I found the opposite. Even my obsure printer that needed tons of windows tweaks and drivers just worked on Linux.
The only device that needed help was a 6-axis 3D mouse. Linux saw it as a mouse/tablet xy input. But Windows needs drivers for it to function. They had a Linux driver for it, so I installed that to get the 6axis working.
Got an example? Because my USB MIDI music keyboard controller, smart card reader, USB guitar/mic capture device, and printer are working just fine.
Chances are, if it’s a major brand, or following any sort of standard, it’s going to work out of the box. This used to be a problem in the 90s and early 2000s. Not so much anymore.
Preface: I’m now completely moved over to nixos and installing a bloody windows drive.
NaturalPoint did some nasty stuff to opentrack and we all suffered.
TLDR proprietary devices prefer proprietary drivers. Additionally any directX game that strains hardware pretty much requires windows or you pay in framerate. Experimental wine and proton can lose a lot of performance. Thankfully more development teams are supporting vulkan and native linux.
Any devices, that do not work on any of my machines:
Any devices, that did not work out of the box on any of my machines and needed a seperate package (I use a distro without any preinstalled drivers): Fingerprint sensor, NVidia GPU (only for gaming, it does work just not very performant)
Any devices, that did work out of the box: Every mouse (including the PowerPlay mousepad), every keyboard, headphones, cameras, printers/scanners, touchpads, game controllers
Bonus: Android to Linux OTG networking in both directions
Any devices that do not work with Windows: Scanner, Touchpad (in the installer), Bonus: Intel Rapid Storage Technology
Linux users trying to get a USB device that isn’t a mouse, keyboard, or data storage working on their OS (the hardware drivers don’t support Linux)
I found the opposite. Even my obsure printer that needed tons of windows tweaks and drivers just worked on Linux.
The only device that needed help was a 6-axis 3D mouse. Linux saw it as a mouse/tablet xy input. But Windows needs drivers for it to function. They had a Linux driver for it, so I installed that to get the 6axis working.
Got an example? Because my USB MIDI music keyboard controller, smart card reader, USB guitar/mic capture device, and printer are working just fine.
Chances are, if it’s a major brand, or following any sort of standard, it’s going to work out of the box. This used to be a problem in the 90s and early 2000s. Not so much anymore.
Preface: I’m now completely moved over to nixos and installing a bloody windows drive.
NaturalPoint did some nasty stuff to opentrack and we all suffered.
TLDR proprietary devices prefer proprietary drivers. Additionally any directX game that strains hardware pretty much requires windows or you pay in framerate. Experimental wine and proton can lose a lot of performance. Thankfully more development teams are supporting vulkan and native linux.
Any devices, that do not work on any of my machines:
Any devices, that did not work out of the box on any of my machines and needed a seperate package (I use a distro without any preinstalled drivers): Fingerprint sensor, NVidia GPU (only for gaming, it does work just not very performant)
Any devices, that did work out of the box: Every mouse (including the PowerPlay mousepad), every keyboard, headphones, cameras, printers/scanners, touchpads, game controllers
Bonus: Android to Linux OTG networking in both directions
Any devices that do not work with Windows: Scanner, Touchpad (in the installer), Bonus: Intel Rapid Storage Technology