatic hardware support is relatively easy. In the laptop world, things are much less straightforward. Many laptops contain extensive arrays of weird and wonderful hardware, often requiring machine-specific drivers. Windows vendors generally ship customized versions of Windows for the machines, something that is much less practical in the Linux world.

This talk will cover the range of hardware available in laptops, and the different approaches available to insure that that hardware is supported without end-user configuration.